A couple of our heat loving plants are suffering a bit in the cold. I was thinking about what to do about it, having moved them several times into warmer microclimates to no avail. I thought about buying some greenhouse plastic, then remembered that I had a heap of bubblewrap salvaged from an art gallery that was going to dump it. The result…personal greenhouses for the affected plants – two Tamarind and two Moringa trees. Just add a couple of garden stakes for a frame and wrap the plant, pot and all, in bubblewrap. I made sure the plants weren’t touching the plastic and that there was a small gap at the top to help reduce condensation. I reckon I’m on a winter winner!
insulation
(Bubble) wrapping your windows in Summertime
Bubble wrap can be easily applied to windows as insulation. A while ago, I wrote a post called ‘Bubble Wrap Insulation‘. That post was aimed at keeping the Winter cold out and our precious heat in but as its been so hot here lately, I thought I’d measure the difference it made on the windows in Summer. The digital weather station with today’s temperatures. The pic above shows the weather station in the lounge. You can see the inside and outside temperatures. The digital ‘gun’ type hand held spot thermometer that I used to take the other measurements agrees with this, within a few 1/10ths of a degree. The bubble wrap pulled back so that I could get a comparison. To prepare the window, I pulled the bubble wrap off of one half of a window and left the other half attached. Then I left it for half an hour before measuring. The window wasn’t in direct sunshine,
Down with the bubble wrap!
‘Did you break your windows” ‘Why have you got bubble wrap on your windows?’ ‘What the hell are you up to now, Haines?’ These have been the three most common questions that visitors have asked over the last few months upon seeing the bubble wrap on the inside of the windows. We’d heard that it helps to keep the heat in the house by adding a layer of cheap insulation to the glass. Did it work? We think it did. We don’t have data on kWh or dollars saved, but it did make a difference to our comfort level. The main thing we noticed was that we didn’t need a heater in the master bedroom at all, as its temperature was equal to that of the lounge (which is at the opposite end of the house). With bubble wrap, the average difference was less than 1 degree centigrade, closer to 0. Thats not bad for free! One of
