How to heat & insulate your greenhouse | 7 EASY TIPS

hey what's up everybody I'm Craig and today we are inside of the lovely and warm grow Paradise Greenhouse rather than outside where it is cold and stormy and in this video I'm actually going to share with you my seven tips on how you too can heat your Greenhouse through winter so that you can grow your tender plants and keep propagating seedlings and cuttings for 12 months of the year now these tips are going to range from budget friendly lowcost Solutions which I use in this greenhouse all the way up to high-tech Wi-Fi connected Solutions which again I use in this greenhouse and the combination for me has been fantastic over the past few years I've been able to keep growing beautiful plants for 12 months of the year with very little stress cost or [Music] effort for me step one of maximizing the heat that your Greenhouse can hold in winter is to clean the glass now you often get like a green algae buildup on green houses or lime scale if you're in a hard water area and just using a allpurpose window cleaner is a great way to increase the amount of sunlight that comes into your Greenhouse in Winter and that's going to increase the heat that's going to be captured inside of this space now the best time to clean the glass in your Greenhouse is late summer Early Autumn before you're bringing everything back into the greenhouse CU you're going to have loads of space to move and get access to all of the corners and get everything lovely and clean to allow all of that beautiful warming sunlight in through those winter months so once we've got all of the glass panels clean it brings on to my second tip for heating a greenhouse in Winter and that's to insulate your Greenhouse now I use bubble wrap and I apply it on the inside of the greenhouse between the glass panels and this framework how you install it's going to vary completely depending on how your Greenhouse is built but I like to have it on the inside and the idea behind using bubble wrap to keep your Greenhouse warm in winter is that these air pockets inside of the bubbles are going to act a bit like double glazing Works in our homes it's going to mean that all of the hot air inside doesn't come into contact with the cold glass panels that are also in contact with the outside environment and I use a Horticultural grade bubble wrap here which just means it's UV stabilized so it doesn't deteriorate in sunlight because obviously in a greenhouse it's going to be exposed to a lot of sunlight it's a little bit more expensive than just cheap bubble wrap which is fine to use if you're on a budget but this will last much much longer and it's got slightly larger Bubbles as well so it's holding larger heat pockets I do leave this up all year round because in the summer for me it keeps the greenhouse a little bit cooler just like double glazing does in our homes and in Winter it retains any heat that I've managed to capture through the sunny winter days now when you're growing plants it's unlikely that all of the plants you grow are going to need extreme heat in Winter which means that you're not going to have to heat everything so my tip would be to reduce the amount of space that you're actually heating so you could have a small Greenhouse like I've got here this this is a domestic 6t X 8T Greenhouse so it's very cost- effective to keep warm and easy to insulate with a bubble wrap but if you've got and you're lucky enough to have a lovely large Greenhouse perhaps you don't need to heat that whole space and you could create a space inside of it which is the only area that you're Heating and it's going to make it much quicker easier and much more cost effective to heat that area inside of your Greenhouse now you could do that by either building a partition wall or you could buy one of these popup green houses that you can get online and just have that inside of your greenhouse and only worry about keeping that inside of that area warm much like I've got here this is a propagator stackable propagator and this area inside of my Greenhouse is kept much warmer in here and outside is just kept frost free and for me it means that I can keep all of the costs down and all of the other techniques and tips that I'm sharing with you now do pretty much most of the work to keep the rest of the greenhouse frost free through winter okay for my next tip I have gotten onto the floor under the benches in my Greenhouse the things I do for you guys and we're going to talk about something called thermal mass now thermal mass is a fantastic affordable way to heat a greenhouse now what is thermal Mass thermal mass is the mechanism whereby solar gain the heat that comes from sunlight heats up a material or an object and that material will hold on to that heat when the ambient temperature drops away so during the nighttime period then it will slowly release that heat back out into the area around the object and in this scenario it's in our Greenhouse now one object and one material that I use is these concrete slabs these heat up throughout the daytime especially when the sun is overhead in the midsummer and it's beaming down onto these slabs and it happens in winter too and they will slowly release that heat throughout the nighttime and heat rises and it's just going to gradually come up and keep the ambient temperature in here just a little bit warmer and it really helps contribute to keeping the temperature warmer and keeping frosts and Ice away you'll notice in so many other greenh houses that there's huge ponds like in Q and most Botanic Gardens because water is fantastic at storing heat and it will slowly release that heat at night time and increase the temperature in the green houses now these two materials you'll notice um in parts of the world that have warmer microclimates coastal areas are often warmer throughout the year and that's because of the thermal mass of the ocean it holds on to the temperature much more and it will slowly release it at night which means that the coastal areas stay warmer and in cities you get a um phenomenon called the urban heat island effect whereby all of the concrete and building materials that warm up throughout the day slowly release that heat at night keeping urban areas much warmer as well so we can make use of