Fanboy Builds a Greenhouse

[Pigskin Fanboy]

As some of you may already know, we decided to attempt building a small greenhouse in our backyard.


I wanted to share that process and hopefully give others ideas and get feedback as I start working on setting up the ventilation system, interior shelving, a rainwater collection system and a Solar powered fan system.
This idea started kicking around up in the old melon on May 23rd and I started drawing out designs and watching a ton of YouTube videos for ideas.
The original plan was for a 2”x4” frame - 4’x8’ Lean-To style but as soon as we got the framing up, I realized I would not be happy with that space (I’m a BIG feller LOL). I make do in my 4x8 tent but it’s cramped.
After talking to the “Boss”, she agreed and we decided to extend the front wall by 2 foot.

So the final dimensions are basically 8’ long by 6’ wide. The back wall near the house is 8’ tall and the front wall is 5’6” tall.

The first step was trying to level the ground with a slight slope away from the house foundation. As you can see it was always in the opposite direction and water was heading right to the house foundation and this has needed to be fixed for a very long time.
This ground is mostly clay and rocks and is extremely hard to dig.
We “Broke Ground” on June 2nd, using a small DR tiller we outlined the area. Could have used a bigger/stronger tiller for sure !!

It seemed to take forever and we really put that little tiller through the wringer. Once the ground was broken up it started raining, so we had a really nasty mud/clay type situation to deal with, added in a bunch of sand and soil and tilled it all in well.

That set us back a couple days to let it dry up and harden again.

We set the frame on 6, 4” cap blocks and started installing the double walled polycarbonate plastic sheeting.

This stuff is fairly expensive so we installed the front section horizontally. For the price savings I can live with it. All 4 corners were left with 3” of 2x4 sticking out that we drilled a hole in and staked the corners to the ground using 18” U shaped trampoline stakes.
You can see the original layer of weed barrier didn’t make it. Lol.
Roof panels installed temporarily to help with stability and to keep the floor dirt dry.

Side and front panels installed, the back wall is T-111

siding and the lower 24” around the perimeter is also T-111 siding. The outside siding will be getting painted or stained in the near future.

A small bead of caulking material was used at the top of the siding to help seal up the edges until I can get the finishing touches in place.

If I would have been a smart man I would have started at the center stud for my seam in the above photo and worked out in both directions but didn’t catch it until it was too late. I was tired LOL.

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

Started working on the floor inside the greenhouse, at this point I knew I wanted a pea gravel substrate but also wanted to make sure that no weeds, no Rodents and especially no Snakes would be able to make their way inside through the ground.
After leveling and tamping the dirt, we dropped in a bunch of sand and raked it all smooth.

Then a triple-layer of weed barrier material that was crisscrossed

then installed a metal lath layer throughout the floor from wall to wall.

All of this was staked down with landscape stakes and stapled to the lower wall studs.

We then covered the lathe with a deep layer of pea gravel. Kept my boy and his team mates busy that day

Framed the door with 1”x4” material using pocket screws and glue.
Mounted some hinges, a pull handle and a temporary slide latch for now. Will be installing a return spring and a threaded leveling rod in a little while.

Now that the door is installed, I marked all the locations of the hardware. We will be covering the door in the poly sheeting tonight also.

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

Good evening everyone
We’ve got numerous aspects of this build going on simultaneously but this will specifically be about the power supply and ventilation situation.
Sorry in advance but this is gonna be a long post LOL.

The greenhouse build is coming together…. slowly but in the right direction, I think.
I’m still fighting with heat/ventilation issues but I’m making progress there as well. I went from inside temperatures around 120f to 93f, which basically matches our outside temperature at the hottest part of the day. I’ve got some more improvements in that area of the build that I’ll lay out here in a few. I want to get caught up on what has been done to this point and outline some of the mistakes I have made along the way.
Hopefully this might help others who may cross this bridge.
I purchased a solar powered Attic Ventilation fan thinking this would be my main source of air exchange. On the description it says it is capable of 3000CFM, around 10 times what the calculators say I need assuming my math was right ….
I’d blow the hot air out of the top of the greenhouse and pull in cooler air from the lower vents. This works very well for my grow room/tent setup but not so much an outside greenhouse LOL. I had to make several “adjustments” to get where I am now.

