Insulating and Winterizing the Greenhouse

The temperatures are dropping, and it's time to get my new greenhouse ready for winter!  I'd be thrilled to keep my greenhouse above 55°F (13°C) for the plants that I want to keep in there, but I'd be fine with above 45°F (7°C) with our winter temperatures. We're using a space heater right now to heat the greenhouse, but in order to keep energy costs down, we want to insulate it the best we can.

After researching insulation techniques, here are the things that we did:

1. Insulate the inside with bubble wrap.

We're still working on bubble wrapping the entire thing - it takes awhile!  We used the kind with larger bubbles.

2. Place styrofoam insulation around lower half of the interior walls.

We have wooden walls on the bottom of our greenhouse.  We bought some styrofoam insulation, as well as supplemented with all the random pieces of styrofoam (and boxes of styrofoam bits) that we have been saving.

3.  Fill up large containers with water.

The water helps stabilize the temperatures.  During the day they will warm up, and at night they will release heat.  The more containers, the better!

4.  Stop air from leaking through.

We put foam weatherstripping around the door, since that is where a lot of heat escapes.  I also plan to make a weatherproof cushion to place at the base of the door outside, to further insulate the gap at the bottom of the door.  On the inside, we have a blanket pushed up against the door.

We realized that we had a lot of heat escaping from the foundation of the greenhouse, where the greenhouse meets the base that it sits on.  Since we had already put the styrofoam on the interior, we decided not to spray foam insulation into the cracks (and such ventilation is good in summer anyway.)  Instead we put salt marsh hay (this area's equivalent to pine straw) around the exterior.  It immediately made a difference and helped tremendously in keeping the greenhouse warm.

I do realize we've probably just invited all the mice in the area to come stay in our nice hay filled bed.  Mr. Red House says they'll add body heat and be of help.  I have my doubts about that and just hope that they don't do too much damage to my flower bed.  (My next order of business is looking into rodent repellants!)

The other option I've seen is to dig a trench next to the greenhouse and half bury sheets of styrofoam right next to the exterior for insulation.  After just building a wall around my shade garden, we were not keen on doing more digging, and a trench would disrupt my flower beds, so we decided against it.

I have to give a shout out to Mr. Red House for all his help with the sensors in the greenhouse.  As soon as I talked about wanting a greenhouse, he's been excited to integrate as much technology as he could in there.  One day, thanks to my technology-loving husband, I'm sure I will end up locked in my own house by an evil computer, but other than that I have to admit that technology is very useful. (Don't let Mr. Red House know I think that.)

The sensors Mr. Red House has put in the greenhouse have been immensely handy, as they feed information about the greenhouse status wirelessly to my phone and computer.  For all those techies out there, here is what we have:

top: Aeon Labs MultiSensor
bottom: Smart Sense Multi Sensor

The Aeon Labs MultiSensor senses temperature, humidity, motion, and light levels.  I have it placed next to my plants.

The Smart Sense Multi Sensor is placed near the greenhouse roof and detects when it opens or closes, as well as what the temperature is up near the roof.

The awesome Mr. Red House has also made a nice app displaying my greenhouse stats in real time.  Check it out at the bottom of my blog page!

the display of my greenhouse stats around 1:30pm today

Our greenhouse is coming along pretty well, but I know temperatures will be even colder in a couple months.  If anyone has other ideas about how to insulate greenhouses, I'd love to hear them!

My New Red House

Well, I didn't even realize, but last week marked the third anniversary of the Red House Garden blog!

I can't believe it was only three years ago that I started this blog, as so very much has happened since then. I was sure that I would be gardening there at my first Red House for many, many years, but life does always have a way of surprising you.  As most of you know, last spring we moved to the Boston area.  I was sad to move, and I missed North Carolina and my Red House.  However, a project has been in the works ever since we moved, and I think my three year Blogiversary is a great time to unveil it...

My new Red House!

Mr. Red House (in the effort to get me to move up to the cold North) promised me that if I moved, he would get a greenhouse.  I honestly thought it would be a couple more years before we would be able to get one, but Mr. Red House was determined.  (After this very long winter, he was probably very motivated to do anything to help his cabin-fevered wife regain her sanity.)  And of course, if we were going to have a greenhouse, we knew it just had to be red!

my red greenhouse

The project started as soon as all the snow had melted after winter.  As handy as Mr. Red House is, a greenhouse was a little too big for him, so after a lot of research he found a company in Maine that builds hobby greenhouses. We first had a couple guys come out and help build a base for the greenhouse.

Tubes were buried in each of the corners and filled with concrete in order to bolt the timbers in place and avoid the problem of frost heaving.

Sticking out in the middle are lines for power and water.  After the base was done, I stained it red, and then the greenhouse was ready to be built!

The greenhouse company built the pieces for the greenhouse in their factory up in Maine, and then they assembled them in our backyard.  The assembly was fast, taking only a little more than a day.

Of course, my new Red House needed a garden around it!  Needless to say, my garden budget is shot for the next few years, however, I've still managed to start a garden around it using plants grown from seeds and pass-a-long plants from other gardeners. (Gardeners are some of the nicest bunch, don't you think?)

I am beyond excited about my new greenhouse.  I think we all know where I am going to spend this coming winter... 

Do you think I can plug a coffee maker in here?

And since I can start my seeds in the greenhouse, I'm sure my parents and other visitors will be very glad they won't have to share our guest room with hordes of seedlings and grow lights anymore :)

Some of you have wondered why I didn't change the name of my blog, and this is why - I knew we would eventually have some sort of Red House again. 

(And I'm so very excited to have it before the next winter hits!)

Happy Gardening from the new Red House Garden!