Yeah....somehow you never know how much a greenhouse would cost until you
build one!
As a point of reference....in the DC area yesterday it was about as humid as
it can get and the air temp was 100F. The min/max thermometer in my
greenhouse was 86.7 degrees as a high. That is about the hottest the GH has
been all summer and we have had a couple of days in the high 90s. I have
50% shade cloth on it right now and use tap water in the Swamp Cooler. Tap
water is very warm this time of year so the cool is mostly coming from the
air movement and the evaporation.
Good growing,
Gene
"Manelli Family" wrote in message
...
"K Barrett" wrote in message
news
I used a lot of the advice from Charley's greenhouse when I built my GH.
I've provided a link to their tips page. I used their formulas to
calculate how large a swamp cooler (evaporative cooler) I'd need as well
as how large a heater. My GH was 8x16 and I put Charley's swamp cooler in
it which was over kill, but when I expanded the GH to 8 x 30 I didn't have
to get a larger cooler. It still works fine.
http://www.charleysgreenhouse.com/index.cfm?page=_tips
OK. I checked them out. The air here is not dry but quite humid from
spring to fall. It's only dry in the winter but the plants still thrived
even with the 20 to 30% humidity. Wetting the gravel in winter with the
hose would bring it up to maybe 40 or 45% for a few hours - when the hose
wasn't frozen. Then I'd use a 1g spray bottle. These swamp coolers
wouldn't help much as they only drop the temps down 5 to 10F for the
affordable one. That's not much when you're dealing with 120/130+ all
summer long. Also, I don't know how many sq. feet the Rion is because of
the roof shape. The larger SC is $590 and needs a constant water supply.
Blasting the limestone to run a line is cost prohibitive as is this
cooler. We've already spent a lot more than we figured on on the Rion
GH, what with all the gravel, cement, rebar, bubblewrap, shade-cloth,
fans, heaters, extra weather stripping etc. etc... etc... ad
infinitum................