that in our green houses put concrete floors down paint them black as well anything that's black is going to absorb heat really really efficiently and then they will slowly release that heat throughout the night and they'll keep the temperature of your Greenhouse much warmer now something that I'm considering adding into this greenhouse is a large trough full of water maybe a couple of fish that I can use to water and fertilize the plants but that will act as something called a thermal battery it's going to store that heat energy and it will slowly release it through the night and help me keep this greenhouse warmer in winter with very little effort and almost no cost right now my next point would be following on from that in winter in your Greenhouse you're going to want to hold on to as much of that heat that you've generated throughout the day as possible so when it comes to watering I'd recommend watering early in the morning because the plants can uptake any moisture that they need and throughout the day that water is going to evaporate and it's going to allow time for all of the materials that we've just discussed to warm up and build up that storage of heat that they can release through night whereas if you were to water in the evening those materials would have heated up all through the day and then if we come in and water it cools them all down and that effect is going to be lost so I always water in the morning in Winter um in the evening it's absolutely fine in summer but I like to water in the morning in winter so that all the materials are still lovely and warm as nighttime rolls in and then they'll slowly release it so that we can benefit from the thermal mass or thermal batteries that we've built into our Greenhouse somehow I've ended up back on the floor in my Greenhouse for my next tip now in Winter sometimes we get overcast days they're wet they're windy they're rainy then the nighttime temperatures are cold and perhaps all the previous tips and techniques I've discussed don't help keep the greenhouse that warm we might need something additional to generate a bit of heat inside of the space that's when I'll use something like this little electric heater now this heater will come on when the outside temperature starts to get below freezing especially on days like I say where there hasn't been much sunlight to warm up the inside of this space and because I've got it down low at Flor level it's going to blast warm air all down in this space that will gradually rise up because remember warm air rises so if you are going to use a heater make sure that you've got it down low in your greenhouse because it's going to heat everything on floor level and that heat will rise up and warm everything else above if you have the heater too high the floor level in your Greenhouse is just going to stay cold because the heat will just come out from whatever level your heater that and then rise up to the ceiling now the good thing about this heater is I can choose how many heating elements I want on so I can control how much electricity this thing's drawing and I can set it to have no heating elements on and just to turn the fan on which will cause air movement in the greenhouse which is great because on really cold days I'm not going to want to open the door or the windows above me but I will want to generate air movement to prevent rot and just to keep my plants healthy so I can do that with this same Greenhouse heater um and it's not going to take any additional space now how do I control this heater that brings me on to my next point for which I'm going to get off of the floor so what have I got that heater connected to so that it's not on all of the time now I've actually connected my Greenhouse to the Wi-Fi so I can control a lot of the um things in here from my phone no matter where I am in the world and the first device is just hidden behind me here this now this is is my Ubbi bot I've not been paid or sponsored by these guys I've just had a really good experience using this product this little device sits in my greenhouse and it measures humidity light and temperature as well as earthquakes but so far I've not experienced any of those here in my Dorset Garden in the UK and that will tell me on my phone what the temperature is how bright it is in the greenhouse so that using the smart plugs that I've got in here the Wi-Fi connected plugs I can turn on lighting I can turn on the heater I can turn it off and I know that everything safe I've actually set it up so that it notifies me on my phone if the temperature in the greenhouse drops below what I've set as a safe Zone which I think is about 5° C and it's been fantastic it's taken a lot of the worry off of me and I'm not having to constantly come out and check on the greenhouse because I can just look on my phone now I'll admit when I first installed it I was check checking my phone constantly that everything was okay but now I trust it as long as it's got battery and the batteries are charged everything in here heating wise is automated so if the temperature drops too cold which is very very rarely then the heater will come on just to keep any ice away keep the plants healthy and keep The Gardener happy hopefully you found that video useful and it's given you some tips and ideas on how to heat your Greenhouse through winter so that you can enjoy your gardening passion for 12 months of the year now if you've got additional questions feel free to post them in the comments section below or sign up to our social network where there is a forum all about winter plant care and the whole Community which is gardeners from around the world that love growing plants like you can come together to help you out the web address for that is grow paradise. social and it is completely free to sign up now please hit subscribe if you've enjoyed the video and I will see you all in the next [Music] one [Music] [Music] oh

Channel: Grow Paradise

Views: 6,629

Keywords: tropical gardening, tropical garden, grow paradise, tropical gardening uk, Heat a greenhouse, how to heat a greenhouse, how to insulate a greenhouse, greenhouse insulation, greenhouse thermal battery, cheap greenhouse heating, budget greenhouse heater

Id: nH5Wi8ttlF4

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 04 2023