Replacing the GH Roof & Building a Palm Shelter

nice work steve. Are you planning on spending some quality time with your washy in that plam hut. I think you could hang a flat screen on one of those walls and watch football on Sundays. ?

Your killing me :cheers:

Maybe we should all hang tv's in our palm huts for Sunday football! LOL!

Bill

The shelter's loaded up (couldn't find room for the TV 😆

Steve

Steve, if those are jugs of water, did you add salt to them.
If so, how much?
Barb

Barb, Just plain water. Besides lowering the freezing point, is there any advantages to adding salt?

Steve

Another poster had mentioned salt.
I haven't tried it.
Thinking of winter roads/sidewalks, salt is an advantage that might work for us in containers.
Barb

I don't have a degree but changing the freezing point might actually help us. All of our outside planted palms are easily hard at freezing when dry, we only use these water jugs for two reasons. One emergency heat source, and two to keep the temperature from fluxuating to much. I'm not sure at what temp salt water freezes but if it's 20 or something wouldn't it be better to use the energy to freeze the water then or at 32 where are palms are fine anyways. Just a thought, what do you guys think?

Bill

Worth a try...it certainly won't make it worse.
Wonder if we have to use the large salt crystals (like ice melter), or just regular salt?

Barb

I'll use ocean water. Next time I go I'll fill up the million milk jugs I've been saving.

Bill

So I'm sure you saw pictures of my structure. How much did it cost you last year to heat with the small heater. I bought a small one with a thermostat and was going to set it to 40. But I am also going to pick up some c-9 bulbs as well in case the first bill is like 😯 Hoping it's not though.

Great job on yours! I'm jellous of the windows!!! I'm thinking I may need to have mine covered by the end of next week. They are call for some colder weather, crap!!

Thanks for the comments! The window is convenient, but also means it heats up quicker (need to open it up in the mornings with warmer days)

I heat the green house and part of the house with electric each winter, so the best guess I could come up with is $10-$20 extra per month. Maybe less, maybe more 😀
For me, solar gain plays a large part. A sunny day and the heater only runs a few hours at night, a week of overcast days and the heater will run 24/7

This is from a web site calculator which will give you some idea, (a worst case scenario), 100 C9 lights at 350W running 28 days straight at .10kwh
(You can plug in whatever values you want to get a rough idea)

Here's the link http://www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/electric.cgi?submit=Entry

Steve

Thanks for the info on the salt, need to do some more reading 😀

Steve

Thanks for the conversion Steve! That really helps people out. I think theres a rv solution we could use to keep all our bottles to a freezing point at a solution of our choice. (Ichanged my mind) What ever that point is It will be hard to get back the energy unless the days are warm or we incorperate heat. (-temps in the bottles set at 20 would be good) Sorry about the sea water, rv solution is way better.

Bill

Cool!! Thanks Steve!!

Good luck to everyone with their winter protection!

Finished mine up, (roof & caulking), even put in a wireless thermometer, no more scraping frost off the window to see inside 😀

Sealed the bottom with soil and it's all set.

Steve