We have received a lot of questions about why our greenhouse footing was designed this way. In this video I will go through why we designed and installed a shallow insulated frost wall with 10ft. piles at 8ft centres.
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Passive solar greenhouse, Passive solar greenhouse design, Passive solar greenhouse construction,
0:36 An important tool on your farm
1:07 Why a rain gauge is so important
1:55 Greenhouse foundation question: Why did you build it this way?
2:23 Walls but no floor?
3:14 Piles
3:40 Subterranean heating and cooling system
3:56 Why put the soil in before framing the greenhouse?
4:40 3-4 feet below grade
4:48 Horizontal insulation around greenhouse
5:02 2×6 walls, close to R20
5:09 Tin sheeting
5:19 Polycarbonate glazing
5:22 16 mil three wall
5:27 vents and motorized roll-up doors
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About Rob Avis and Verge Permaculture:
In less than 10 years, Rob & Michelle Avis left Calgary’s oil fields and retooled his engineering career to help clients and students design integrated systems for shelter, energy, water, waste and food, all while supporting local economy and regenerating the land. He’s now leading the next wave of permaculture education, teaching career-changing professionals to become eco-entrepreneurs with successful regenerative businesses. Learn more and connect with Rob & Michelle at https://vergepermaculture.ca/
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My apologies in advance, stupid question alert: I've rewatched the video a couple of times, but I still can't figure out what you mean by piles – piles of what? I understand what you're saying re: the reasons for necessary structural reinforcement, but what is the pile going on those spacings? It just looked like rebar/ concrete reinforcement. Again, my apologies if I'm being dense..!
Rob, do you think 6" pit run in the bottom then sand fill with weeping tile air heat pipe would be a better medium for heat transfer/battery. I know in the old times they use to heat 4" to 6" pitrun stones wrapped with a cloth after keeping them by a fire to keep your feet warm for a long time.
Is there inclusion of passive heating? Geo thermal?
I love the greenhouse design! You will be leading edge for our region. I see high yields and exponential in ground perennial and annual experimentation.
You guys are doing such great work. Your farm house looks beautiful in great shape. Grow Alberta Grow!!!
it'll be interesting comparing your design with paul wheaton's kickstarter thing
Wow, that greenhouse looks huge. I'm sure it will be amazing. Cant wait to see it.
Can't wait to see more! We've built a greenhouse with a few of the features you talked about. We wish we knew more when we built ours. The overhead doors idea sounds interesting. Why did you decide on polycarbonate considering we have some wild hail storms? Will the angle of the glaze matter in terms of hail or is hail even a consideration?
Thanks for taking the time to share your build with all of us!
Yay! We are planning to break ground in 2021. Thanks for doing these vids. I took your PSG course and still have questions about designing and building for Zone 3 cold climates.
In Vermont with our 4 foot plus frost depth, we would use T walls to support those long ICF walls
Are any of your glazing decisions different in light of the large hail-pattern Alberta has been seeing in the past several months? I'm wondering if exterior shade-material might DOUBLE as hail-protection for some stacked functionality (?)
Have you seen Paul Wheaton's kickstarter greenhouse? Looks like they are trying to go off of any input's like fans by circulating the ground air. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulwheaton/greenhouse-1?ref=8zrzi6&token=c19f680c
i built a 10 x 24 foot in ground (3 feet) greenhouse, put in two sets of 25' piping, any suggestion on the types of fans I should buy? tks
I took your PSG course. This is the kind of videos I was waiting for! You building a good one! Keep the hard job and please continue filming your progress. Thank you so much.
This should be a nice and informative video series, specially an engineer commenting on it, instead of some Youtuber.
By the way, here's no reason for the selfie shots. Just show what your talking about.
Check out my self heating and cooling greenhouse design at thecorehome. I'm going to start a kickstarter campaign very soon to get the hubs I designed into mass production.
Looks like we gonna have cool updates upcoming. I'll save your videos and docs for my future green house. If you have any plans to sell, I'm buying!
Thats a fancy greenhouse that you building there. Wondering whats the EROEI in this project.
Just for a few vegetables? i would construct a barn to store hay, feed it to animals as the Amish do. The output is more concentrated energy and less input. But That just me.
Looking forward to updates. Can't wait to see what it's like when it's done. I find greenhouses fascinating!
show plans im interested 🙂
Great video, do you help people with plans etc to build one of these. I live in PEI. thanks
'Polycarbonate glazing on the front.' Why is that, please? Thanks! Sounds fantastic, keep up the great work!