A very technical greenhouse

The new greenhouse (or, as Marlon calls it, ‘outhouse’ because of its semblance to an old fashioned outdoor dunny) is up and running.

It’s a bit of a rush job but I’m proud of it. I whipped it up so that it was finished before the Adelaide Edible Garden Trail came out to do some filming here.

It’s only small but fits nicely into a little space that gets a lot of Sun in Winter. Because of the orientation of the house, we need to have two greenhouses to maximise capture of the Sun’s energy.

The greenhouse on the other side of the house is waiting to be built and I’m waiting on a rain tank that needs to be installed before I build it.

That greenhouse will be larger and is planned to provide passive heating for the main bedroom.

I’m using two sprinkler misters per shelf on 13mm poly pipe, connected to the mains water so pressure isn’t a problem. Trial and error will help me find the perfect position of the tap and how long to leave it on for.

The build.

To make the greenhouse, I simply attached some old polycarbonate sheets to an existing foldable greenhouse frame. I attached two sheets as the sides and bent them around the back and overlapped them a little. This meant that that I didn’t have to cut them and can reuse them later.

The state of the art hinges for the door are just thick wire wrapped around convenient parts of the greenhouse frame and looped through the polycarbonate sheets. The roof is a cut-off from a sheet that I’d cut for another project and is tied to the other sheets with wire.

Probably the most complex part of the whole greenhouse is where the front door locks closed. The angles of the ribs in the polycarbonate fit snugly together and the door literally snaps closed.

The vent is also extremely high tech. I attached the roof so that it bowed upwards slightly. That leaves a gap at the front. To close it, I just put a bit of wood on it and the weight closes the gap. A bit later, I’ll add some loose mesh to the gap so that it is screened when open.

There’s only a couple of things left to do, one is to add an online tap to each shelf so that I’m not watering empty shelves. Some way to catch water at the bottom is in order too.

Maybe I can knock a hole in the toilet wall and vent the warm air into there over Winter? What’s that, Jelina? No way!!!