Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[mtncats <mtncats@yahoo.com>]

Bobby, you're definitely headed in the right direction.  I'll reread that site, it's been awhile.

Passively heating a greenhouse with annual heat storage makes perfect sense.  That's what keeps our house comfortable year around.  Mounding dirt worked on flat-as-a-pancake land, as I saw in Saginaw, Mich.

The trade-off is going to be insolation, heat loss, and enough mass to prevent over-heating.  Not difficult to manage, as we do (residentially) on another forum.  

Passive annual heat storage (PAHS) is beyond simple earth-sheltering, and works considerably better.  Very simple concept: store excess summer heat for winter usage.  Which is also what comprises the cooling system.  Similar system worked as well in Missoula, Mont. with 8125 heating degree-days as our 4166 heating degree-days.

How many heating and cooling degree-days do you have there?  Excavation/burial costs are not at all excessive. 
 Probably better to take this off-list if you're interested in specifics.

Tom (in central Va)

Bobby G <bobbyg53211@yahoo.com> wrote:
>  http://www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=03.08.01&article=finch
>
> While growing oranges in Nebraska is a bit more of a
> novelty than this list is all about, it does show the
> value of this type of greenhouse design.
>
> i am thinking that the earth-sheltered greenhouse
> would be definitely among the first-year projects our
> land co-op would undertake. not to grow oranges in
> Wisconsin, but because of the huge advantage in
> season-extending combined with the intensive
> mini-agriculture approach.
>
> almost all the greenhouses in our area are the
> above-ground structures that gobble energy like crazy.
> the goal i have in mind would be a greenhouse
>  that
> allows for (almost) year-round growing PLUS only
> "sips" energy.  
>
> what i'm thinking is, it should be dug down into the
> earth quite a ways, with only the SSE, S, and SSW
> sides exposed to the sun.  the trench system for
> geo-thermal heat-pumping is a great feature, but i
> fear it would add enormously to the costs of such a
> greenhouse. the idea is to start netting profit from
> use of a greenhouse almost right from the beginning,
> not to invest huge amounts in sunk costs, literally.
>
> if there is no hillside on the land we end up
> acquiring, the second notion i've had is to use the
> excavation dirt from a pond which is excavated, to
> create an artificial "hill" to shelter the
> earth-sheltered buildings.
>
> am i thinking in the right direction here?  i'll
> probably keep drifting in these directions unless
> y'all knock me on the head by showing me where my
> thinking is daft...
>
> bobby g
>
>
>  
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