Greenhouse Renovation Plans
Eventually I’ll have a quarter-acre pit-greenhouse parked in the area that my current pit greenhouse is. It will be deeper and will have tall retaining walls to increase the headroom even more for my coconut trees. But, I’m going to do that right and in order to do that right, I need to have a bit more spending cash than I do now, so my current goals are a bit humbler - clean up my current pit-greenhouse and fully cover it.
This Spring I am renovating it. I will be removing all the plants and pots and whatnot, digging up the ferns that have escaped their pots and whatnot (there is a good 8″ of sand on the floor), then I will remove the cattle-panel hoops and unscrew the walls from each other and disassemble the structure into the wall segments and move them to the side. Then I shall take a skid-loader down there and remove every bit of loose sand from the entire floor of the pit, leaving just a solid sandstone floor. I could easily pour in a bit of grout or Portland and glaze the floor and it’d be just like a thick concrete slab - the hard sandstone goes down perhaps hundreds of feet.
Then I have decided that rather than having a above-ground fish tank, that I may as well sink it since I seem to have no end to good sandstone and it’d make the barrelponics setup much simpler - so I’m bringing in a smaller backhoe. I’ll go to the very end and first make the end wall perfectly vertical. Currently it’s got a little bit of a slope because the backhoe couldn’t dig it straight down from topside. That’ll give me a good 3′ more of length right there, plus make more of a flush fit for the enclosure. And for eight feet of that end, I’ll dig down four or five feet - removing all the sand so I have a nice clean tank and floor.
I’ll shape the other end a bit more square too and will perhaps get another 4′ or so - I hope to end up with a 50′ long pit when I’m done. I guess I could keep digging it but I plan on replacing this smaller pit with a much larger pit in a few years so I’ll settle on not much bigger than it already is for now. I’ll clean the ramp up a bit. Later I’ll lay down some external plywood with strips across it for traction.
Then the old walls go back, extension walls get built to enclose the rest of the pit and the door-end goes back on. Cattle-panels get re-attached, new curved ends get built and that’s that for the enclosure. With a flusher fit, this time around I plan on covering the gap between the sandstone walls and the enclosure wall - often mere millimeters but some irregularities a bit larger - with more external plywood bridging the gap. No more cold air intrusion - which has been the trouble I’ve had with my current temporary setup. Covered gaps means even more earth-mass influence. A very very Good Thing ™.
Then I’ll line my tank, and build the frame-work for my barrelponics containers against the north wall - it’ll go along the wall and then over the tank all the way to the end - don’t think the fish will mind, donchaknow. A few get to drain directly into the tank. The south wall will have my taller trees - nanners and whatnot and they’ll be set up for barrelponics draining and plumbing even if I don’t immediately convert them over to that - at the very least their drain water (I’m completely organic, no nasties in the water) will be recycled in the fish-tank.
Next winter should be very exciting - I may put a chair down there, enjoy the much warmer tropics and frolicking chickens… Heck, I may put a hammock down there and have me a vacation…
Stay tuned - many more step-by-step articles replete with photographs are on the way. This is happening very soon - as soon as I can take the plastic off, shortly after Easter. I can hardly wait.
Stumble it!