I have 10 gallon bucket and a cheap 5 buck water heater that thing keeps the little cold frame from freezing and even kept it at 60f or 15c when it was 37f or 3c outside my citrus are growing here in zone 6 thanks to this method. I wonder what the effects would be in a large green house.
@@qvanergy5453 You can wire up one of the cheap 12v DC immersion water heaters submerged in a big water barrel to a 12v 100 watt solar panel and get extra winter warmth for the nighttime in your greenhouse, chicken roost or next to a fruit tree. A solar panel like that will last for a very long time and they don`t cost very much but are incredibly valuable on a homestead for so many things if you understand basic DC electricity.
My yankee mechanic friend in Florida showed me a trick. Put something large and metal in front of the heater. An engine, big wheel, anything big and metal. Put it as close as possible to the heater. It will heat the metal and the metal will radiate heat. It's really effective. He heated his loft with a small space heater and a Harley transmission and engine in front. I think if you warmed up something metal in front of your heater it would stay warmer. A metal barrel full of water would be really good probably but I haven't seen it done with water like that. It's super easy to do and it absolutely makes the heater more effective.
Granite works for this as well because of the lower thermal conductivity. Also setting insulation on top of the metal or rock slab will cause the heat to radiate out the sides instead of losing the heat out the top. If you set a sheet of aluminum on top of that insulation that is even better because the insulation will prevent conduction loss and the aluminum will reflect the radiant heat back into the slab.
My husband and I got caught in a high tunnel greenhouse during a downpour with the guy who ran the nursery with nothing to do but talk. He said that they had one high tunnel with the shade cloth on the outside and one on the inside and the tunnel with the shade cloth on the inside got much hotter than the greenhouse with the shade cloth on the outside. I'm reminded of this every time I see your shade cloth draped inside your green house but this time I saw it when the post was new. Something to consider is all. Or do an wxperiment.
I make a compost (alfalfa cubes soaked with urine) that I put under cutting trays in my greenhouse. It’s really just to slightly heat the rooting medium but they started steaming on my coldest night and raised the temperature about a degree in my green house. I imagine if I used the entire bag of alfalfa cubes it could heat my entire tiny greenhouse significantly. What I like most about it is that come spring I will either have a great soil amendment or I will have a great mulch.
I made a very small hotbed using half a compost bin. I filled it with fresh manure and green garden waste. Topped off with two inches of bagged compost and put a thick sheet of perspex on top. I used it as a mini raised bed with huge success.
I live up north, I keep a barrel in my high tunnel (8x16) to help the cold spring mornings here (40 degree mornings in June). I think the hot compost idea is intriguing because barrels won’t cut it in the winter for my climate. Still a really cool idea for those down south.
The greenhouse I used when we first moved to Montana had two black 55 gallon metal drums filled with a glycol/water mix and it made it so I could start plants in there in March, with two foot of snow on the ground and no extra source of warmth. Just sun warmed barrels and that never froze even when it got to -30 in January/February. I noticed that temp moderation for the heat as well, but so it goes. It was only an 8X10 glass walled shed, but I can see that as a good Idea for the next stage of my garden growing adventure with a tunnel.
Nice set up. Also nice to have an extra1500 gal of emergency water ready to go. Grateful for the way you dispel the myths that sometimes hold us back. Does not need to be black metal drums. Thanks.
Glad you mentioned about barrels don't have to be color black. I got 9 blue barrels inside my mini greenhouse that I built inside a huge 40ft by 96ft. I bought a black heavy duty 60-gallon trash bag to cover up each of blue barrels so it will be black and suppose to work better (well, based on the myth anyway). With what you are saying, now I don't have to buy those trash bag but just get a bunch of blue barrels inside the 40X96ft green house. Thank you for mentioning that.
David, I've learned a lot from you over the last few years, Thank you by the way. I took your swamp water idea and ran with it filled a couple garbage cans full of weeds and water and I'm using them in my little tiny 6'x9' greenhouse up here in BC, Canada. I'm fortunate to be in one of the mildest spots for winter, rated as zone 8B here. I figure my barels are doing double duty, making some nice easy fertilizer and hopefully being a buffer for the cold days. Our winters here are never fully predictable, some years we get a cold snap that lasts a week or two well below freezing and some years, very mild. this year, we've barely dropped below freezing. I do have to replace my plastic as the stuff I had before wasn't rated for sunlight so only lasted 2 summers but the replacement stuff is rated to hold up hopefully a few more years. Thanks again for another great video.
