Ok so I know some of us live in terrible climates, I can consider myself one of you. As a result, I started to check out this type of greenhouse called a Walipini, or more commonly, a solar greenhouse. Let me say this to start off. You will most likely have a hard time doing this if you live in a city, or have a small yard. Here are my two main sources, a lot of which will overlap, but there you have it nonetheless. Solar Greenhouse Resources http://www.bensoninstitute.org/Publication/Manuals/Walipini.pdf The idea of this type of greenhouse is to extend the growing season even further than the typical greenhouse. A few things to notice about this design. 1. The greenhouse will be submerged typically into a hill, but in the ground in order to provide insulation. This may seem like a huge loss of light, but reflective walling on 3/4 sides can help fix this problem. 2. These "solar" greenhouses are positioned facing the south, with an angle that will maximize solar energy during the colder winter months and help deflect excess heat in the summer. So basically a quick walk through of a possible setup. The initial space must be dug obviously, but in this one case clay soil can actually help maintain the structure. Building into a hillside can be much easier, but if you live on ground simply dig the hole and figure out which angle you need to build the greenhouse roof. With an angle and a width of the space you can use simple trig to find out how tall one side has to be in order to support the roof. So what we are looking at here is making one side taller for obvious reasons. To do this you can come up with numerous simple and most likely cheap and effective ways to make one side higher. However, one interesting way that I saw in all of my research was to get a few hay bales and pile them as high as necessary. Once the bales are in place, take the extra hay that you have and need to mix with clay, sand, and of course, hay to make a sort of mud brick building material. With this material you can cover the outside and in between the bales in order to create a reasonably adequate structure that should offer decent insulation. An analysis of materials to use as the roof is given here as stated in the initial part of this. Solar Greenhouse Resources Note: when you dig the space for the solar greenhouse leave an area towards the front ( south side ) a little bit deeper than the rest, I would say a foot would do, but this is an estimate. This will create a cold sink in which colder air will fall. Now, on the NORTH end of the solar greenhouse add additional items such as 55 gallon water drums (painted black), or some other item such as rocks (I have even seen someone use empty beer bottles filled with water so be creative). The idea is what is really important, the use of these drums or whatever material you use it to absorb heat during the day(this is why they are black) and slowly release it during the night into the growing space. Then, depending on your level of enthusiasm or overall laziness or lack thereof, cover the walls with a reflective material in order to maximize sunlight. Because the sources given have so eloquently stated information about installation of components such as doors, reinforcing walls, and ventilation, I will not be doing so as I will probably do it with less skill than them. This has merely been a small summary to see what you guys think about this type of greenhouse as opposed to other ways of growing. Please let me know what your thoughts are and if you have any really cool ideas.
i have begged my dad for years to make one on our west hill base. he said if a heavy rain comes where we live we would have a swiming pool..lol. i think he just dosnt want to dig. but i love the idea and the info . i think more people should know about this method if you live in extreme places.
Yeah so do I, but there are ways of funneling the water out in relatively simple ways if you look it up I'm sure you can convince him.
+rep to you sir for expanding my knowledge and much much more, thank you for sharing the info! also thought I'd add some info here, I plan to do sqftgardening in this whenever i build one to increase efficency also i was planning on having not one but two gutters to feed into my 55gal drums, one off of the glaze side and another off of the berm side and i was planning on adding MORE drums as a water supply for when you may not have enough water available, i was thinking to pretty much just line em up along the back wall so if there was a 50' walipini, there'd be about 30-40 55 gal drums there, try overflowing THAT water system! also have some other things that i am going to do to improve this design that i will post here as i come up with them one atm is a brick that i cant remember the name of but it has MUCH better insulation value, i'll let you know when i rember the name and gather more info on it
thanks chillin! yeah i have a huge green house now so i wont be moving anything unless i need to. i know if i made some french drains it would totally work out. we are lazy out here in cali. +rep peace ,mack
ok so the bricks are called ICF's and they aren't really bricks per say, its foam FORMS that are filled with concrete and even more insulating than dirt, but due to the expense i'd say best not to use these if you don't have too. on the bensoninstitute pdf file they do the "mathmatical angle figuring" or add 23 to thier lattitude and then apply that to the UPPER ANGLE or the angle that connects the backwall to the glazing(at least in the diagrams), therefore the higher your lattitude the closer to a completely horizontal angle you get, which is obviously not a good idea for higher lattitudes but in fact lower THERFORE to improve on that you wanna do your "mathmatical angle figuring" off the bottom angle or the front wall and the glaze, therefore the higher the lattitude, the closer to vertical you get, which means you get the winter sun better when its important and not so much of the hot summer sun which would burn your plants ive read during my research of these greenhouses that someone has gotten a bannana tree to grow successfully at 14000 ft! now imagine snow on the ground and pulling in a fresh bundle of bannanas! the mylar is a good addition to help reflect light assuming you have the funding, look into solexx panels this design is used in the LDS church welfare program so they obviously look for the most EFFECTIVE way to do things cheaply in order to do the most good, which is great, but if you got the solexx panels instead of plastic, i imagine it would maintain an EXCELLENT temperature even when its neg 40 outside as it gets here in the winter also one thing thats not too much more expense than whats included in the pdf file, is solar operated vents, look em up, basically just pistons that expand when they reach a certain temp and contract at another, opening and closing vents for ya I DO plan on building one of these at some point within the next three years, will devote a whole thread to it when i do, and will post on here to let you know than you can learn about improvements that i've done