A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

building questions?

I am planning to build a lean-to style greenhouse soon. I have a 30" brick wall in my backyard and the otherside is filled with dirt so i was going to lean my greanhouse against that. i have been looking at different types and thicknesses of glass and dont know what would be best. I live in albuquerque nm and most of the year it is sunny and warm. I plan on using this greenhouse all year. Any advise would be great thanks

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Permalink Reply by Pat James on February 22, 2013 at 4:43pm

Jim Fisk said:

Don't make fun of HF. They have saved me a fortune on tools. Better know what you're looking at though. They also sell some real cr&*p. DO NOT buy their chainsaw sharpener for example.

Northern is a big step up sometimes.

Permalink Reply by Pat James on February 22, 2013 at 4:51pm

I have a 10X12 Harbor freight greenhouse that is almost 2 years old. No problems yet and I have almost 100 seedlings in there now. I bought one of the cheap flux-core welding units also. I had a few small projects that needed welding but not enough work to warrant spending a pile on a better system. The unit has paid for itself.

I also used a harbor freight angle grinder to cut up and grind the sharp edges off the cages on my 14 growbeds.. And that is just a start. If you make a living using a power tool, then HF is not for you. but for the occasional to semi-regular job around the house, then you can get away with most HF tools with no problem. I have found( calculated) that it would be cheaper to buy a HF tool, use it a couple times and throw it away than to either hire somebody to do the job or buy an more expensive tool use it the same number of times and then try to sell it....

Permalink Reply by coty on February 22, 2013 at 8:54pm

Ooo dont get me wrong. I love harbor freight my little bro is a supervisor at our local harbor freight so we are always there.

Permalink Reply by Jim Fisk on February 23, 2013 at 6:58am

BTW, I needed a 12" compound miter saw which I only use around the farm and I love HF's at 150.00 and it was about 1/3 the price of the competition. I use it for almost all my AP projects from the slots in the gravel guards to the 4x6's that form the GH. Can't use it for cutting my 4' rolls of photo paper that I buy on Ebay for my 17" Epson roll printer. For that I use my Delta as the cuts must be close to perfect.

For a great chainsaw sharpener forget HF and go for the 100.00 Northern brand. I told HF they should be ashamed of themselves for selling their worthless piece of C. They don't listen to me. Still selling that pos 5 years later.We use a lot of wood. Just felled 2 90' trees this week for next year. This time I cut most of it at 26" for the my own wood stoves. Northern has the best wood splitter I have ever used and the fastest, for under 1000.00 and I have been using woodsplitters since the 70's. Splits in both directions. Just love it.

Also BTW the HF inverters are simply awesome and I use the 30.00 400/800w to run the AP system pump and air compressor during power outages. Best deal anywhere and it runs both with no complaints unlike others I have purchased in the past. Already saved the day connected to a large truck battery that I keep trickle charged in the GH. Also I saved about 800.00 by purchasing the HF front end tool for our Cummins Ram for a upper ball joint job just the other day and doing the ball joint, the wheel bearing and the universal myself. It worked fine. Just lube it well and help it along. In other words be a mechanic instead of trying to prove what a piece of junk it is and it will serve you well. If I were doing such for a living I would get the Snap On for 3 times the price.

I can't see a thing wrong with their Ghs. However for the same $ I built my own 3x the size and I prefer the wood frame look. Matches my other buildings better. There is no value to glass all around as well. The N side should be well insulated in our climate.
Oh yeah, their 4" angle grinder at 16.00 is kick ass.
coty said:

Ooo dont get me wrong. I love harbor freight my little bro is a supervisor at our local harbor freight so we are always there.

Permalink Reply by Linda Logan on February 23, 2013 at 1:32pm

This is what Jon Parr told me. Have the slope of your south facing wall (glass) perpendicular to the winter sun. Since you are in a southern climate your slope would be less than mine in Portland OR. Paint your back wall with flat white paint high in titanium rather than aluminum. Home Depot you ask for studio white or artist white and tell them to add titanium.

Hope this helps.