I am aa small backyard farmer. I put some plants under a plastic bin and out two 2 liter bottle of hot water with them. Keeps plants from getting to freezing when we get down to 28-30)
Cool! I have a 10 x 20 unheated temporary greenhouse and have 4 barrels of water in there. This is the first winter doing this. It does freeze in there, but I'm only growing hardy greens. I just hope the barrels temper things a little bit. We live in Indiana, so it gets cold here a lot in the wintertime.
Thank you, please keep this raw content coming, it is very inspiring. We are going back n forth on building a big messy tropical greenhouse here in North Carolina
I am in iowa and it will help in March when the greenhouse gets very hot but nights are still cold. I know it won't help in January but wow what good idea!
I put my propane tank in a old metal milk crate to prevent tipping. they fit perfectly. I had a friend with a huge hoop green house that used your method of thermal mass with good success. he lived in ski country of northern NM, alt. 9500'
In Tx I have protected and saved citrus trees with a sheet and a couple of 1 gallon jugs of water next to it. As long as the sheet is secured well the tree lives, even down to 12 degrees!!
This is awesome! Im thinking that i could use shorter barrels to make nightstands in the bedrooms, tables in living areas, covering them with a decorative frame and that would help keep rooms comfortable, too especially after hurricanes. Dual purpose water storage. Love it.
I’ve used this method in my smaller greenhouse in N Texas with great effect. 👍 I have an 8’x12’ wood frame greenhouse - I use one gallon and 2 1/2 gallon jugs instead of the 55 gal barrels and they work fine. Your planter pots are also heat batteries, make sure to water them before a cold night. The only time we had to extensively use space heaters was in Feb 2021 when we had 10 consecutive days below freezing and a couple nights below zero.
Hey David, good to see you again. I'm in Atl still. The lemon grass is a perrenial that I've been growing outside now for 3 years down to 15° F. They come back every year, so I put them around the front of the house as decoration. They're getting to at least 5 foot every year and doubling in width. Love the greenhouse, it's a beauty....
We use two of these along with gallon water jugs black-bagged. We are using an elec./heater to help with these cold 9-deg. mountain nights in GA> But everything looks vibrant in our small 16x22 greenhouse.
So excited about this! We have moved to the northern part of the Panhandle from SoFlo and I want my tropicals! Will see you at the Farmhouse Fair in Milton in March.
I wonder how far north you could push this idea. I know a lot of people use small glass greenhouses filled with and built on sand that acts as a battery to be able to grow bananas in Canada
Grow water cress in the barrels or even better have a fish tank and grow fish inside the tunnel, I put slate on my pathways and ground the outside to release heat.
Liquid mass can be a long term solution for Minnesota or further north especially if it's a deep tank,. Another help would be the water pipe around perimeter circulating, I don't know much though
Extra thermal mass is great for greenhouses in general. But it's super practical in those areas where you could almost get away without any extra heaters. Another method that seems to work well, though is a bit more work to install is to use the ground beneath the greenhouse as the thermal battery by burying several ducts a couple feet down and running a small fan to circulate air through them with a thermal barrier of 2" insulation buried around the perimeter of the greenhouse to keep the heat from escaping to the surrounding soil as quickly.
You can wire up one of the 12v DC immersion water heaters submerged in a big water barrel to a 12v 100 watt solar panel and get extra winter warmth for the nighttime in your greenhouse, chicken roost or next to a fruit tree.
@@lezly1336 You're the one openly criticizing the maker of the video. He wasn't making a video about an ELECTRIC GREENHOUSE. Anyone can all think of ways to improve if ELECTRICITY is used. The person being unfriendly is you, and I personally hate (yes hate) when people diminish others by suggesting and clearly implying the work/plan/brilliant video information is lacking. This greenhouse is superior to one with a fish tank heater, and I went easy on your irrelevant suggestion.
I have one of those small greenhouses from harbor freight 10x12 of a 5 gallon bucket that I use for watering. The plants and I keep a tiny space heater in front of it. The water warm and hopefully capture some more heat.
Thanks for sharing. I'm in NW FL and moved from MN. I'd like to enclose a screen porch to create a greenhouse for winters here, but only want it temporary. I have to figure out how to get that plastic or another type of material up without it looking bad.
I wonder what effect filling the black barrels with sand would have? Or even semi ripened compost? If it were compost, you’d get a double bonus...maybe.
The thermal mass of water is much higher than sand, so it works better. Compost would not be likely to get hot enough in a barrel to make a difference.
