# My GH and how it works



## SlipperKing (Jun 22, 2016)

Some folks expressed interest in seeing the inside of my greenhouse so I snapped off a few shots. This isn't a flower photo shoot per say but more of an exchange of ideas for getting the job done. Some folks may get a few ideas they can use and some ideas may be given which I can use.

Outside view so you can see my environment in which the GH sets in. The GH is not positioned east/west, more of a northeast front with southwest back. Its in a prefect alignment with prevailing winds from the south(Gulf of Mexico side) 

Front; door with three exhaust fans





The back showing the wet wall, 4ft by 10ft





Northwest side showing the large single oak tree on the south,southeast corner. This provides plenty of shade during the hottest part of the day. Back in the day of construction I had 60 trees in this yard I lost many to drought and pine beetles. 





As raggie as it is, the shade cloth covers the two sides and only half of the roof (right side). Also, I have it suspended on wire cables,4 that run the lengh of the house to keep it off the plastic. Big cooling factor.






Inside:
Looking up I have 2 gas-fired space heaters for winter. Not that I need 2 but good as a backup. Their are synced to come at the same time. Notice the roof, this is white fiberglass and I discovered I really didn't need shade cloth over it.





Water source: 550 gal of rain plus A/C condensation. I missed uploading the the feed water inside the GH. I'll post later.





(To be continued)


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## SlipperKing (Jun 22, 2016)

Ok back. The feed water is gravity fed into the GH and fills this tank. Any fertilizer gets mixed here and deliveried by a sump pump which plugs in to operate.
55gal





Next to the feed water is my super sophisticated control panel









A breaker box and a bank of thermostats! Each exhaust fan, heaters and wet wall are on individual thermostats six total. Notice also the fans are old 220V fans out of A/C units. I pick them up cheap, 30-50 bucks from air conditioning companies around town.
Another 55gal with part of the top cut off serves as the reservoir for the wet wall. Sump pumps kept burning out after a year so adopted this outside pump.






On the back side walls I have vents pointing inside used only in the winter. I cover the wet wall with plastic in the winter so to let fresh, cool air in when it heats up during the day, these vent provide that.





The benches are stacked to increase my growing area.





I suspend vinyl sheeting under the upper benches so all the run off goes to either end and to the floor. This is the same vinyl I originally install back in the late 90's Its indestructible!
Which you can see here





Looking down through the vinyl





I have walk ways down both sides so I can "walk up" and look down on my plants on the top benches 





A shot down the center showing a PVC frame I hang plants on





Finally, if disaster looms I have forces at work with my two guardians Moe and Curly


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## Justin (Jun 22, 2016)

Looks great rick can't wait to see more


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## Gilda (Jun 22, 2016)

Thank you Rick for taking time to do this ! Awesome ideas ! What is the shade cloth suspended from ? Looking forward to the rest of the tour


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## SlipperFan (Jun 22, 2016)

Awesome, indeed! So much thought and planning, all for the love of orchids!

I love the walk-way idea. How cool is that!

Do you ever have algae or other crud build-up in your rain-water tank? If yes, how do you deal with it?


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## JAB (Jun 22, 2016)

Rick
That is great! Thank you for sharing! Are you a hobbyist, or is this one of those JOB things? Either way you have a great setup that seems to be made on a budget. Awesome inspiration. Now I just have to move somewhere out of Seattle so one can afford, well, anything!

Cheers
JAB


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## troy (Jun 22, 2016)

Excellent greenhouse, looks like quite a bit of modification engineering comes in handy


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## naoki (Jun 22, 2016)

Thank you for the tour, Rick! It is great to see the grow area of others.


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## ehanes7612 (Jun 22, 2016)

cool


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## gego (Jun 22, 2016)

Thank you Rick. Very well thought out. 
I would imagine you have a spot somewhere where you just sit and enjoy looking at your babies. 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk


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## MaryPientka (Jun 22, 2016)

I love the walkway, too! Thanks!


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## Happypaphy7 (Jun 22, 2016)

Thank you for showing around the details. 

I'm so jealous of anyone who has a greenhouse or three! lol

What is that devil face doing there?
Scare off the bugs and diseases?


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## SlipperFan (Jun 22, 2016)

I think those scare off the "No Bloom Goblin."


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## abax (Jun 22, 2016)

SK, just an amazing amount of do-it-yourself innovations...good work.
We're DIY people and you can learn soooo much via successes and
failures. It's lot of work, but fun and rewarding.


