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| Solar-Powered Greenhouse |
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| These are some pictures of a small solar-powered greenhouse we built at our house, using an old carport frame. The solar panels run a blower that inflates the air between the two layers of cover plastic, and it also runs an exhaust fan and a small 12 volt light inside. |
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We grow cool weather crops all winter long, even though we're at 6600 feet above sea level and nights get very cold, and we do so without any supplemental propane heat at night. To do this we employed a well-established but little-known trick of insulating the soil within the greenhouse from the outside soil using extruded polystyrene board around the perimiter. This way, the inside greenhouse soil acts as a big thermal retaining mass, and the ground inside doesn't freeze even in the coldest part of winter. The insulating board goes down 24 inches, except in one or two spots where we decided to make peace with some of Torrey's notorious boulders! |
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| View from the front. The two-part door allows us a lot of control over the intake ventilation, but keeps our hungry bunnies at bay. |
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| The structure that you see inside is a cold-frame table, which provides an additional measure of temperature buffering for seedlings. A block wall was placed behind the table for additional thermal mass. |
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| Exhaust fan mounted in the back door. Even though our summers are fairly cool, the daytime sun is very strong. It's amazing how much exchange air is needed during the months of April to October, just to keep the temperatures under 110 degrees inside. |
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| With all the veggies we produce in our greenhouse, we had to get a second chest freezer so that we could continue to enjoy the fruits of our labors over the long winter. A dedicated small solar system with a Sundanzer high-efficiency DC chest freezer does the job quite well. |
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| The Sundanzer is on the right. We added a small Morningstar SureSine inverter to run some AC lights and tool charger in the shed as well. The extra cables hanging down from the enclosure are part of a datalogger system that monitors solar production and freezer watt-hour demand. |
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| Lab & Office at Raynes Engineering in Torrey |
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| A good shot of the inside of our office on Main Street in Torrey. |
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