that ground battery is a keeper; I'm planning on a chinese greenhouse next with a mass back wall made with 1000l water filled totes (solar heated), polycarbonate sun wall and a rocket stove bench in the middle to boost warmth in the colder temp. I'll add up led lighting.
Excellent information Curtis. Great transition from simple to better then best and the real deal greenhouse. But like you have said it's all about what you need and what you can afford. Amazing series. Thanks Man. Enjoy your journey.
Hey Curtis, love what you're doing on the homestead, its great seeing all of it come together. I'm looking at putting in a hoop house for next season, and the walkthrough of different levels is super helpful. Keep up the great work.
Love this series. Here in South Africa materials is very expensive, so is electricity and water but I am trying bit by bit. Got the first 10m x 3m tunnel up and productive. Doing better than the outside crops as we had over 1000mm (normal < 900mm) of rain during December. New bugs like cauliflowers lice and snails. Working on the next tunnel, saving and buying materials on a month by month as our income is less than US$2000 a month, but take it season by season. Looking back we made much progress over the past 3 years. 🤗🇿🇦
For anyone concerned about cost. The no freeze performance can be achived with 1000$ greenhouse of same size. The greenhouse from part 2 with inflated poly and heater. I added third layer bouble wrap inside and i can heat 24m2 greenhouse with 2kw for 15°C. We rarely get below -15°C.
Thanks for the information! Honestly, the increased overwintering potential and productivity gains in the shoulders come at a great cost. I can only see this being useful in an area with limited greenhouse locations. Otherwise, seems way better to have 3-4 "v2 high tunnels" for less than half the cost of one of these.
I mean, if you can put in like 3 layers of floor heating and insulation, and 2 different heating and venting systems, I think you could put a light in. Like, lighting is an option. A couple hours in the early evening is all you'd need to simulate at least a spring/autumn days light and heat, if not full summer. 1 panel could handle that amount of work.
Combine that hydronic with a simple Evacuated tube solar collector and you would not need the boiler. Even at -30C on a grey day they can still hit 50-60C on the output.
Curtis, for ergonomics have you thought about either raising the raised bed height, or lowering the walkways to put the growing height ~waist level? My grandfather built a U shaped greenhouse with excavated walk ways to keep the growing medium waist level. this presented a center growing bed and the U shape outer area growing beds. this worked good for him and my grandmother to work the garden. for reference this was made in central FL.
Awesome vid!!! I love that you are experimenting so the rest of us can learn! Kudos for using the Chinese method of using the ground as thermal mass; I hope it works for you on both levels. Question: do you have condensation issues with climate battery or hydronic floor after months of going into a freeze?
@@offgridcurtisstone I was just thinking that a single run would ensure that the heat distribution would be more even. With a system in parallel like yours, it may have runs that have all, or some runs with none of the heat. Air will find the easiest path. Just a thought.
If you burry your drip hose 6inches down you will have a stronger root system on your plants. The roots reach for the moisture causing a more anchored plant. Just sayin’ 🤷♀️. Great content!!
Love your Contant love your book. If you had a cement floor, couldn’t you theoretically put an extra bed in and have the bed on wheels so that you could move them in such a way where you only had one walkway, but could move them around to expose another walkway behind them, no question is in addition to this being a pain in the butt when you have to move them with this interfere with any of the heating.
Some designs include a foam board skirt around the outside perimeter when back filling to decrease lateral loss of heat from the mass. Was this included in the design? If not, was it considered?
how could you do that, as a blower to pump hot air down into the ground, to me is soo noisy. the thing is, how would hot air be captured in which to transfer into the water. I guess a water pump would not be so noisy, plus cutting the cost of all that work in laying ducting with which to put hot air into the ground. warm water can be used, to water the plants.
I wish you were ten years older than me instead of twenty years younger! You are literally doing things I wanted to do years ago and just kind of felt my way through. Sometimes it worked, other times because of one stupid flaw, it didn't work nearly as well as it might. We also have a wood boiler but were warned off running lines into the greenhouse by a plumber (former farmer) who felt the lines might dry out the beds. However we were proposing to run the lines MUCH more shallow than what you have done, so you'll likely escape that issue. Are you concerned about water accumulating in the floor material, as I notice there is not really a proper drain. In our area (Central Ontario) there is an extremely high water table and if were to dig a 3 foot hole I would have a 2 foot deep swimming pool
Question Curtis: why did you choose to not insulate on the outside of the concrete? Isn't insulation standard with GAHT systems? Wouldn't insulation be relatively cheap? Great experiment using the inflated poly!
