Can a green house save you money?

[Jaxom]

In my dreams... I wake up in the morning, after taking care the morning nessities in my master bath, I head down to my kitchen, first pouring myself a cup of coffee I harvested from my own coffee plants. Then I grab a few slices of home made bread that I've toasted and covered with my home made preserves. I gather my morning breakfast together and head to my attrium and sit down at a patio table where I left my lap top. I cruise through all my emails while I drink my coffee and eat my toast, all the time there's 2 feet of snow outside and the windchills tempuratures have a minus sign in front of them. While I sit here complete surrounded by sub-tropical and tropical plants. At any given time I can reach out and pick a banana or orange to add to my breakfast....

Now back to reality! Part of my goal to become self sufficent is planning on having a green house. Reason why? I live in grow zone 5b. Hardly an area where I can grow citrus or other savory fruits. Then there's the aspect, of no matter how large of a summer garden you have, I REALLY hate having to pay a grocer exorbant prices for winter veggies. You know what I'm talking about, those perfectly round, perfectly red, and perfectly tasteless hot house grown tomatos that they sell in 3 packs. I'm also fond of denver omlettes, which require fresh bell peppers.

A green house is a major investment that's going to take conciderable amount of planning if it's going to be successful. There will be many factors to concider. Things like does your property have the right orientation so a green house can be constructed? Will the local building ordences allow such a sturcture. (Where I live now, the answer is no.) Beyojnd that, you have to take into count building methods. How will it be heated, cooled? So on and so forth.

The question here is this. Can a green house produce enough to offset it's intial costs of building and then maintaining over time? Can you keep the heating and cooling costs low enough to help aid in this? Could you possibly off set some of the costs by using said green house by propagating plants for others and selling them? Perhaps selling seedlings in the spring or selling extra fresh fruits and veggies to other's in the winter?

So for those of you that either have, or planning to have a green house. What's your take on this? If you have already built one, what are some of the pitfalls, or things you would change if you did it all over again? What methods have you used to keep operating costs to the lowest minium?

Thanks,

Jax

 

[~gd]

It CAN and it can also be a money pit. you are going to spend a ton of money to keep a 5b green house warm enough for the things you talked about. The tropical plants need to be warm NIGHT and day to produce. Your best bet is to let them go dorment and warm enough to stay alive over the winter. down here in 7b (NC) I have managed to produce banana and some of the small citrus without one by growing in large pots and moving the more hardy plants into my garage right against the interior wall (heat leakage from the house) and the more tender into the house where they hog the sunlight from the windows. Citrus make nice house plants besure you buy drawf trees.
What about your snow load 5b tells temp but nothing about snow load.
BTW there are many greenhouses here for the taking, they used to be used to start tobacco plants but that crop is moving to Brazil now that price controls have been removed. You have to give the owner a deposit to insure you clean up after yourself, take down their green house and move it where you want, If they are happy with your work they refund the deposit. I have run the numbers but decided not to get one because of the cost vs profit picture. (only pot growers are making money!)
sure you can grow your own hot house tomatoes but without the sun and heat they are going to be tasteless like the ones out of the store. cool temp crops you can have all winter but not in the greenhouse in the fall, spring, and summer unless you actually air condition. I know lots of pepper nuts but none use a green house except for starts, there must be a reason but I have never asked.
How are you at hand pollination (can't spell) most fruits require that in a hot house without bees and wind to help.
Check out heating and cooling costs, a greenhouse can help during winter daylight with heating but it is going to cost to keep heat lost at night to a reasonable level.
Dream if you want, but get the facts before you buy.

 

[Wildsky]

Yeah I am in Zone 4, and a greenhouse will extend my growing season a bit - a couple of months perhaps, but when the real winter temps hit there is no way I'd be able to keep it warm without using tons of wood or electricity.

 

[ducks4you]

Turning out the lights when you leave the room helps, too. SURPRISINGLY, when the economy was good (when I was a kid) my PARENTS were always getting us to turn out the lights to save money!!