The first issue is, if even one little cloud partially blocks the sun, it slows this fan down to almost nothing. I originally thought I could just hook the fan directly to a 12vdc battery and control it with a speed controller and temp switch but that wouldn’t work either. I’m assuming the fan is some sort of brushless, PWM controlled motor because it will not run at all with a direct 12vdc hook up, and the fan is nowhere near 3000CFM even when running lol. I installed a 40% greenhouse shade over the roof and that helped a lot !

I then played around with the solar panel placement and got it working good for a longer period, but it’s just laying on top of the roof at the moment and I’ll have to come up with a plan for that.

Obviously even when I do get the exact placement and maximum sun exposure this is not going to work as a standalone system. One or two cloudy days and I’d have a bunch of dead plants, I’m sure !! So I decided to leave that fan installed, since I already cut the hole for it in the side of the Greenhouse

I got the bright idea that I’d install a true 12vdc cooling fan (Automotive) system attached to a deep cycle battery and use the solar panel(s) to charge the battery up as needed. Sounds great in theory but I’d have to come up with a way to control the new cooling fan or it would burn itself out in a week running at full speed.
I picked up a stand-alone solar battery Charging system with a charge controller, so now have 2 solar controllers to play with

I was able to pick up a set of 2 16” fans, relatively inexpensive but after about 30 minutes of running wide ass open the motor was getting hot to the touch, I didn’t measure the surface temperature but I’m sure not sure if it would last long that way. Now these fans could possibly move 3000CFM each !!!
Here it is in “Pusher” mode (reverse polarity on leads)

I then decided to run an extension cord out and power up an ACI T4 system and added in a large 12” oscillating fan and things seemed to “fall into place” and eureka I think I found the answer.

So throughout all this I decided my answer is going to be somewhere in the middle and will be installing a solar bank with an inverter system
The ultimate goal is to have 2-12vdc deep cycle batteries hooked in parallel as my main battery bank system. There’s going to be a solar panel system hooked up to a charge controller to keep my batteries topped off and protected from overcharging. The battery bank will be outside the greenhouse in a waterproof-vented container to prevent problems.
I’ll be running an intake and an exhaust fan one pulling and one pushing. I have both AC and DC options now so will be playing around to come up with the best configuration.
I have a 1000W inverter that I can use to run a few smaller 110VAC items. I’ll be working on a control panel for all of this and setting up that system tomorrow with one battery for now to test it out for a week or so.

With the charge controllers and the Inverter, I now have several 5vdc USB ports for various other things, like security camera, RainPoint watering system, LED lighting for night gardening and phone charging
Hopefully I’ll come to a happy medium soon cause we are on a tight schedule with an upcoming vacation and I don’t have time to slack off now. I’m keeping my teenagers very busy

Hopefully this covers all the aspects of the ventilation system and having some options to set timers and make adjustments with WiFi.
Oh yeah, here’s how I pay my teenage laborers, works every time !!

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

As with the other areas of this build this one also threw some headaches my way LOL.
I originally wanted to use 3” PVC pipe as a gutter system, which would make routing the water to the rain barrels so much easier. Not to mention I wanted it to be “different” and use what I had on hand. Turned out what I had on hand was too short, so me being the “Big Dummy” I am I went and got some brand spanking new PVC and a bunch of connectors to try and make this plan become reality …. NOPE !!
My first idea was to drill a bunch of holes in a straight line from one end to the other and catch “most” of the water. I thought it would look cool lol.

