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 resincoatedlungs
Brickweed Aficionado
Registered: 09/05/12
Posts: 503
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 Soil-heating-cable for cold weather greenhouse 
#853833 - 12/16/21 07:42 AM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Has anyone ever used such a thing before?
My mom got a greenhouse with the intent on using it for year-round use of sunlight for the boosted yields and energy-efficiency, but then it dawned on the both of us that in order to succeed with the original plan of benefitting from the wide-open root space of the earth floor that will be in the greenhouse, something will have to be done to address the -literally- icy frozen ground problem during winter months, what with it's tendency to kill roots and all...
If anyone has used soil-heating-cable, how much was required per cubic ft of soil? And how deep was it buried?
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Man Eater
12
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resincoatedlungs
Brickweed Aficionado
Registered: 09/05/12
Posts: 503
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 Re: Soil-heating-cable for cold weather greenhouse [Re: Sugabearcrisp]
#854217 - 12/22/21 12:03 AM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Yeah, the goal would essentially be a floorless greenhouse, though I was thinking of digging out the floor and lining it with tarp, essentially creating one huge pit of soil roughly 2ft deep.
Still spitballing ideas here, and really want to find a way to enable winter grows that yield similar to this past season's outdoor grow.
Quote:
FYI it would be more cost effective to grow inside under lights then to heat a green house with electricity
Well the purpose of the greenhouse wouldn't exactly be to save money or anything, but to create space to actually grow during those months. As it is, we only have a 2.75ft x 2.75ft area to grow indoors with no more room whatsoever to do anything with. That space would be more for specialty projects like feminized seed, small grows in the name of strain diversity, etc.
The greenhouse is to give ma something to do and focus on during one of the most boring, depressing times of year, and growing is the only thing she has that can honestly be called "relaxing" or even just "hobby". The floor space would be 6ft x 8ft, minus a foot path.
My original intended plan was to save up for sufficient heating cable for that specific cu. ft.of soil, and a couple 600w (possibly 1000w) lights to be run in the late hours, sans cooltube since the more heat, the better.
Im glad you bring up woodstoves, because i wasnt sure how common they were in this scenario, but a small woodstove (or even just running the hot ducting from the house's woodstove through the greenhouse before exhausting out) would be great during lights-out.
Don't autoflowering strains flower even at 24hrs lighting? Sounds perfect here since dark hours=cold hours. HPS off (or half-power) during daylight, fullstrength HPS during night hours to offset the temp shift.
Edited by resincoatedlungs (12/22/21 12:04 AM)
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resincoatedlungs
Brickweed Aficionado
Registered: 09/05/12
Posts: 503
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Re: Soil-heating-cable for cold weather greenhouse [Re: Sugabearcrisp] 1
#854421 - 12/25/21 12:45 PM (3 years, 3 months ago) |
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Very good point about the soil acting as a heatsink, kinda forgot that there's still "the rest of the earth" regardless of the large oversized humidity dome sitting on top of it
Soil beds made of/lined with wood and/or enormous plastic tubs, with the bottoms insulated by something like a ton of vermiculite or even classic fiberglass insulation would likely be of great aid. Fiberglass being buried outside and under the contained soil bed, between the liner and the planet's crust, of course.
May be able to get away with half(ish) of the soil bed being below the ground surface with plenty of cheap (or free, repurposed) insulation, but that may be wishful thinking. Lots of tests will have to be done in cold season before committing plants to it blindly, but once it's figured out, this concept would be a dream come true for her and one hell of a warm-up for MY intention of doing something very similar to enable the year-round home-cultivation of either poppies, coca/novo, or both.
As it stands, I don't even bother attempting coca/novo since they need long growth periods and several big bushes before yielding enough foliage to justify extraction in hopes of getting enough pure alkaloid to have even one good irresponsible run per year. With all of it's headaches and low yields, total synthesis is still more feasible than extraction in the given conditions; which speaks volumes about the people who grow and extract enough to supply the planet year-round. Back. Breaking. Labor.
Edit: Forgot the mention of foam insulation, that sounds perfect, and could even contain heating cable or some other generator of heat layered in it.
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Man Eater
12
Edited by resincoatedlungs (12/25/21 12:54 PM)
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