Seems like a good use-case for sand batteries. It's just a metal bucket of sand with an electric coil inside that heats it up. Sand holds a shitload of heat and releases it slowly. Good pairing with solar pv. I like how scalable it is, bigger\smaller bucket and heating element. Can also be heated from below with a stove as a simple slow-release thermal battery. Read a comment by a vanlifer trhat said they used a small one in their van, barely sipped power from their batteries to heat the van all night. One video said to use marine-grade heating thing. That's all I know so far, haven't tried it yet, just stoked :(
This is a great video. I hope you do one cheap modification for science sake. It would be wonderful if you purchased some cheap thermometers and placed them around your green house. I live in Arizona where the night time temperature is usually around the lower 20's. My green house does not have a heater but it tends to stay 10 degrees warmer than the great outdoors. I assume that it is about the dirt filled tanks. The dirt filled tanks are probably not as productive as those barrels but maybe in those colder zones the two methods combined would be useful.
I am in Arkansas and been experimenting with growing tropical plants. I got your book to help me with the journey of pushing my greenhouse zone to able to grow tropical plants. How big is your greenhouse in this video? I am trying to figure out how many blue 55-gallon barrels I would need for my 40X96X12ft tall high tunnel/greenhouse? Thank you.
What would a large ground dug pit full of water in a greenhouse do? Would heat radiate into air around plants, or would the thermal mass be too low? Thanks for the video.
have you ever done the thermal mass calculations on it? as it would just as likely depending on area and environmental factors, in the winter work in the opposite way. ie. absorb the cold during the night and keep the greenhouse colder during the day and in the summer if you are in a hot area, absorb the heat and keep the greenhouse hotter than you need it. do you have the data to back the theory up? cause that would be sweet, all the farmers i know that have done trials have not seen results from it. myself included. sorry to add apart from positively extending the end of the season at the end of summer. it has worse effects at the beginning of spring when they are trying to warm back up, it keeps the tunnel colder than it could be
@ I feel as though you haven’t understood the question, i asked have you done the thermal mass calculations and have the data from the calculations to share. Not just the anecdotal information, for example i have tunnels that freeze and don’t freeze depending on the year, at the same temperatures. so it is not consistent with how much the temperature manages to drop the temperature in the tunnels. it doesn’t necessarily mean it is because of the barrels, or at least i couldn’t tell for definite as i can not control the other variables, or understand what they are. so it could be other factors or variables instead that are causing it to not freeze. A lot of other people in my growing area have tried this idea and have anecdotal stories with good and bad results. I asked if you have also tried this idea, had you also done the calculations to understand what causes and affects the differential factors to cause the variation in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ results. i am assuming though now from your reply you haven’t or you would have mentioned it and the work done to complete the thermal mass calculations to get better results in all season for obvious reasons but to also save from emptying, moving and refilling, depending on the season considering it is a lot of time and money spent on doing it. I suppose it would also be interesting to know if you also found the same negative effects in spring when trying to warm the greenhouses up for growing, do your houses also heat up slower in spring potentially because of the barrels?
I would think that a ceramic heater would suffice or do they tend to fail outdoors? We run them in our sunroom whenever the outside temps get down to below 55° because it's been converted into a studio and if it gets too cold, all guitars go out of tune. And there are a lot of them.
Would ibc totes work just as well as the barrels? I'm asking because i believe the ibc totes are much thicker plastic than barrels so im just curious if the thickness makes a difference..?
What are the dimensions of your greenhouse? Do you have videos of your construction of it? My husband and I are planning to build a greenhouse. We need all the info we can get! Maybe you wrote a book on it? And on how to use a greenhouse effectively?
ORLANDO where it near never gets a freeze. I called around looking for barrels under $80. and no one had them sale. Where did you find yours at such a reasonable price?
I have slate pathways inside and around the outside to absorb heat during the days and I have a hot bed and that alongside a fleece has protected my crops bur for your Greenhouse you could line the inside with the heavy duty bubblwrap and that might be enough for moderate frost and most early crops.
@@ivahihopeful That is best during the winter but once the spring comes you need to be able to remove it and what I do is staple velcro pads to the bubble wrap and stick the opposite velcro pad onto the glass and this makes it east to remove and use again next winter.
I think those heaters have a 1 year warranty if not too late. Also, do you have lids on your barrels? Curious about humidity and also if you are having any CO issues with plants when the propane heater is on?