That didn’t work out too well
Next attempt was to run a skill saw down both sides of the holes and just make a channel for water to fall into. Skil saw had a tendency to melt the plastic and bind the blade …. It looked like Stevie Wonder had cut those lines ….
Then the “Boss” got home in time to tell me I should just go buy the piece of gutter and make it like normal. “Captain Obvious” was right though and it was much cheaper than the PVC pipe
After all these years together, I’m used to being wrong LOL.
So I followed her advice and we installed a section of guttering with a drain at the right end. Hopefully it will eventually make its way into the rain barrel system LOL. I still need a little more angle to make sure the gutters are emptying.
Now the Rain Barrel System is just 2-15 gallon barrels that are connected together at the bottom and piped into the greenhouse through the wall. Built a table out of scrap lumber, topped it with scrap decking boards, I left one piece of decking board out for the pipes to run from the bottom of the barrels. I left room for a 3rd barrel if needed.
I may wrap these in the same manner I do my DWC buckets or I may just clean them with acetone and paint them . They will be strapped down in case of strong crosswinds possibly moving them when low/empty.

There’s a shut off valve at each barrel and a union in between the two. Still fine tuning everything but ……Viola !!
We have water inside the greenhouse !!

This is just a “wet” run with garden hose water and at the moment only one barrel is full. I wanted to see what type of pressure I had inside and of course check for leaks. Finally one thing that has went right for me during this crazy adventure !!!
I have a 12vdc pump that I may hook up for more pressure, if needed. I also have a rain point programmable watering system (USB power) that I may try to implement somehow. I’ll try and get the barrels connected to the gutter tomorrow, that will be PVC pipe. Gotta use it somewhere now
As always thanks for following along !!

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

Good evening y’all !!

Just a quick update. We are now on 100% battery/solar power.

ACI on speed 10

I’ll reroute all the wires tomorrow and place the battery outside. Clean everything up to try and make it nice and neat
With the ACI T4 fan and S6 oscillator on speed 10 and an additional 12” oscillating fan running the draw appears to be 40w. If I turn off the ACI system and run just the 12” oscillating fan it shows 0w on low and on medium it shows 40w about every 20 seconds & on high it shows 40w constant. I’ll have to sit down tonight and try to do the math lol. This is just with the battery only. I’ll hook up the solar panel to the charge controller in the morning. Time to get some rest lol.

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

Good evening everyone

It’s been crazy busy here but progress is being made in several areas. I was able to get most of the solar system wiring, cleaned up and routed.

After around 2 1/2 days running on the one 12v battery, I woke up to the alarms going off and the charge controller was in voltage, off mode. My inverter also shut down.
I then went back to my extension cord and started doing what I should have done more of , from the start …. Research and Planning lol. I was surprised once I started punching in the numbers of the appliances I am trying to power into one of those solar calculator systems.
I added a 2nd battery to the system and temporarily have them in a storage box with a lid and I drilled some large ventilation holes in the sides.

I mounted the panels I have to the existing roof screws temporarily with some cheap strapping material, It has worked well enough to give me an idea of what angle I need to get the best sunlight exposure throughout the day.

Once I make a more suitable panel mount system we are either going to move the panels to the roof of our house or mount them on a pole in the yard. I need to keep the greenhouse roof surface clear for installing and removing the shade system. I have some “roll up” ideas I may implement here also.
It also has allowed me to realize I will most likely have to go to 2-100w panels and use these strictly for ventilation fans only. The one panel is only 30w and it’s designed as a trickle charger type setup for the batteries. Even with perfect sunny days I don’t think it could keep up, once you start doing the math on the entire system. I jumped in with both feet and now I’m playing catch-up lol.
This whole solar thing is completely new to me, so I’m learning a lot and still having fun and for me that’s what keeps me getting out of bed in the mornings.


Now the fun stuff….. I’ve been slowly moving plants in as I build shelving and decide on a layout. It’s changed several times but everything is screwed together so it’s fairly simple to adjust as needed.