Permalink Reply by coty on February 24, 2013 at 2:40pm

Thanks linda for the good info. Do you know what degree your slope is? I was just going to do 45 degrees

Permalink Reply by Jon Parr on February 25, 2013 at 12:27am

Linda, you're such a good listener! Here is a cool site to help you determine your winter angle, and the rest of the year too.

http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SunChartProgram.html

I live at 37N/122W, so my weakest winter sun is only 30 degrees off the horizon, and my summer peak is 77 degrees. This puts my optimum roof slope at 60 degrees, which is dang steep. It is often impractical for us northerners to truly slope the roof perpendicular, especially for large greenhouses, but steeper is better for winter light absorption, snow load, and summer light deflection. Linda is 45.5N/122.7W, so her perpendicular roof tallies in at 69 degrees to catch that winter noon sun of only 21 degrees. Arizona is more like 55 degree roof slope to catch a winter angle of 35 degrees. With a rear north wall of 30' high, you just might be able to do it, or darn close. In reality, windows catch more winter sun than standard greenhouse roofs, and there are some who actually make greenhouses using only vertical windows for light, and some reflectors strategically placed to bounce in enough summer light to grow without cooking things. I listened to a PHD architect from Boulder who does just that, covering his windows with thick, insulated reflective shutters when temps are very cold, and when the shutters are open (bottom hinged, opening outward) they reflect light back through the window (thereby doubling the light capacity of said window). Combined with a massive climate battery and 8' deep by 4" thick foundation insulation, he was able to keep tomatoes growing in the 70's with snow outside in Feb.

Permalink Reply by coty on March 6, 2013 at 12:42pm

Jon i looked at this chart but it didnt make any sens to me lol. My glass wall and roof will be facing south. My zip code is 87114 if you could look it over for me.

I have decided to go with polycarbonate sheet instead of 6mil plastic. I was able to find some for a good price on craigslist. $150 for 7 3'x4' sheets. I was thinking of doing 3 sheets for my front wall an 3 for the roof making my greenhouse 12' long. Then i was just going to do th rest wood. I was also thinking of building a small retaining wall around the outside for some extra thermal mass and space to grow in the dirt. thanks for all the info.

Permalink Reply by Jim Troyer on March 15, 2013 at 2:23am

Hi All - first post this group.

I read about heating a green house with the latien heat of the soil several years ago and would like to pass this along. While I have not used this method, it seems like a fairly easy and straight forward method to keep reasonable temperatures in your GH year round. If you don't have a greenhouse and are planning to build one, this is a must read...

This is the first paragraph:

Subterranean Heating and Cooling System - SHCS - is an innovative approach to optimized solar greenhouse heating and cooling design that uses the magic of phase-change for heat exchange.
This proven system can heat your greenhouse for operating costs for as little as 7 cents per square foot per year. like I've done in sunny Colorado Ag Zone 4. Supplementary heating and fan cooling costs are often eliminated!

He explains the theory well enough that I think the average guy could figure out how use this simple method after reading his web site.

http://www.sunnyjohn.com/indexpages/shcs.htm

all the best,

Jim

Permalink Reply by Jim Fisk on March 15, 2013 at 7:34am

Hey Coty,

If you have lived where you are thru a Winter just make note of where your Sun sits around noon in January and make your S wall perpendicular to that tree line or what ever. That's all I did and it was close to perfect. Really not rocket science. You could even ask a neighbor who has lived there for a while. You simply want that wall to reflect as little sunlight as possible during the coldest weeks of the year and perpendicular does just that. As far as solar storage is concerned Mother Earth News did testing in the 70's and found dark green was a better color over all for heat absorption than flat black. They have a great DVD of ALL their old issues. Quite a treasure trove.

Oops, got to run. A sheep just found it's way out of our upper field

coty said:

Jon i looked at this chart but it didnt make any sens to me lol. My glass wall and roof will be facing south. My zip code is 87114 if you could look it over for me.

I have decided to go with polycarbonate sheet instead of 6mil plastic. I was able to find some for a good price on craigslist. $150 for 7 3'x4' sheets. I was thinking of doing 3 sheets for my front wall an 3 for the roof making my greenhouse 12' long. Then i was just going to do th rest wood. I was also thinking of building a small retaining wall around the outside for some extra thermal mass and space to grow in the dirt. thanks for all the info.