Cheapest Solar Thermal Greenhouse

let's do something interesting today today we're going to explore the idea of heating a greenhouse with solar energy to extend your growing season and you can do this as an add-on to most existing greenhouses too wait doesn't the greenhouse naturally heat up in the sun okay let's be specific here this video is about the cheapest way to heat a greenhouse at night using solar wind and energy what's that you say the sun doesn't shine at night now do I have your attention we're going to do something that's called a thermal Mass which we're going to use like a heat battery to heat the greenhouse at night and that thermal mass will be something we all have access to and can get really cheap for free water what could be cheaper than water especially if you have a well or can collect rain water there's so many ways to get cheap water of course most everywhere you're going to try to heat your Greenhouse at night is going to cost you some money but in this video I'm going to explore a way to scrounge as much materials as possible to create an incredible liquid solar thermal heating system that can get your plants through the cold nights and I'm going to do it with normal photovoltaic solar panels for a very affordable price because solar panels have come down in price so much recently yeah I know if you stack 45 gallon drums on your north wall painted black you can soak up the solar heat and release it back into your Greenhouse at night but in this video we're going to explore how to supercharge that I mean the heat in the greenhouse itself is great to gather and store for later but we need more and without any digging either so no more of this use all the excess heat in the greenhouse to get you through the night nonsense I'm not passive and neither is my Greenhouse today we're supercharging this baby for the northern climates to get five to ten times more heat out of a liquid thermal mass than a passive solar Greenhouse could ever dream of doing on its best day simple tick that's the name of this channel and the Cookie Monsters have told me that I have to take a moment to sponsor them on this video apparently they want more cookies Coco says she's fed up with chewing sticks and wants something good to eat like a Milk Bone so hit like thanks and subscribe to support their cookie habit and help YouTube know that this is the kind of content you like so YouTube can suggest more stuff like this for you to watch anyone familiar with greenhouses and passive solar greenhouses knows about thermal mass at 55 gallon drums on the north wall this works somewhat but it's not just not enough heat I want more you deserve more and we're going to show you how to get more for your Greenhouse some people have solved this problem by digging down and installing a climate battery but that needs an excavator and a ton of digging it just isn't an option for everyone in this video we're going to show you how to get climate control inside your Greenhouse without digging because some locations can't install a climate battery in the ground if you're in an area where you can't dig like solid rock or poor soil conditions this is the video for you on how to heat your Greenhouse this channel has been about doing things with recycled and affordable materials available to you from the start just check out our archives today we start with what's called a solar Greenhouse basically a solar Greenhouse is a greenhouse with a thermal Mass north wall that heats up when the Sun Shines on it and slowly releases that heat back into the greenhouse at night often that thermal mass is Clay but an upgrade is to use water in 55 gallon drums painted black to absorb the heat of the sun water holds a lot more heat than play a rock the problem with this system though is that 55 gallon drums just don't heat up enough the solution is simple inject more Heat and the way to inject more heat is to go outside the greenhouse and get that heat and bring it inside the nice thing about liquid and when I say liquid I mean water because I'm cheap is that it's easy to heat up look at your hot water tank in your house all it is is a big insulated holding tank with an electric heater in the water turn the electricity on and the heater heats the water up until the thermostat says it's at its highest temperature and turns it off slowly it cools down until the thermostat turns electricity on again pretty simple Now using the idea of a north wall as a thermal Mass we just employ the idea of a hot water tank to the 55 gallon drums there's a few ways to heat these water tanks you could get a tank heater and plug it into the grid but electricity costs money true radiant heat is efficient and one of the cheaper ways to heat your Greenhouse with Grid electricity but solar panels have come down so much in cost recently that it seems cheap and easy to set up a solar system to get the electricity to heat the drums of course there are some positives and negatives to a solar boosted thermal north wall and of course we're going to discuss some of them here on the positive side is current pricing solar panels have never been cheaper the biggest expense in most any off-grid solar system is the battery but heating water as an energy storage device eliminates the expense of buying batteries you heat the water directly with the solar panels