Hi,
Has anyone had experience of making a heated bed in the greenhouse.

I am planning on using heater cable and a thermostat but am looking for ideas on structure.

Regards

Mark
www.greendragonbonsai.co.uk

Dear Mark

Sorry, I don't have any direct experience in making a bottom heat system
but I have thought about it and picked up some information over the
years...

Things you have to be careful of when using a heating cable is the
placing of the cable in the propagation bed so that even heating is
generated with no hot and cold spots. I have seen complicated coiling
and interlocked spiral designs being advocated. The other issue is
that you should put some kind of barrier (what? I am not sure) above the
cable so that new roots don't wrap around the cable which may get
damaged each time you have to sort it out.

I have also seen someone that successfully used a commercially supplied,
domestic under floor heating system. The advantage of this is that
professionals will install it (thermostat and all) and that the cables
are sunk into a block of cement or possibly lie under a layer of
tiles. You can then put the cutting trays on top of this.

Low technology solutions include creating a compost bed of chopped plant
material on top of which you place the cutting trays. I have tried
this and the layer of grass clippings I used was below the critical mass
needed to get a good decomposition rate and had it actually started
working I am not too sure how one controls the temperature. It is
amazing the temperatures that can be generated inside an active compost
heap.

Here in the Third world a design of a baby incubator that has saved
countless lives is a box containing a 60 W incandescent light bulb with
another box on top of it in which the baby is placed. I have thought
that this very simple design could be adapted to save our baby plants.

I hope that this helps a bit

Carl
Cape Town, South Africa.

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