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## Bjorn (Jun 23, 2016)

Thanks a lot Rick, interesting to see how you deal with your challenges, here up north we have others- more connected to preserving heat than getting rid of it- ha ha, however with a greenhouse that preserves heat, high temperatures comes automatically. So, we get it both. Talking about solutions, two rules apply
1) Keep it simple (KISS) 
and
2) If there is a chance of failure, then it will happen, - and when it happens its always when it suits the least. E.g. when you are away. So dealing with greenhouse automation I made the following rule "Its (almost) impossible to make it fool-proof; the fools are much to clever"
Good Luck with the summer heat


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## paphioboy (Jun 23, 2016)

I find it interesting how shady the growing area is, especially for those Maudiae-type and primulinum in flower. Is that area much brighter in the heat of summer?


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## JeanLux (Jun 23, 2016)

:clap::clap::clap: !!!! Jean


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## SlipperKing (Jun 23, 2016)

Gilda said:


> Thank you Rick for taking time to do this ! Awesome ideas ! What is the shade cloth suspended from ? Looking forward to the rest of the tour


Gilda,
In the first pic, front of the GH you will see 4 galvanized rods bolted to the front projecting upwards. The back outside wall has the same. Four plastic coated cables run the lengh, tighten with turn buckles. Still, with the weight of the cloth it sags so look at one of the side shots of the GH you will see a tall pole going up near the center. There is a "V" shaped set of poles connected to the four cables above. The two vertical poles on either side of the GH are connected to this up-side-down "V" and when pushed up into position they lift the "V", the cables and cloth up off the roof removing the issue of sagging. Clear as mud right?


SlipperFan said:


> Awesome, indeed! So much thought and planning, all for the love of orchids!
> 
> I love the walk-way idea. How cool is that!
> 
> Do you ever have algae or other crud build-up in your rain-water tank? If yes, how do you deal with it?


The black tank, no. The 55 gal buried in the ground inside some times. I had it spray painted black to prevent algal growth but that has chipped away over the years.


JAB said:


> Rick
> That is great! Thank you for sharing! Are you a hobbyist, or is this one of those JOB things? Either way you have a great setup that seems to be made on a budget. Awesome inspiration. Now I just have to move somewhere out of Seattle so one can afford, well, anything!
> 
> Cheers
> JAB


 Hobbyist like you I assume.


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## SlipperKing (Jun 23, 2016)

gego said:


> Thank you Rick. Very well thought out.
> I would imagine you have a spot somewhere where you just sit and enjoy looking at your babies.
> 
> Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk


How's this?





Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


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## Gilda (Jun 23, 2016)

SlipperKing said:


> Gilda,
> Clear as mud right?
> 
> For a senior , blonde ,technically challenged person ... sure :rollhappy:
> Thanks for explaining anyways. :wink:


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## gego (Jun 23, 2016)

SlipperKing said:


> How's this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Hahaha, there you go. Where's the coffee table?


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## Migrant13 (Jun 23, 2016)

And where's the cold beer?! Thanks for the tour and GH know-how. May come in handy someday....for now it's light carts in winter and under the crabapple tree in summer.


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## abax (Jun 23, 2016)

Spooky SK...you look pissed off and a bit like David Morse
in one of his mean roles. Actually, that's a compliment.
He's a great character actor.


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## SlipperKing (Jun 24, 2016)

Bjorn said:


> Thanks a lot Rick, interesting to see how you deal with your challenges, here up north we have others- more connected to preserving heat than getting rid of it- ha ha, however with a greenhouse that preserves heat, high temperatures comes automatically. So, we get it both. Talking about solutions, two rules apply
> 1) Keep it simple (KISS)
> and
> 2) If there is a chance of failure, then it will happen, - and when it happens its always when it suits the least. E.g. when you are away. So dealing with greenhouse automation I made the following rule "Its (almost) impossible to make it fool-proof; the fools are much to clever"
> Good Luck with the summer heat



Heat, yes it is an issue here along the Gulf coast. Back in the late 90"s when I bought the GH out of some folks backyard it was only 7 feet tall to the peak. That would never do for me. Over the years I have taken down and re-built this same GH 4 times So with that said, I think I've improved upon each resurrection of this building. It stands now at 12 ft 2 inches to the peak which gets the heat way up away from the plants and with three fans it really moves allot air in and out. Back when I had a yard full of trees with no shade cloth at all the temps never got out of the 80's Everything bloomed as it does now, cats, vanda types,dendros etc. We loved that yard. It was like a mini forest inside the city but the drought of 2010 took out 18 pines, a maple and some other stuff. I had to drag out the old shade cloth. 