 

[patandchickens]

If you have to pay any signficant amount of money to build it, then NO it will for sure not save you money. If you can scrounge and build something that is funny-lookin' but structurally appropriate, then it might potentially save you A LITTLE BIT of money IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY WASTING money on buying out-of-season imported produce.

For a point of comparison, my parents just moved to a retirement home this past winter but before that their house had a lean-to style greenhouse, probably about 10x20, on the SW end. It was older but very well designed, and set up to provide (rather management-intensive) solar heating to the house during the day, and be heated to 55 F or so at night (they grew orchids) using a natural gas heater. They figured that in a typical year, they pretty much "broke even" from it, in terms of the heat saved via using it for solar house heating versus the heat expended at nighttime to keep the plants from freezing. Obviously it was still a net loss when you consider the construction costs (tho dad did all the work himself) and the ongoing replacement of various bits and parts every few years.

They didn't grow edibles in it (cept parsley and rosemary) but could certainly have grown lettuce, tomatoes, that sort of thing if they'd chosen. However that would only represnt a significant "saving" if you are buying those things from the grocery store during the winter. And even then, I am very unsure that it would save much of anything beyond the operating costs of the greenhouse (exclusive of heat, I mean -- talking about electricity, repairs and replacements type of thing)

A small cold frame or 'cold house' greenhouse can be more worthwhile, if you can build it for basically-free, by providing you with some sort of greens for much or all of the winter at little or no operating cost. However this does not mesh with your dream of going and sitting in there with a cup of coffee on a snowy morning and picking lemons, or whatever LOL

You know what, all of these "alternative" things you're talking about -- funky house designs, greenhouses, etc -- are fun to contemplate, but they are for people who either a) have a lot of disposable money, or b) have already got land and a house and are now in a position to see what they can do with their scrounging/building talents.

Please don't be offended when I say this, but a job -- any sort of job at all that produces income, even flipping burgers or sweeping floors -- would seem to be a necessary first step to acquiring the aforementioned disposable income and/or land-and-house.

Best of luck,

Pat

 

[DrakeMaiden]

Off the top of my head, I would say it would be a money pit if you intended to grow tropical plants. Would you get enough daylight in the winter to keep the plants thriving anyway, not to mention the heating issue?

You could use a greenhouse in a passive solar sense to extend your growing season into the winter (read Elliot Coleman's book about raising vegetables year-round), without too much expense. If you scavenged materials for the greenhouse or found a used one that you could easily re-assemble, you would definitely be ahead. But I somehow don't think that would fulfill your dream.

It would be cheaper to move to a more tropical environment, IMO.

 

[Jaxom]

Snow loads...that would be a concern. While we've had 20 some years of tempurate winters, we can occationally be nailed with easily over a foot. I have a book on green house building that they show the structural requirements for green houses that will have to deal with this issue.

Because of the issue of cold and snow, I've been looking at berm style greenhouses, or the very least green houses where the northing wall had no glass and is heavily insulated. Further more I'm a firm believer in radiant floor heating. Either by using pv electric or water piped through the slab. In addition to this since the north wall will be solid, I could build that out of cinder block and paint it black or some other dark color. This would act as a passive solar collector for radient heat as well.

Pat, I'm an adult. I'll be 45 in mid august. I take constructive critism very well. For that's the way I believe you ment what you said. I haven't been here long, but I can tell, just by comments that everyone here really cares about one and other. I can only see that pretty much everyone here would like to see everone else succeed.

Job wise. If could find a job, I wouldn't be loosing my mother's home. After she passed away last October, I spent the first two weeks pretty much in shock. But I have responcibilites as well. My other half lives with my 6 1/2 year old daughter. She's carring for not only our daughter both of her ailing parents as well and cannot work. While my mother was still alive I could not work either, but once those first two weeks went by, I got out there and started hustling for work. I pounded the pavement day in and day out. There are just no jobs out there! Heck I agree, I'd rather be flipping burgers then having to loose this home. But things just haven't worked out that way.