There’s this one plant, I started inside in a GroBucket system. It was fairly large in my tent and I didn’t want to keep moving my light up so outside it went on Sunday. Overnight it had grown a couple inches more. It is blowing my mind and it made me make changes to the layout of the shelves because it was already touching the roof panels after 2 days in the greenhouse. Today is day #38 for it since sprout.
I had to build another bench system and dropped it down lower, in the below photos the 2 benches appear to be the same height but there’s about 8” difference and am now in the process of building another bench along that left, 8’ wall at the same level. The squash had to go back outside lol.
The bad thing about this tall plant is I have no clue what it is

One day I was at my desk and found a single seed sitting under the sliding table shelf and figured I’d see how it would do. No idea if it’s an auto or who the breeder is but it’s a beauty so far !!

I’ve added in some vegetables and moved 2 other plants out there today.

Things are really starting to come together and it’s actually starting to look and feel like someplace I’m going to enjoy spending time in, every day.

Upcoming “adjustments” that weren’t mentioned above :
I’ll be shortening the rain barrel height by about 12-18”, changing around the water pipe layout inside, adding in a 12v water pump and switch , adding in a 68” bench to the left (tall) wall in the above photo for taller plants. I’ll have a nice-wide area to walk down the center and a U-shaped bench system around the lower section of the greenhouse. I still need to decide on any shelving locations or overhead storage areas.
Thanks for hanging out and giving me a shoulder to cry on

 

[Pigskin Fanboy]

Hey y’all !!
Been crazy busy with trying to upgrade the solar panel and mounting system, I was at my wits end there for a few days and just had to back away and headed to the beach !! It was just what I needed to get back in Gear again.
Had the boys dig me a hole and set a 10’ 4x4 post in the ground. Concreted it in and let it set for 2 days. I then built a frame to mount the 2-100w solar panels and then realized there was no way one pole would hold the panel mount safely !! Not only that but it was not oriented properly to the angle I needed LOL.
I then had the boys dig another hole and set another post in concrete at the correct angle, 40” inches diagonally from the first. Decided to slightly notch both 4x4 posts for the crossbars to mount in. This fixed 2 issues for me, it gave the entire structure more strength and also corrected the angle problem
on the first post.
Both posts were sealed where they will be in the ground, hopefully this will last for many years to come.
Got the panels mounted to the two poles with 3 heavy duty hinges. Only have one screw in each at the moment until I work out all the kinks and get the wiring routed properly.
My original idea was to somehow make the entire panel mount rotate on the frame (was thinking of a boat seat base that rotates like a lazy Susan) but it just was too much for my feeble mind to figure out lol. So now it is only adjustable vertically and I’m sure this will be fine for what I need. Tomorrow I’ll be working on a solution for the vertical push bars that will be used to set the angles. The plan is to make several stopping points to coincide with where the sun path is at April, June, August and October. I’m thinking of making notches (or slots/holes) in the 2x4’s and just lift and set it in the notch that corresponds with the time of year. The weight will help hold it in place but I want to come up with some sort of locking pin type setup so it couldn’t possible jump out of the notch in high winds.
As y’all can tell I’m fully vested in this thing,
I’m probably over complicating everything and it’s been an expensive/exhausting process but I have high hopes that it will all fall into place soon !!
Here’s some photos of all the things discussed in this update.
The solar setup diagram that came with these bigger panels.

Mounting them both together in the center

The support brackets that came with the kit.

Mounted to the frame at 6 points

Back side view , all protruding screws were cut off and sanded smooth

Treating the 4x4 post for ground contact.

Braced the first pole to the building to let the concrete set. Temporarily running the rainwater away from the area

Starting to see some progress

Front side view

Playing around with a scrap 2x4 and trying to figure out the design and layout of the adjuster pole system to set the angle towards the sun/sky.

Hopefully tomorrow I can get all the wiring setup and routed properly, figure out what to use to set the proper angles and start testing the system out to see how long it will last on its own.
I’ve made some changes to the water collection system and hopefully can have that done by this weekend.
Thanks for hanging out with me on this journey !!!