Propane is cheap and relatively clean burning so it is a good choice for a greenhouse. If you wanted to put solar on the roofs of your buildings with batteries inside you could run electric to your greenhouses. Typical returns on investment for solar is 10 years. A mini split heater would be safer than a space heater. A space heater if not used properly (small extension cord) can be almost as dangerous as a propane heater. There are some health benefits to not burning portable propane in an enclosed space and it does displace oxygen. That's typically how people die sleeping in doors with a portable propane heater in a power outage. Brooder or heat lamps with fans and water barrels are what I use on my fig bush in snap freezes in April in North Carolina.
I look at the water container/heat battery as a dual use technology, i.e., you can use for watering plants, too. But I found myself in an autistic reverie wondering if, in an emergency or whatever, one might fill barrels with heavily salted water to further delay total freeze by a degree or two... but then you couldn't water plants with that water without evaporating it first and then you'd have a lot of salt to do something with.
I've seen it done on Pinterest and a video on here where this guy dug down built a wall of IBC water tanks surrounding the house and that seemed to work for him.
For what it’s worth, one way to make the barrels even more effective space heaters is to put an aquarium heater in one or more.
I have 10 gallon bucket and a cheap 5 buck water heater that thing keeps the little cold frame from freezing and even kept it at 60f or 15c when it was 37f or 3c outside my citrus are growing here in zone 6 thanks to this method. I wonder what the effects would be in a large green house.
Good idea
@@qvanergy5453 You can wire up one of the cheap 12v DC immersion water heaters submerged in a big water barrel to a 12v 100 watt solar panel and get extra winter warmth for the nighttime in your greenhouse, chicken roost or next to a fruit tree. A solar panel like that will last for a very long time and they don`t cost very much but are incredibly valuable on a homestead for so many things if you understand basic DC electricity.
Put a reef aquarium in thre @@davidthegood
You could also put fish into it 😅aquaculture baby! Maybe even some hydroponics! Multi system.
I used a barrel like that with a fishtank water heater inside, it works a dream 💕
Now that's thinking!
Brilliant!
My yankee mechanic friend in Florida showed me a trick. Put something large and metal in front of the heater. An engine, big wheel, anything big and metal. Put it as close as possible to the heater. It will heat the metal and the metal will radiate heat. It's really effective. He heated his loft with a small space heater and a Harley transmission and engine in front. I think if you warmed up something metal in front of your heater it would stay warmer. A metal barrel full of water would be really good probably but I haven't seen it done with water like that. It's super easy to do and it absolutely makes the heater more effective.
Granite works for this as well because of the lower thermal conductivity. Also setting insulation on top of the metal or rock slab will cause the heat to radiate out the sides instead of losing the heat out the top. If you set a sheet of aluminum on top of that insulation that is even better because the insulation will prevent conduction loss and the aluminum will reflect the radiant heat back into the slab.
@N8_R wow, good to know.
I live in Virginia now by the Chesapeake Bay. It's been cold lately for a FL Man. I'm happy to learn more ways to stay warm.
👍
My husband and I got caught in a high tunnel greenhouse during a downpour with the guy who ran the nursery with nothing to do but talk. He said that they had one high tunnel with the shade cloth on the outside and one on the inside and the tunnel with the shade cloth on the inside got much hotter than the greenhouse with the shade cloth on the outside.
I'm reminded of this every time I see your shade cloth draped inside your green house but this time I saw it when the post was new.
Something to consider is all. Or do an wxperiment.
It was certainly way easier to hang on the inside.
I’ve heard of people using a compost pile to heat their greenhouse in winter, I always thought that too was a cool idea.
Lol, I was just wondering if this was possible when I saw your comment
I make a compost (alfalfa cubes soaked with urine) that I put under cutting trays in my greenhouse. It’s really just to slightly heat the rooting medium but they started steaming on my coldest night and raised the temperature about a degree in my green house. I imagine if I used the entire bag of alfalfa cubes it could heat my entire tiny greenhouse significantly. What I like most about it is that come spring I will either have a great soil amendment or I will have a great mulch.
I was just wondering whether it would work too.
I made a very small hotbed using half a compost bin. I filled it with fresh manure and green garden waste. Topped off with two inches of bagged compost and put a thick sheet of perspex on top. I used it as a mini raised bed with huge success.
I live up north, I keep a barrel in my high tunnel (8x16) to help the cold spring mornings here (40 degree mornings in June). I think the hot compost idea is intriguing because barrels won’t cut it in the winter for my climate. Still a really cool idea for those down south.
The greenhouse I used when we first moved to Montana had two black 55 gallon metal drums filled with a glycol/water mix and it made it so I could start plants in there in March, with two foot of snow on the ground and no extra source of warmth. Just sun warmed barrels and that never froze even when it got to -30 in January/February. I noticed that temp moderation for the heat as well, but so it goes. It was only an 8X10 glass walled shed, but I can see that as a good Idea for the next stage of my garden growing adventure with a tunnel.
