>On Jul 28, 2008, at 6:00:03 AM, Mark wrote: >With the jump in the price of energy, supposedly there will be high? >heating bills this winter, I was wondering what effect this maybe having?on people who grow orchids especially in colder climates? >Here in Central New York, USDA Zone 5, home greenhouses are extremely rare to begin with. We moved to a small ranch 12 years ago, & three years ago we installed all new windows. During the winter, I grow my orchids & tropical bonsai in a basement plant room under fluorescent lights. It is too warm, & I would just as soon find a way to keep it cooler, possibly a thermostat that goes lower at night than our present one. Most of our club members grow orchids on windowsills. >Global warming is affecting many temperate climates. There is talk that the Syracuse area is now in Zone 6, but USDA has not published a new official map yet. >Iris > >On July 29, Tennis writes: When I had the three growrooms indoors before building the GH (just seconds before oil prices rose - my typical luck!), I ran the lights at night. It started when I had fluorescents and then when I switched to HIDs I vented them to the furnace cold air return. Leaving the furnace fan on, the lights heated the house through the winter and the furnace seldom if ever fired up. Though you may not be able to vent fluorescents, they do produce a good bit of heat, as mine did before I switched to HIDs. If it's practical for you, enclose the room if only with sheets of hanging plastic, block out natural light from the room they're in and run the lights at night when it's naturally colder; during the day you'll have a 'natural' temperature drop. If the room is still too warm at night, vent it as a whole into the furnace air return and let the furnace fan do the work and help heat the house at the same time. Tennis Tennis' idea of capturing the heat produced from the lighting and ducting it to the cold air return of the home's furnace is an excelant idea. The only problem is for those of us that have hot water heat, this would not be practical. One could vent a basement grow room to the outdoors by a piece of round metal duct with an inline fan that is controlled by a thermostat that has a day and night setting. This way the temperature can be dropped to the level you wish to drop it to at night. > At this time, I have been giving thought to building a greenhouse but have reservations due to heating costs. I have been researching heat saving features for eventual use. I thought this infot might be very useful for others as well. To decrease heating costs, in a greenhouse, one can utilize passive and/or active soar technology. This can involve an initial outlay of money but, at the cost of rising heating prices, can be recouped quickly in savings. 1.More heat is lost through the roof of a greenhouse than through the side walls because hot air rises. Replacing the polycarbonate on the roof of a greenhouse with 5 or 7-wall plycarb. would insulate the greenhouse better and save on heating costs. 2.The area above the sidewalls is space that does not need to be heated, at night. So, retractable, thermal, shades trap heated air where it is needed, in the area of the greenhouse where the plants are. These can be manually opened during the day or, for a larger outlay of funds, they can be hooked to a control box and opened by a motor, by throwing a switch or set on a timer. It should be noted that after a snow storm, one would want to have them opened to help melt off the snow load. 3. One could use black, plastic barrels that are filled with water as bench supports or in a row against the southand west walls of the greenhouse to trap solar heat during the day and passively release it at night. Even racks of water filled, plastic, gallon, milk jugs could be utilized for this purpose, at little or no expense (one can raid recycling bins throughout the area on garbage day). 4. There are many active solar options that can be retofitted to an existing greenhouse. One that I have been giving thoughts to is to run black, flexible, plastic pipe, in the peak of a greenhouse and have it plumbed to the home's hot water return to the furnace or a heat exchange unit, to help heat the house or greenhouse. Another option with this would be to plumb the black plastic water barrels together and make a closed system with the black plastic flexible piping in the peak and combine passive and active solar together to suppliment the greenhouse heating. It would require a circulating pump that is run only during the day. I plan on enquiring into phtoelectric cells to run the circulating pump. >I hope this info can be helpful to others. More info and techniques, of using >solar energy, can be found in books and with internet searches. _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