and the water stores the Heat and releases it slowly through the night solar panels even collect energy even though not as much on cloudy days so you even get some heat on days when the sun doesn't shine one solution to boost power on cloudy days though is to add a windmill wind usually accompanies cloudy days so when your solar panels aren't pumping out electricity at full power your windmill is boosting the output and continues to inject some heat all night long so long as the wind blows as a rule of thumb on a small system you should get about one quarter of the max solar output in a windmill for proper hybrid system setups windmills have come down and priced a lot recently as well so adding this power boost option isn't out of the budget plans for most people looking to do this it just means you'll have to heat through you'll have heat through extended cloudy periods of your system that's off grid if you have on grid capacities you can boost the water heat with a plug into your Electric System and just pay the power company for the backup heat on really cloudy bad days yes there are evacuated tube arrays that can be used to heat water and they work well but photovoltaic solar has come down so much in price in the last couple years that the cost difference isn't even a close race anymore plus it's much easier to run a wire than a tube that needs pumps to run and Put liquid material in that tube outside when it can freeze meaning you've got to employ some liquids other than cheap water that won't freeze an extreme cold winter days so for this application I'm going to recommend photovoltaic solar panels based mostly on how cheap and easy they are to install and work with the next consideration is the 55 gallon drums these work great for a passive solar system stacked up against the north wall painted black absorbing the warm sunlight Heat but there's another option and when you're supercharging your thermal wall this other option might just work better 55 gallon drums are limited in volume to 55 gallons but IBC totes are 250 to 300 gallons each these huge liquid storage containers are five times the volume and when you're hooking up a DC water heater element from your solar panels it means less elements are necessary for whatever total volume of water you need to use unless you want to employ a huge water exchange system between the 55 gallon drums which is possible but another huge expense and issue having 250 gallon IBC totes with a water heater element and each one it's just much more simple resilient and cheaper and easier to set up the solution to heat an existing Greenhouse without digging up your yard is to add a thermal Mass with IBC totes on the north wall painted black to absorb the sun's thermal energy and heated by a hot water tank element that's powered by a solar panel positioned outside doing this yourself and with new solar panel costs figure less than 500 per IBC Tote that's allowing for 350 for the solar panel 50 bucks for the ABC tote and 100 bucks for wires and paint to set it all up each tote would be enough thermal mass for about 100 to 200 square feet of greenhouse four IBC totes would run 2 000 bucks but that's a thousand gallons of water on the north wall you can scale this up or down depending on the size of your Greenhouse when you compare this to the cost of an electric heater this system pays for itself in one to three years depending on the electricity cost in your area from the grid and this will work off-grid without any power lines I know you might pay a little more or less for the IBC Tote and solar panels depending on where you live these are approximates post in the comments below if you think my numbers are wrong and how much you can get these things for in your area what I love about this solution is that you can add it to any Greenhouse yes it works better in greenhouses that are oriented with a north wall that get no sunlight that you can insulate but honestly you can stick the IBC totes into any Greenhouse even a dome positioning it in the center or a wall that doesn't get a lot of sunlight it's versatile and can work almost anywhere to give you heat and as an add-on opens itself up to many more types of greenhouses even if you don't get enough energy to make it through a minus 40 degree winter the thermal mass of this system can get you to start growing one to two months earlier in the season and one two and two months later in the fall an extra four months is like getting two summers instead of one from your greenhouse and even though it might cost a few thousand to set this up what would the cost be of doubling your greenhouse and just working in one season instead of two also having produce when no one else has fresh produce can get you a much better price as you have less competition and marketing and sales will be so much easier when everyone else is closing up shop and not able to grow when you can and have product let me know what you think in the comments Below on this idea for Greenhouse Heating and if it's something you want to try with a newer existing Greenhouse see you in the next video

Channel: Simple Tek

Views: 32,733

Keywords: Solar thermal, greenhouse, greenhouse heating, thermal mass, greenhouse ibc, 55 gallon drum, solar pannels, heating element

Id: yyhoxDfKcV4

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023