Hey Curtis, we have been binge watching your video, we are about to start construction on a greenhouse of our own. Questions about the climate battery, do you think there would be much benefit of painting the upper plenum pipe black to absorb more heat from the sun. Also we are constructing next to our garage. The garage is roughed in for in floor heating but we are not using the system. What are your thoughts on using the garage floor concrete as a thermal battery? We do keep the garage above freezing, so it may benefit from that too. Anyway, love the videos, keep them coming.
There might be. Rob Avis did that to his, though it's hard to say because even if that pipe is black, on cloudy days, it's not going to make a difference. On sunny days, it'll get really hot, but it's hot in the greenhouse on sunny days anyways.
Have you ever tried LED lighting? Seems like with a $10k capital cost it would be optimal to grow year round if lighting is the only issue. I guess being on solar the economics are not as good as if you can just plug them into the grid?
I’ve enjoyed a lot of the things you do, but there are a lot of confusing points you make. “The greenhouse sits higher in the ground, so it stays warmer”. Burying the greenhouse deeper, would actually keep it warmer. Not insulating the exposed upper ledge of your concrete wall will negate any benefits of the insulated outer edge, if you do the math it’s a very significant surface area. If you aren’t heating the greenhouse with a solar air heater, or some equivalent, circulating the air from the top of the greenhouse to the soil is… actually probably going to cool the soil in the winter. These were just some initial observations, but I think you’ve incorporated some cool systems in a somewhat counter-productive order.
I just show what I do and it all depends on my context. There are always better ways to do things for your own context. We are on a mountain of mostly rock, so digging things deep isn't an easy option.
@@offgridcurtisstone thanks for the reply, but can you , please expand on . 6mil, is a name of a company? 1/4” thick poly is almost not polythene. Would it not be then . Perspex.? Yet here Perspex is quite rigid, although it can be bent without cracking. Yet Perspex discolours over time.
Googled it. 6mil in decimal point relates to mili liters. You cannot mean this. Therefore 6mil must mean . 6mm/millimetres. Which is = .2 mm, or around 200 microns. On your website do you go into the construction details for the roof, cladding Deep winter greenhouses. Could translate to . All year round greenhouse growing. Which is optimum for the amount of work that goes into the construction. This then brings the attention to . Light transmission, and then heat transfer . How efficient would you say, your design is for commercial application. That’s seems to be a short fall. Eg fresh air circulation, and humidity control.
I am extremely surprised to see that you used the same size pipes for your collector pipes as your heat exchange pipes. That design surely requires a much bigger powerful ventilator than if you had 2 much bigger collector pipes. Why have you not used 2 much bigger pipes as collector pipes? You will have saved money on your ventilator.
Not really. The cost of wood wasn't even factored in, because there wasn't a lot of lumber used. All the forming lumber was used in other places afterwards.
I wonder if it would have been better to put your "climate battery" towards the top layer, and put your boiler water pipes under that? That way you could have first put down a 2" layer of insulation foam board, then your heated pipes on that, then your sand and "climate battery" above that. The insulation foam would insure that you are still getting the full benefit of your water pipes, after it heated up all that sand. It's hard to say about this though. You would probably have to build another one like that to be sure. I don't know enough about the stats of a climate battery. also, maybe burying your water pipes too deep would end up making them ineffective. It's hard to say
@@offgridcurtisstone It would suck to bury your pipes and they end up not working because it dissipates the heat too much. I'm not sure how deep you can bury them and still work. I'm sure there is a chart somewhere.
that ground battery is a keeper; I'm planning on a chinese greenhouse next with a mass back wall made with 1000l water filled totes (solar heated), polycarbonate sun wall and a rocket stove bench in the middle to boost warmth in the colder temp. I'll add up led lighting.
So much awesome information! Thank you Curtis for sharing and creating all the videos to learn and build from. ❤
@livnwildeandfree We have to so much to implement..
This is a great series. Thank you.
Excellent information Curtis. Great transition from simple to better then best and the real deal greenhouse. But like you have said it's all about what you need and what you can afford. Amazing series. Thanks Man. Enjoy your journey.
Hey Curtis, love what you're doing on the homestead, its great seeing all of it come together.
I'm looking at putting in a hoop house for next season, and the walkthrough of different levels is super helpful. Keep up the great work.
Love this series. Here in South Africa materials is very expensive, so is electricity and water but I am trying bit by bit. Got the first 10m x 3m tunnel up and productive. Doing better than the outside crops as we had over 1000mm (normal < 900mm) of rain during December. New bugs like cauliflowers lice and snails.
Working on the next tunnel, saving and buying materials on a month by month as our income is less than US$2000 a month, but take it season by season.
Looking back we made much progress over the past 3 years. 🤗🇿🇦
Love this kind of content! Reminds me of the videos you used to post here! So helpful
real nice greenhouse - thumbs up Curtis
you totally helped me out in my dream last night. Thanks brother :)
Thanks Curtis. I’m looking at excavating a area in to a hill for my 90x30 greenhouse this summer. I’ll definitely keep these ideas in mind.
