Greenhouse plans

When we first came to see the house and I spotted all the lovely old windows (that had been replaced on the house) still sitting in the barn, I got very excited. In fact we included them in the sales clause, that they were not allowed to get rid of them. This is why...

The plan is to make a recycled window greenhouse.

Making a green-house with plastic is a great utilitarian low-cost solution. Maybe it was growing up close to Allen Gardens, but I have always loved solariums, and greenhouses. So we're going to the second lowest cost solution, which is recycled windows.

You have to find old windows to do this, new windows have a UV ray protectant film on them, which is the opposite of what you want in a green house.

We're building ours on one side of the shop, for 2 reasons. The first being that the side that the shop is on provides very little light anyway. That side is mostly north (we're on an angle) so it's saving us putting windows where they wouldn't be much benefit anyway. The second is we have the option of heating the greenhouse with the shops woodstove.

I'm not sure when we are going to get the greenhouse built, I'll be very happy if we can get it done next year. It maybe another year before we actually consider heating it, but at least we have the option. I would love to be growing our own coffee, tea & bananas in the green house.

The "wall" closest to the camera is
smaller because we need a door
out of the green house

First things first, I'm going to need more windows.

This was a go-big or go-home sort of project. If you're doing a plastic green house you can get away with starting small & adding later, really easily actually. If we wanted to expand a glass greenhouse later we'd be taking down a whole wall. It's too small anyway, I laid out all our work-able windows on the grass (then stupidly left them alone for 20 minutes, the ducks/chickens/someone broken one) and measured out what we got.

8 x 7 and 2 walls 6 x 7.


Yeah, that isn't super small, and for lots of people that is definitely enough room; but I don't have space in the house to be starting plants. It's a problem every year! I take over an entire section of the house then we have cats pooing, dogs nosing, kids tipping dirt over and having mud-fights in the house. I want to be able to start an entire gardens worth of seeds (and I start most plants as seeds) in my little greenhouse, and eventually be able to over winter, or even raise tropical plants in there.

The site could me a little more ideal. It's right beside the barn too, so the greenhouse is going to miss the very last of the evening sun, but should get really strong early morning to early-evening in the summer.

So how big do we want it?

Well... as wide as the shop which is probably about 18' so it looks good, and about 10' wide. What we have is about 7' tall, which is perfect because you walk out a door from the shop down into the green house, and we need enough for head room (so we'll build up a little foundation then have the windows so the whole thing should be at least 8' high).

So, hubby has a mission! He's got to talk to some of this buddies in windows and see what we can get, otherwise the greenhouse is stalled indefinitely. Not only do we need several feet of more windows for the 3 sides, we need some for the roof as well! Really hoping to get my hands on some old sliding glass doors, that would be amazing!!