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SteveO
SteveO
16 years ago

Great podcast!

Also, look into setting up a passive solar heater like what ‘Mother Earth News’ wrote about. Here’s the link: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SpaceHeating/solar_barn_project.htm

SteveO
SteveO
16 years ago

Ooops. meant to say ‘Great topic for a podcast’. I’ve not had a chance to listen to it yet.

BlackMacX
BlackMacX
16 years ago

This was an interesting podcast and did marry many good ideas (I’ve see a couple; but never integrated into a single green house) into one. An extension to this might be (if one were building a green house attached to your residence) to attach the green house to your home, thereby (with proper controls in place) provide some additional moisture in the air in winter as well as heat (from the solar gain in the green house); in summer, the house could be a partial source for cooling air for the green house as well. Just a thought.

ModernSurvival
16 years ago

@BlackMacX,

Your concept of pulling some of the heat into the house is also one I plan to try. The only problem with that for me at my retreat is the layout of the house in relation to the way the sun moves across the sky.

The southern side of my home which will get the best solar exposure if the Green House is attached to the home is the side of the house with “secondary bedrooms”. I have a one story “split floor plan” where the kitchen sort of seperates the layout.

So the part we actually “live in” is on the lesser exposed side. I still think we can get some winter solar gain but if I built the home myself I would have done things differently. Everything I guess is a trade off.

I have also seen that a “solar room” can cool a home in summer if you let it vent heat away. I don’t “get it” mentally the way I understand solar gain but I will be working on systems that do this as well in the future.