Awesome. Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks CS!
Outstanding
Did you know you can mix thermal gel that freezes at 65deg f or adjust for varying freeze temp? It would let you s harvest more heat on milder days.
Nice work on the greenhouse and great idea's with the heating ! 👍
For anyone concerned about cost. The no freeze performance can be achived with 1000$ greenhouse of same size. The greenhouse from part 2 with inflated poly and heater. I added third layer bouble wrap inside and i can heat 24m2 greenhouse with 2kw for 15°C. We rarely get below -15°C.
All depends on your climate zone.
Thanks for the information! Honestly, the increased overwintering potential and productivity gains in the shoulders come at a great cost. I can only see this being useful in an area with limited greenhouse locations. Otherwise, seems way better to have 3-4 "v2 high tunnels" for less than half the cost of one of these.
Yes for sure. All depends on your context.
I mean, if you can put in like 3 layers of floor heating and insulation, and 2 different heating and venting systems, I think you could put a light in. Like, lighting is an option. A couple hours in the early evening is all you'd need to simulate at least a spring/autumn days light and heat, if not full summer. 1 panel could handle that amount of work.
Combine that hydronic with a simple Evacuated tube solar collector and you would not need the boiler. Even at -30C on a grey day they can still hit 50-60C on the output.
This is definitely advanced. The way the ground is heated is so 😎 cool... I mean 🔥 hot 😆
6 hrs sun? What would it take to run grow lights off your solar? How many hours would you need to run them per day when you have 6hrs sun?
Pretty cool. A lot of work, initially.
ThankQ keep Crushing
The vent control uses a "wax motor"; when the wax melts it expands.
Curtis, for ergonomics have you thought about either raising the raised bed height, or lowering the walkways to put the growing height ~waist level? My grandfather built a U shaped greenhouse with excavated walk ways to keep the growing medium waist level. this presented a center growing bed and the U shape outer area growing beds. this worked good for him and my grandmother to work the garden. for reference this was made in central FL.
These beds are waist height.
@@offgridcurtisstone they are 2'.
So epic I am going to do the same one day!
Awesome vid!!! I love that you are experimenting so the rest of us can learn! Kudos for using the Chinese method of using the ground as thermal mass; I hope it works for you on both levels. Question: do you have condensation issues with climate battery or hydronic floor after months of going into a freeze?
Not so far.
why is the big O run into manifolds rather than one continuous switchback run?
Why do that? What I did works.
@@offgridcurtisstone I was just thinking that a single run would ensure that the heat distribution would be more even. With a system in parallel like yours, it may have runs that have all, or some runs with none of the heat. Air will find the easiest path. Just a thought.
If you burry your drip hose 6inches down you will have a stronger root system on your plants. The roots reach for the moisture causing a more anchored plant. Just sayin’ 🤷♀️. Great content!!
Love your Contant love your book. If you had a cement floor, couldn’t you theoretically put an extra bed in and have the bed on wheels so that you could move them in such a way where you only had one walkway, but could move them around to expose another walkway behind them, no question is in addition to this being a pain in the butt when you have to move them with this interfere with any of the heating.
Technically sure. I wouldn't do that though.
Some designs include a foam board skirt around the outside perimeter when back filling to decrease lateral loss of heat from the mass. Was this included in the design? If not, was it considered?
@@AW-yv9sq insulated around the concrete, but I didn't spot a horizontal skirt projecting from the foundation anywhere
Can you pipe solar heat into the hydronics if you wanted?
I hope so. I want to do that in the passive solar greenhouse.
how could you do that, as a blower to pump hot air down into the ground, to me is soo noisy. the thing is, how would hot air be captured in which to transfer into the water. I guess a water pump would not be so noisy, plus cutting the cost of all that work in laying ducting with which to put hot air into the ground. warm water can be used, to water the plants.
So cool.
I wish you were ten years older than me instead of twenty years younger! You are literally doing things I wanted to do years ago and just kind of felt my way through. Sometimes it worked, other times because of one stupid flaw, it didn't work nearly as well as it might. We also have a wood boiler but were warned off running lines into the greenhouse by a plumber (former farmer) who felt the lines might dry out the beds. However we were proposing to run the lines MUCH more shallow than what you have done, so you'll likely escape that issue.
Are you concerned about water accumulating in the floor material, as I notice there is not really a proper drain. In our area (Central Ontario) there is an extremely high water table and if were to dig a 3 foot hole I would have a 2 foot deep swimming pool
Hello Curtis, do you have the plans for this and I would be interested in speaking with you to build one of these on a property this year.
Impressive!
Question Curtis: why did you choose to not insulate on the outside of the concrete? Isn't insulation standard with GAHT systems? Wouldn't insulation be relatively cheap? Great experiment using the inflated poly!
