January Update Enclosing the Greenhouse

Its been a busy fall, what with creation of the Aquaponics Association (yours truly is Secretary of the US Chapter). But I finally got a chance during the holiday break to enclose my greenhouse. Not much growing going on, but the fish are all doing fine, even through the nasty cold snap that swept through the eastern United States in early January.

I shot a bit of video on January 1st, when it was cool (55 degrees) but sunny. With the greenhouse enclosed, it got up to 83 degrees inside. Nuts! Slipping into the greenhouse was a bit like getting off the plane in a tropical locale.

For the roof of the greenhouse I simply have a double thickness of 3.5 mil plastic - though I dont have this inflated, there is still insulation value from the small air pockets between the two sheets. This is a time when "rumpled" helps.

Ive been wanting to install some method of measuring temperatures, but the Stout family has collectively decided to be fiscally responsible in 2012. So no impulse purchases of environmental monitoring equipment for Meg. Ive gotten a kickstarter project approved which would let me ask the collective crowd to contribute to the monitoring experiment (for prizes!). Ill see about going live on that project in the next week or so.

Anyway, heres video of the state of things on January 1st, starting with a snippet of video from September to explain how I get 10 foot wide sheeting to cover a greenhouse.