That is awesome.
I had the fire spitting problem with a buddy heater once. I added a 17 dollar propane filter. Keeps it from sending too much fuel. Fixed the problem 😉
Nice set up. Also nice to have an extra1500 gal of emergency water ready to go. Grateful for the way you dispel the myths that sometimes hold us back. Does not need to be black metal drums. Thanks.
Thank you.
Glad you mentioned about barrels don't have to be color black. I got 9 blue barrels inside my mini greenhouse that I built inside a huge 40ft by 96ft. I bought a black heavy duty 60-gallon trash bag to cover up each of blue barrels so it will be black and suppose to work better (well, based on the myth anyway). With what you are saying, now I don't have to buy those trash bag but just get a bunch of blue barrels inside the 40X96ft green house. Thank you for mentioning that.
David, I've learned a lot from you over the last few years, Thank you by the way. I took your swamp water idea and ran with it filled a couple garbage cans full of weeds and water and I'm using them in my little tiny 6'x9' greenhouse up here in BC, Canada. I'm fortunate to be in one of the mildest spots for winter, rated as zone 8B here.
I figure my barels are doing double duty, making some nice easy fertilizer and hopefully being a buffer for the cold days. Our winters here are never fully predictable, some years we get a cold snap that lasts a week or two well below freezing and some years, very mild. this year, we've barely dropped below freezing. I do have to replace my plastic as the stuff I had before wasn't rated for sunlight so only lasted 2 summers but the replacement stuff is rated to hold up hopefully a few more years.
Thanks again for another great video.
Thank you. The good UV-resistant greenhouse plastic works a lot longer. 8b is a great zone.
I am aa small backyard farmer. I put some plants under a plastic bin and out two 2 liter bottle of hot water with them. Keeps plants from getting to freezing when we get down to 28-30)
Cool! I have a 10 x 20 unheated temporary greenhouse and have 4 barrels of water in there. This is the first winter doing this. It does freeze in there, but I'm only growing hardy greens. I just hope the barrels temper things a little bit. We live in Indiana, so it gets cold here a lot in the wintertime.
Yes, it will definitely extend the season, if not keep it from freezing.
Thank you, please keep this raw content coming, it is very inspiring. We are going back n forth on building a big messy tropical greenhouse here in North Carolina
Thank you. Good luck.
I am in iowa and it will help in March when the greenhouse gets very hot but nights are still cold. I know it won't help in January but wow what good idea!
I look at all your beautiful plants and I could cry. I'm getting a greenhouse this year, I'm tired of losing crops 😢
It's wonderful.
I put my propane tank in a old metal milk crate to prevent tipping. they fit perfectly. I had a friend with a huge hoop green house that used your method of thermal mass with good success. he lived in ski country of northern NM, alt. 9500'
That is an extreme climate!
In Tx I have protected and saved citrus trees with a sheet and a couple of 1 gallon jugs of water next to it. As long as the sheet is secured well the tree lives, even down to 12 degrees!!
This is awesome! Im thinking that i could use shorter barrels to make nightstands in the bedrooms, tables in living areas, covering them with a decorative frame and that would help keep rooms comfortable, too especially after hurricanes. Dual purpose water storage. Love it.
That's an interesting idea.
I use black barrels as well, and they definitly increase the length of season in zone.
Great timing on me seeing this. Preparing to build my first high tunnel/greenhouse.
May it go excellently.
I’ve used this method in my smaller greenhouse in N Texas with great effect. 👍
I have an 8’x12’ wood frame greenhouse - I use one gallon and 2 1/2 gallon jugs instead of the 55 gal barrels and they work fine. Your planter pots are also heat batteries, make sure to water them before a cold night.
The only time we had to extensively use space heaters was in Feb 2021 when we had 10 consecutive days below freezing and a couple nights below zero.
"Snow" magededdon! It was a very difficult event for us Texans. We have plenty of stories of this time to pass on down to our Grandchildren.
I’m going to do that!!! Great for the hill country of Texas. Thank you! Currently 39°. Below freezing the next couple of nights!
David thank you so very much for sharing.
This is pretty easy for me to do as a female lol
Hey David, good to see you again. I'm in Atl still. The lemon grass is a perrenial that I've been growing outside now for 3 years down to 15° F. They come back every year, so I put them around the front of the house as decoration. They're getting to at least 5 foot every year and doubling in width. Love the greenhouse, it's a beauty....