It is insulated outside of the concrete. 3 inches rigid.
Oh very nice! Do you have any suggestions or resources for people looking to build their own GAHT system? Like calculators for pipe sizing?
Not really no. This video I guess.
For high tech, could you include co2 from the boiler?
Where could we find the plans for building the roll up sides? It looks like an excellent solution.
I was looking around for the same.
Hey Curtis, we have been binge watching your video, we are about to start construction on a greenhouse of our own. Questions about the climate battery, do you think there would be much benefit of painting the upper plenum pipe black to absorb more heat from the sun. Also we are constructing next to our garage. The garage is roughed in for in floor heating but we are not using the system. What are your thoughts on using the garage floor concrete as a thermal battery? We do keep the garage above freezing, so it may benefit from that too. Anyway, love the videos, keep them coming.
There might be. Rob Avis did that to his, though it's hard to say because even if that pipe is black, on cloudy days, it's not going to make a difference. On sunny days, it'll get really hot, but it's hot in the greenhouse on sunny days anyways.
Thanks for the reply. Again we are really enjoying your content, keep it up.
Have you ever tried LED lighting? Seems like with a $10k capital cost it would be optimal to grow year round if lighting is the only issue. I guess being on solar the economics are not as good as if you can just plug them into the grid?
I have a bunch, but without the heat units and the low sun producing very little solar, it's not worth it.
Where can I find the video of you and your wife discussing unschooling?
All streams are on Rumble. Just search off-grid with Curtis Stone.
I’ve enjoyed a lot of the things you do, but there are a lot of confusing points you make. “The greenhouse sits higher in the ground, so it stays warmer”. Burying the greenhouse deeper, would actually keep it warmer.
Not insulating the exposed upper ledge of your concrete wall will negate any benefits of the insulated outer edge, if you do the math it’s a very significant surface area.
If you aren’t heating the greenhouse with a solar air heater, or some equivalent, circulating the air from the top of the greenhouse to the soil is… actually probably going to cool the soil in the winter.
These were just some initial observations, but I think you’ve incorporated some cool systems in a somewhat counter-productive order.
I just show what I do and it all depends on my context. There are always better ways to do things for your own context. We are on a mountain of mostly rock, so digging things deep isn't an easy option.
you say that the poly is 6mm. this is over 1/4 " thick. then the outer poly, which you say is another 6mm.. where did you get this kind of poly?
6 mil.
@@offgridcurtisstone thanks for the reply, but can you , please expand on . 6mil, is a name of a company?
1/4” thick poly is almost not polythene. Would it not be then . Perspex.? Yet here Perspex is quite rigid, although it can be bent without cracking. Yet Perspex discolours over time.
Googled it. 6mil in decimal point relates to mili liters. You cannot mean this. Therefore 6mil must mean . 6mm/millimetres. Which is = .2 mm, or around 200 microns.
On your website do you go into the construction details for the roof, cladding
Deep winter greenhouses. Could translate to . All year round greenhouse growing. Which is optimum for the amount of work that goes into the construction. This then brings the attention to . Light transmission, and then heat transfer . How efficient would you say, your design is for commercial application. That’s seems to be a short fall. Eg fresh air circulation, and humidity control.
@@mervynshute880 I don't know what it means, but that's what they call it.
❤️
I am extremely surprised to see that you used the same size pipes for your collector pipes as your heat exchange pipes. That design surely requires a much bigger powerful ventilator than if you had 2 much bigger collector pipes. Why have you not used 2 much bigger pipes as collector pipes? You will have saved money on your ventilator.
It would probably be cheaper given the cost of wood today
Not really. The cost of wood wasn't even factored in, because there wasn't a lot of lumber used. All the forming lumber was used in other places afterwards.
I wonder if it would have been better to put your "climate battery" towards the top layer, and put your boiler water pipes under that? That way you could have first put down a 2" layer of insulation foam board, then your heated pipes on that, then your sand and "climate battery" above that. The insulation foam would insure that you are still getting the full benefit of your water pipes, after it heated up all that sand. It's hard to say about this though. You would probably have to build another one like that to be sure. I don't know enough about the stats of a climate battery. also, maybe burying your water pipes too deep would end up making them ineffective. It's hard to say
Try it and see.
@@offgridcurtisstone It would suck to bury your pipes and they end up not working because it dissipates the heat too much. I'm not sure how deep you can bury them and still work. I'm sure there is a chart somewhere.
I wonder what if the climate battery gets flooded from a high water table, unless it has a drain I didn't see?
@@deedee2948 It would in a high water table, yes.
@@offgridcurtisstone Do you have a drain for your system or is it a case of you will never have that problem?
Your internship application has been approved. You start on May 7th.