As for failures, My friend Don lost a major portion of his big fancy GH just two weeks ago. He spent 80-100K on his brand new GH with all the bells and whistles including computer controlled environment. A single thermostat device failed while he was gone for one day. He came back to a 130 degree GH and allot of burned up plants! Apparently, the device's manufacturer had pre-programmed the system to default to heaters on air vents closed! The computer was reading a temp of 0 degrees! Needless to say, Don was/is very depressed.



paphioboy said:


> I find it interesting how shady the growing area is, especially for those Maudiae-type and primulinum in flower. Is that area much brighter in the heat of summer?


No it is not. Mucho shade from the bench above.


abax said:


> Spooky SK...you look pissed off and a bit like David Morse
> in one of his mean roles. Actually, that's a compliment.
> He's a great character actor.



Actually Angela, I had just finished for the evening working on replacing the polycarb on the front of the GH with twinwall poly in 90+ heat with 90+ humidity. See the shine on my forehead? The beer is not in the picture


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## bigleaf (Jun 24, 2016)

Thank you.


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## JAB (Jun 24, 2016)

The story of your friend Don is heartbreaking! A lesson to us all that we should never trust technology complicity! Hope he can recover.


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## Bjorn (Jun 24, 2016)

Yeah, understand if Don is pissed off now, I had my incidence myself, with thermostatically controlled lights, 4-5kW in the small space and with no vent. Without the shutoff and some additional sun, the temperature howered to about 49C (around 125F?). I came home and was able to turn things off, but a lot of sunscars on the cattleyas. The paphs were elsewhere luckily.


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## NYEric (Jun 24, 2016)

Thanks for sharing. Good to see the earth outside the GH is not scorched this year!


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## Carper (Jun 24, 2016)

Fantastic space and layout Rick.You know when you have it right. Yes, there are times when need to tweak but you gain confidence when your plants react positively. That space is a distant dream for me at present, purely because I don't have any! When it does happen, I'm going to duplicate the one I have for a much larger version. 

Gary


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## SlipperFan (Jun 24, 2016)

NYEric said:


> Thanks for sharing. Good to see the earth outside the GH is not scorched this year!



I was thinking that, also. From one extreme to another.


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## JAB (Jun 25, 2016)

Unfortunately with plants (any living thing really) you MUST have eyes on every day! SO many things can go wrong especially the more automated we all get.


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## SlipperKing (Jun 25, 2016)

Yea, poor Don. I should of taken pics to show what can happen but it wasn't the right time. 

Now for more of a positive note, here is a shot of the roof at 11:24am today and two pics of the plants under the white fiberglass. 




You can see the oak tree shading the far end. Below; lousy cell phone PIC. These plant really are GREEN! 







Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk


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## SlipperKing (Jun 25, 2016)

Now the south side plants





Currently 29 degrees C

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## SlipperKing (Jun 25, 2016)

I finished the front too





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## Justin (Jun 25, 2016)

Super impressive...great work.


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## Gilda (Jun 25, 2016)

Looks good !!! I found my orchids getting more sun this year. Phrags are going bonkers with blooms. Nothing burned though.
I'm having to water more frequently with the heat wave we are having. 
Thanks again Rick for the tour !!!!


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## SlipperFan (Jun 25, 2016)

Almost looks brand new!


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## Brabantia (Jun 26, 2016)

Beautiful installation! I dream to have as much place than you to cultivate plants. 
In prevention of bacterial or fungic attacks do you apply some treatements on your plants ?


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## SlipperKing (Jun 26, 2016)

Brabantia said:


> Beautiful installation! I dream to have as much place than you to cultivate plants.
> In prevention of bacterial or fungic attacks do you apply some treatements on your plants ?



No I do not have a preventive program for bac/fung. I should clarify a bit, I keep a close watch but neither case seems to be much of a problem. Once in away I have bacterial rot on the S/H cultured Phrags


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## AdamD (Jun 26, 2016)

Color me green. Very nice, thanks for the tour.


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## NYEric (Jun 27, 2016)

SlipperFan said:


> Almost looks brand new!


Spiffy!


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## Duck Slipper (Feb 27, 2021)

Excellent SlipperKing, I enjoyed the show!


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