That is excellent. More cold-hardy than I would expect!
I’m down in south Louisiana and this is an awesome idea! Thanks a lot David 🙏
We use two of these along with gallon water jugs black-bagged. We are using an elec./heater to help with these cold 9-deg. mountain nights in GA> But everything looks vibrant in our small 16x22 greenhouse.
That's a great idea. I was looking for just such a solution.
All my plants that were under a awning did fine, I got all my tropical plants in the bathroom at a cool 80° warmer than anywhere else
An awning makes a big difference.
So excited about this! We have moved to the northern part of the Panhandle from SoFlo and I want my tropicals! Will see you at the Farmhouse Fair in Milton in March.
See you there!
Super helpful, from Texas! Thanks!
Thank you.
These barrels work well here in Georgia too!
They didn't get the state line memo
You guys rock God bless y’all let us know when you’re back in Florida. I’ll give you some of those 55 gallon drums.
Thank you.
Thanks brother South Louisiana appreciates you
Thank you.
I wonder how far north you could push this idea. I know a lot of people use small glass greenhouses filled with and built on sand that acts as a battery to be able to grow bananas in Canada
This works just fine in Alaska
Very good to know. I need to get some barrels. Thanks! 😎
Perfect for northern ca! Thanks
Even if the barrels were to freeze, I imagine you could add salt to them to reduce the chance. Or 12v bubblers.
Yes. Though I imagine if they were below the freezing temperature of non-salted water, the plants wouldn't stay warm enough to avoid freezing.
Greenhouse goals. Thanks for sharing!
Grow water cress in the barrels or even better have a fish tank and grow fish inside the tunnel, I put slate on my pathways and ground the outside to release heat.
Liquid mass can be a long term solution for Minnesota or further north especially if it's a deep tank,. Another help would be the water pipe around perimeter circulating, I don't know much though
I am - I am a nerd! 🤓 Will check out your book!
Fantastic set up!😊
Great vid thanks for the inspiration!
Thermal mass is brilliant when utilized.
Thank you . I really enjoyed this content.👍🙏🌻
Extra thermal mass is great for greenhouses in general. But it's super practical in those areas where you could almost get away without any extra heaters. Another method that seems to work well, though is a bit more work to install is to use the ground beneath the greenhouse as the thermal battery by burying several ducts a couple feet down and running a small fan to circulate air through them with a thermal barrier of 2" insulation buried around the perimeter of the greenhouse to keep the heat from escaping to the surrounding soil as quickly.
Yes, I have seen that.
You can wire up one of the 12v DC immersion water heaters submerged in a big water barrel to a 12v 100 watt solar panel and get extra winter warmth for the nighttime in your greenhouse, chicken roost or next to a fruit tree.
Great ideas!
One could also just put a fish tank heater inside the barrels three or four of them throughout the greenhouse would heat that place very effectively
What do you do if power goes out?
@@MFaith777 should be grand rigging it to solar
The barrels are non-electric solution. That's why we watched this video. Once you have electricity none of this matters. 😑
@ no need to be snob pal, solar panels are extremely cheap even so you can purchase ones direct from China 10-60, not my fault 😑
@@lezly1336 You're the one openly criticizing the maker of the video. He wasn't making a video about an ELECTRIC GREENHOUSE. Anyone can all think of ways to improve if ELECTRICITY is used. The person being unfriendly is you, and I personally hate (yes hate) when people diminish others by suggesting and clearly implying the work/plan/brilliant video information is lacking. This greenhouse is superior to one with a fish tank heater, and I went easy on your irrelevant suggestion.
Fyi even black ones won't get too hot in summer. I have only water / no propane and survived the snowpocolypse of central Texas. On my channel
What is the dimension on your gh? I think you need more barrels per area. I have more per area. More Surface area is needed.
I also have a hottub with fish. 300 gal and 3x ibc totes (300 gal each).
Push the zone!
Greenhouse is about 2000 ft2. I'm sure it could use even more barrels, but I got tired of buying and filling them.
I have one of those small greenhouses from harbor freight 10x12 of a 5 gallon bucket that I use for watering. The plants and I keep a tiny space heater in front of it. The water warm and hopefully capture some more heat.
Nice vídeo. Salutations from Brazil!
Thank you.
I have a Coleman heater from 2015 that takes the 2# but on low it is good for 9-10 hrs
Thanks for sharing. I'm in NW FL and moved from MN. I'd like to enclose a screen porch to create a greenhouse for winters here, but only want it temporary. I have to figure out how to get that plastic or another type of material up without it looking bad.
