A side door would affect the structural integrity( it might blow over).

A 2' x 10' Roof door is just too heavy to hold up.

Allen

Ya good point.
Hope your 3 yr seedlings are OK after all.
Barb

Allen look forward to seeing success with your palm protection. Take some pics.

John

I finally got enough information to try to calculate the cost of keeping the shelter warm over the winter.

Our electricity consumption increased by 192 kilowatt hours from the previous winter which cost about $30($13 +transmission & delivery). 😀

I figured--Yeah right--

So I started figuring out the changes in our electricity usage. We used more lights this winter(my niece and 4 times as much germination area). We got rid of our old washer and dryer and bought one of those fancy front loading washer & dryer sets. With my niece & kids, the washer/dryer was used about 2 1/2 times as much and I don't know how much that affected the electricity usage. 😕

I figured it out this way. Upgrading our dryer more than paid for heating the palm shelter.

Another rough calculation would be .4 kilowatts x 16 hrs/day x 150 days x 1/2 usage(for warm & sunny days) = 500 kilowatt hours. Cost to me 500 x $.064/ kilowatt hour x 2.5(to allow for transmission & distribution) = $80. 8)

Darn, I should have heated the other shelter. 😈

I am hoping to get the front off of the shelter today and will take some pics before I put the sun shade(bubble wrap) on.

😀 8) 😆 😉 😉

Allen

Darn it. I got the pics but Postimage.com isn't working.

The Washingtonias have a small sign of life in the stalk. The Cycas Revoluta are fairly brown and appear to have sunburn. Most of them should survive. The Yucca elephantipes are sunburnt baddly and the Butia has several dried out/sunburnt fronds. The Chamaerops is a little pale and has one or two burnt fronds.

The weather going from 24*C and sunny to cloudy and -12*C and then back to 20*C and sunny in a week and a half has really affected everything in the shelter.

I am going to have to figure something that will gradually increase the sun while keeping the shelter temperatures between freezing and 15*C. I will also have to figure out how to allow for the reflection of the sun when the ground is covered in snow. When it was still -8*C and sunny, I sunburnt in 15 minutes.

Allen[/img]

The sun was very bright and washed out the color quite a bit. It should be cloudy with sunny breaks over the next week which will give the palms a more gradual introduction to the sun.

Allen

Allen, considering the weather you had, I think the enclosure worked really well.
Re allowing for reflection of sun off snow, would one of those opaque fibreglass (not see-through) panels help diffuse sun?
Barb