Five weeks have passed since my last update to this blog and progress on the greenhouse has been slow. It took more time than I thought to complete the backfill and sometimes rain, or muddy conditions after the rain, made it impossible to work. Then things began to freeze and now they are blanketed under 6 inches of snow. Still, I think I will be able to complete the project before Christmas, and maybe if I augment with some wood heat, have it thawed out sometime in January.
I had to work for 17-days strait at my day job, and that really tired me out and delayed the work on the greenhouse, but I needed to make money too. With only two days off and another 8-days to work, I'll finally have a 4-day weekend starting Friday, then maybe I'll be able to write about some progress.
Besides working out in the cold, the backfilled frozen lumpy ground made it nearly impossible to place ladders for installing the three stringers that will run end to end in the structure. A few days ago, I thought of setting up some gates from a horse arena inside the greenhouse and then placing large flat sheets of wood on top of those gates to serve as a scaffolding. It worked great. Six feet off the ground I am able to work at the height I need to be to install the stringers. In a few hours I had the first stringer bolted in place. I have two more to go and then I'll start on the north end with the doorway. I'll build that end in the garage and move it into place on the greenhouse with the tractor's front end loader.
Snow fell over the last two days and that will complicate the project even more, but I intend to keep trying. Hopefully, the cover will be on before Christmas!
The thermostat apparatus has been completed for the fan controllers. A friend built that for me for the cost of materials, about $80. It's made to plug into a electrical current source and then in turn have the main circulation fan plugged into the outlet mounted to the bottom of the box. Two thermostats, one for temperatures above the high setting (around 80 degrees) the other for when the temperature drops below the low setting (around 60 degrees) will operate relays that in turn will power the outlet that the circulation fan is plugged into. It's designed to be portable rather than a stationary mount. This allowed my friend to build the unit at his place rather than have to come out and hard wire the apparatus in my greenhouse.
The wires attaching the two thermostats are short but will be replaced with longer wires once the thing is set up in the greenhouse. I'll mount the 'high' temperature thermostat up near the ceiling because that's the intake air will come from. The second thermostat will be mounted lower at about table level. That one will turn the fan on when heat is needed at night.
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