I wonder what effect filling the black barrels with sand would have? Or even semi ripened compost? If it were compost, you’d get a double bonus...maybe.
The thermal mass of water is much higher than sand, so it works better. Compost would not be likely to get hot enough in a barrel to make a difference.
QUESTION -- I don't have plastic barrels but I do have many steel drum barrels with removable lids. Would these work instead of the plastic ones??????
Might work better.
They will work fine.
Thanks so much for this tip, really good to know!
Seems like a good use-case for sand batteries. It's just a metal bucket of sand with an electric coil inside that heats it up. Sand holds a shitload of heat and releases it slowly. Good pairing with solar pv. I like how scalable it is, bigger\smaller bucket and heating element. Can also be heated from below with a stove as a simple slow-release thermal battery. Read a comment by a vanlifer trhat said they used a small one in their van, barely sipped power from their batteries to heat the van all night. One video said to use marine-grade heating thing. That's all I know so far, haven't tried it yet, just stoked :(
This is a great video. I hope you do one cheap modification for science sake.
It would be wonderful if you purchased some cheap thermometers and placed them around your green house.
I live in Arizona where the night time temperature is usually around the lower 20's. My green house does not have a heater but it tends to stay 10 degrees warmer than the great outdoors. I assume that it is about the dirt filled tanks.
The dirt filled tanks are probably not as productive as those barrels but maybe in those colder zones the two methods combined would be useful.
Thermometers are a good idea.
What do you do in the summertime when it’s hot and a water in the barrels get hot how do you keep the greenhouse cool
The water doesn't get that hot, so it has not been a problem.
I love Ashwaganda
I have not figured out what to do with it.
I am in Arkansas and been experimenting with growing tropical plants. I got your book to help me with the journey of pushing my greenhouse zone to able to grow tropical plants. How big is your greenhouse in this video? I am trying to figure out how many blue 55-gallon barrels I would need for my 40X96X12ft tall high tunnel/greenhouse? Thank you.
2000 ft2
Great job! I need one, too!
What would a large ground dug pit full of water in a greenhouse do? Would heat radiate into air around plants, or would the thermal mass be too low? Thanks for the video.
It would help, but it would take up a lot of space.
have you ever done the thermal mass calculations on it? as it would just as likely depending on area and environmental factors, in the winter work in the opposite way. ie. absorb the cold during the night and keep the greenhouse colder during the day and in the summer if you are in a hot area, absorb the heat and keep the greenhouse hotter than you need it.
do you have the data to back the theory up? cause that would be sweet, all the farmers i know that have done trials have not seen results from it. myself included.
sorry to add apart from positively extending the end of the season at the end of summer. it has worse effects at the beginning of spring when they are trying to warm back up, it keeps the tunnel colder than it could be
Data? Yes. I had a greenhouse without barrels and it froze inside. When I added barrels, it didn't.
@ I feel as though you haven’t understood the question, i asked have you done the thermal mass calculations and have the data from the calculations to share. Not just the anecdotal information, for example i have tunnels that freeze and don’t freeze depending on the year, at the same temperatures. so it is not consistent with how much the temperature manages to drop the temperature in the tunnels. it doesn’t necessarily mean it is because of the barrels, or at least i couldn’t tell for definite as i can not control the other variables, or understand what they are. so it could be other factors or variables instead that are causing it to not freeze. A lot of other people in my growing area have tried this idea and have anecdotal stories with good and bad results. I asked if you have also tried this idea, had you also done the calculations to understand what causes and affects the differential factors to cause the variation in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ results. i am assuming though now from your reply you haven’t or you would have mentioned it and the work done to complete the thermal mass calculations to get better results in all season for obvious reasons but to also save from emptying, moving and refilling, depending on the season considering it is a lot of time and money spent on doing it.
I suppose it would also be interesting to know if you also found the same negative effects in spring when trying to warm the greenhouses up for growing, do your houses also heat up slower in spring potentially because of the barrels?
Keeping a compost pile in there works too
A good yet smelly idea
I can get metal barrels; would those work?
Yes
What will keep the water from going stagnate?
It doesn't matter - you're just using it for the thermal mass.
Thank you for your video. Where do you get your barrels from?
Some from a flea market, some from a friend.
Good info.
thank you
I would think that a ceramic heater would suffice or do they tend to fail outdoors? We run them in our sunroom whenever the outside temps get down to below 55° because it's been converted into a studio and if it gets too cold, all guitars go out of tune. And there are a lot of them.
Would ibc totes work just as well as the barrels? I'm asking because i believe the ibc totes are much thicker plastic than barrels so im just curious if the thickness makes a difference..?
