The Greenhouse

This is my basement greenhouse. I purchased it a year ago from Canadian Tire. Basically I was too lazy at the time to create one of my own. The idea was that if I can make this one work, then I could build my own larger version.

My idea for this greenhouse was to run it as cheaply as possible. I want it to be energy efficient, and would even like it to run entirely off of solar power some day.

In this section of the Wiki I will go over all of my various trials while getting this thing working. Pages linked to this section will deal with everything from new setup ideas, additions to the project and the plants that I'm growing.


The Setup

Setting up this greenhouse was a cinch. It took about 20 minutes to open the box and set it up. I do find it to be a bit wobbly, but since it's in my basement, I'm not overly worried about it being knocked, or blown over.

The First Issue

I knew this was going to be the case, so there were no surprises here. Lighting. There isn't any. I managed to purchase some cheap flourescent fixtures and hang them up with chains. So far I'm not that happy with them. I find that they don't shed quite enough light, however they are cheap to run. They also provide a small amount of heat, although not quite enough. This leads me to...

The Second Issue

I didn't think of this one at first. My basement is a bit cold. It turns out that plants like some warmth! For the winter months I was forced to add a small heating unit (900 watts!). This was able to keep the structure at any temperature that I wanted (at a substantial power cost!). I hope to get rid of this one day.

In September 2008 I had walls and insulation installed in my basement. This significantly increased the heat retention of the basement, and consequently I haven't had to use the additional heater to keep the greenhouse warm enough for the plants.