Plan is for me, currently is to get an estate sale done. Fix my beat up old truck so that I can get around and not have to count on public transportation any more. It's too costly and doesn't get me to areas where I might find work. Depending on the out come of this estate sale, and how much it will cost to get my truck running will determine if I can at least hang out here for a while, and hopefully find a temp job, until such time I'm forced out of this house one way or another.

Turst me, if I could I would be working. Until my truck broke down I was even dumpster diving for metal and hauling that to the recycling center for a bit of cash. I've reviewed my skills and my ablities to see if there's anything I can market myself even to do odd jobs and such.

Being at home during all this leaves me with alot of time on my hands, even when working on estate sale, I "think" alot. This thinking and dreaming is about all I have left, and for all intensive purposes has kept me sain.

So I hope you take this the right way Pat, if you have ANY suggestions as what I can do, I'm all ears. I've discussed these same matters with my best friend, my fiance, and just about anyone else that will listen.

 

[SKR8PN]

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5698



Above is a link to the thread I started on my totally solar greenhouse. I am in Ohio and I plan on having food from this year round, WITH NO ADDITIONAL HEAT SOURCE! I need to update the project thread in the next day or so. I just received the triangle shaped windows that go beside the doors, got the front and rear beds filled with the growing medium (a mixture of soil, compost, vermiculite and sand). I "might" be able to have it all done within the next week or so!!

This project isn't exactly what I would call cheap, but it ain't no million dollar money pit either. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, has either been on sale(REALLY on sale!) bartered for, off of Craigslist, or scrounged.
Heck, for that matter, even a lot of the shed it is attached to came from Craigslist and a little bartering!! Did I mention that I Craigslist?

 

[~gd]

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5698



Above is a link to the thread I started on my totally solar greenhouse. I am in Ohio and I plan on having food from this year round, WITH NO ADDITIONAL HEAT SOURCE! I need to update the project thread in the next day or so. I just received the triangle shaped windows that go beside the doors, got the front and rear beds filled with the growing medium (a mixture of soil, compost, vermiculite and sand). I "might" be able to have it all done within the next week or so!!

This project isn't exactly what I would call cheap, but it ain't no million dollar money pit either. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, has either been on sale(REALLY on sale!) bartered for, off of Craigslist, or scrounged.
Heck, for that matter, even a lot of the shed it is attached to came from Craigslist and a little bartering!! Did I mention that I Craigslist?

You all report back next spring or even this January and let us know how it is working out for you. I am skeptical my self. It looks like you are depending on water jugs for your heat sink. just how many gallons do you calculate you will have? your part of Ohio have sunny winter days? Western NY where I grew up, could go 30-40 days without seeing the sun, funny the clear days were when it was really cold, we would say it was "too cold to snow". Good luck to you in any case....~gd

 

[SKR8PN]

The jugs contain a total of 745 gallons, but that isn't my entire heat sink. The entire floor and both growing beds will act as a heat sink as well. I also used insulation on the INSIDE of the front and side walls, that extends down into the earth 18 inches deep. That will be my frost break and protect that front bed from any freeze or frost coming in from the bottom from cooling the front bed. The walkway down the center is also insulated underneath to help retain any solar gain. The wall behind those jugs is 6 inches thick with OSB on the inside and the outside with a full 6 inches insulation between, as well as the siding(for a dead air space) and an additional 1 inch thick foam board behind the jugs. The jugs themselves are setting on 4 inch thick concrete that is also insulated on the bottom side. My largest heat loss will be through the thermopane windows and the sliding glass doors. I am contemplating on using a solar pool cover to make a "curtain" that could be lowered behind the entire front glass wall at night to help retain heat. That is still in the thought process. I may just wait and see how this works out this winter. I plan on tracking the outside vs the inside temp this first winter to give me some idea as to when to plant inside. The biggest problem is going to be the lack of sunlight after November 15. We will need to have all of our stuff actually producing BEFORE that date. I may have to add some grow lights on timers if this proves to be the case.
Sorry for the ramble, but I just got out of bed and am on my first cup-o-joe.