They'll work just fine.
What are the dimensions of your greenhouse? Do you have videos of your construction of it? My husband and I are planning to build a greenhouse. We need all the info we can get! Maybe you wrote a book on it? And on how to use a greenhouse effectively?
David posted the video of them building it a couple of years ago.
We got to 15 degrees here so I had to put my plants in the basement. Where did you get the barrels?
Flea market seller.
ORLANDO where it near never gets a freeze. I called around looking for barrels under $80. and no one had them sale. Where did you find yours at such a reasonable price?
Be careful of scammers but, have you tried Facebook market place or Craigslist?
Round here they’re in Craigslist all the time
I found some at a flea market.
Do the barrels have to be that big? I was wondering how to work something for a small greenhouse.
I have slate pathways inside and around the outside to absorb heat during the days and I have a hot bed and that alongside a fleece has protected my crops bur for your Greenhouse you could line the inside with the heavy duty bubblwrap and that might be enough for moderate frost and most early crops.
Might be able to get away with using 5 gal buckets? I'm considering this for my 10x12' greenhouse for next year. I'm in zone 6b/7.
@ibrstellar1080 does this bubble wrap go all the way up the walls of the greenhouse?
@@mistymountainmiss yes, I’m wondering if that would work or if the volume has to be greater.
@@ivahihopeful That is best during the winter but once the spring comes you need to be able to remove it and what I do is staple velcro pads to the bubble wrap and stick the opposite velcro pad onto the glass and this makes it east to remove and use again next winter.
A good idea but if it works so well, how do they allow the temps to get so low inside?
The temps drop, but don't like to drop to freezing. I am no physicist. It just works way better to prevent freezing than before we added them.
I think those heaters have a 1 year warranty if not too late. Also, do you have lids on your barrels? Curious about humidity and also if you are having any CO issues with plants when the propane heater is on?
CO2 is great for plants. The barrels are closed, so mosquitoes don't get in.
What mil plastic are you using?
Coffee! 😍
Where to get these barrels?
Are they sealed barrels?
Yes, otherwise mosquitoes are a problem.
I have a heater like that and it failed with a few times of using it as well. Something I bought from HD.
What size greenhouse is that? Looks long and tall
About 2000ft2
Propane is cheap and relatively clean burning so it is a good choice for a greenhouse. If you wanted to put solar on the roofs of your buildings with batteries inside you could run electric to your greenhouses. Typical returns on investment for solar is 10 years. A mini split heater would be safer than a space heater. A space heater if not used properly (small extension cord) can be almost as dangerous as a propane heater. There are some health benefits to not burning portable propane in an enclosed space and it does displace oxygen. That's typically how people die sleeping in doors with a portable propane heater in a power outage. Brooder or heat lamps with fans and water barrels are what I use on my fig bush in snap freezes in April in North Carolina.
Wow!!!!!! Brilliant!!!!
A blue bottle apart from heat, produces CO2, as a byproduct, same as a paraffin heater does too!
What is the length of the greenhouse
96'
If you put the barrels in compost bins, they'll be heated by the compost decomposing.
Logistically, this is not that efficient.
What species of coffee are they?
Arabica
Cool.
I look at the water container/heat battery as a dual use technology, i.e., you can use for watering plants, too. But I found myself in an autistic reverie wondering if, in an emergency or whatever, one might fill barrels with heavily salted water to further delay total freeze by a degree or two... but then you couldn't water plants with that water without evaporating it first and then you'd have a lot of salt to do something with.
Wir haben im Sommer nicht Mal +26 draußen 😅
Diesel/kerosene is the move. I also use a smaller greenhouse for the winter because its easier to heat it.
I do the same with my ten 12 liter metal watering cans and can fully confirm this. But my greenhouse is only 7.5m2.
Is it Fahrenheit or Celsius?
Fahrenheit
@davidthegood thanks
Do these barrels have an official name? I want to try to find some.
Usually just called 55-gallon plastic drums.
Wouod this work to
heat an offgrid home?
I've seen it done on Pinterest and a video on here where this guy dug down built a wall of IBC water tanks surrounding the house and that seemed to work for him.
It would keep it much more moderate in temperature. I have seen a barrel wall/greenhouse in the side of a house.
Those heaters can be repaired. Remove diffuser, locate gas orifice, gently clean with wire brush, save $$.
Fix that gap in the door and you'll gain a few degrees at night! A strip of rubber or plastic a few inches wide would work
I jam insulation in it, but pulled it for this video.