Temporary shadehouse/ Emergency heat
 

Ok, here's the deal. I have about 2000 plants, all sitting outside
waiting for my greenhouse to go up. This may or may not happen before
the cold nights, although so far September has been warmer than July up
here in Michigan. They are in a shadehouse kind of thing, with my barn
on one side and two layers of shadecloth draped over my (very nice,
thank you) A-frame steel benches. It is mostly enclosed by the
shadecloth, with a few gaps lower to the ground open to the outside air.

I've bailed out on trying to put up the greenhouse by myself. It
wouldn't be hard if there were two of me (plus a third to watch the
little frog) and I had another month to work on it, but I'm running out
of time. So, I'm going to have a contractor do the work for me.
Problems go away if you throw enough money at them, but I'm a little
nervous about the timing of this whole operation. So, a couple questions.

1. How hard is it to heat the described structure with some temporary
propane heaters? Florida growers do this all the time in their lath
houses - but I'm not in Florida. I don't expect that the night
temperatures will get much below 35 degrees until mid October, but there
might be an early frost or two between now and then, and I would expect
that we will see a fair number of days where the highs don't get much
above 60. I don't really care about the phals, but I would like to
keep the minicatts alive.

2. How many BTUs might I require for an enclosure that is about 800 sq
feet? Where does one find suitable heaters? I've looked at Lowes and
didn't see anything that looked like it would work.

If anybody wants a good deal on some plants, let me know. They are all
properly cooled for optimum blooming... *grin* Alternate plan is to
move the plants into the barn, but it is pretty dark in there and there
are a lot of plants. I'd still have to heat the barn, but it might be
easier than heating the shadehouse.

Rob

--
Rob's Rules: http://www.msu.edu/~halgren
1) There is always room for one more orchid
2) There is always room for two more orchids
2a. See rule 1
3) When one has insufficient credit to purchase
more orchids, obtain more credit
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