Convenient do-it-yourself greenhouse. Do-it-yourself greenhouse fantasy or reality? Video: greenhouse construction steps

Many summer residents and gardeners are so accustomed to their own grown products that they strive to get fresh vegetables throughout the year. To realize such a desire, the farmer will need to move to the highest level of gardening skill - to build a greenhouse. Do-it-yourself greenhouse erected on own site, this is indeed a great achievement, which, however, will require a lot of work, knowledge and resources. In addition, depending on the needs, not only the type of greenhouse will change, but even its location, size and shape.

How to build a greenhouse with your own hands? A step-by-step construction demonstration will be shown later in this article.

Advantages of greenhouses

In order for a little-informed gardener to fully realize and appreciate the value of a greenhouse, and in the future to figure out how to make a greenhouse with their own hands, a number of main advantages should be highlighted. Of course, each type of greenhouse also has individual properties, but some common series of outstanding characteristics still stands out:

• Tightness of a design, for maintenance of a temperature condition;
• Ease of installation and, if necessary, dismantling of some types of structures;
• Durability;
• Polygonal greenhouses are able to absorb the maximum number sun rays;
• Environmental friendliness;
• aesthetic appearance, allowing you to fit into the environment of the winter garden or landscape design.

This is only a small part of the advantages that do-it-yourself greenhouse construction has. It should be noted that often, in addition to cost, such greenhouses have much more advantages than store options. But first you need to figure out how to build a greenhouse with your own hands. However, any greenhouses have some common disadvantages that should also be highlighted:

• Corrosion or decay of the structure;
• Instability and vulnerability to weather factors (hail, strong wind);
• Uneven air heating.

To build a greenhouse on the site with your own hands, maybe even a person far from construction. It is enough to carefully select the materials, carefully build the greenhouse with your own hands, and follow the rules for maintaining the structure during operation. However, those who decide on such an event, first of all, will need to decide on the type, materials, dimensions, shape and installation location. About how we build a greenhouse with our own hands, we will consider the phased preparation process below.

Types of greenhouses

Today there is a wide variety of various types of greenhouses. We make a greenhouse with our own hands and determine its type according to the following criteria and selection priorities.

Operating criterion

First of all, the farmer needs to decide how it is planned to operate the greenhouse: all year round or seasonally. This will make it possible to understand whether the design of the greenhouse will be collapsible or not, and in addition, winter greenhouses have more complex structure and demanding operating conditions.

By location relative to ground level

If you decide for yourself that I am building a greenhouse with my own hands, then the most traditional option is to place the greenhouse directly on the surface of the soil. In the case when the greenhouse structure is planned to be heated, it can be deepened into the ground, and also be a house adjoining structure. If necessary, a special foundation can also be laid. In some cases, a greenhouse is built on the top floor of an existing object: a house, a garage, a shed.

By functionality

Everything here is determined by what exactly the gardener plans to grow, especially if it is a do-it-yourself greenhouse. Among the main options: traditional garden crops, mushrooms, flowers, fruits, exotic plants. The choice will directly affect the internal arrangement of the greenhouse.

By architectural design

In this case, there are many options: one, two or three-slope greenhouses, combined, wall-mounted, arched or horizontal. Or maybe it's an arched winter garden. The choice will directly affect the final cost of construction and the dimensions of the structure.

According to the types of building materials

The resources used to build a greenhouse are divided into two types: frame material and cover. For the construction of the frame, wood, metal, plastic or even brick can be used. The coating can be polycarbonate, conventional glazing and many other options. If necessary, the gardener can resort to a combined design.

These were the main criteria for preparing the construction of a greenhouse with your own hands, and among others, we can distinguish the division of greenhouses according to the type of heating, the method of planting, etc.

It is curious that greenhouses are quite diverse structures, which can be different in design and interior design. It can be, albeit a solid, but hastily and primitively knocked together structure, or a sufficiently technological and equipped point for year-round crop cultivation.

It is important to remember that all summer cottages are in different conditions, that is, even with careful selection suitable type greenhouses, the expected result and the final result, as well as DIY greenhouse ideas, can still vary greatly.

Thus, it is recommended for a gardener starting from scratch to get acquainted with greenhouses and greenhouses, to start with budget options, and also not to aim at large areas and large crop volumes.

Location selection

The construction of greenhouses is one of the most important issues, which is determined by many factors and in turn affects a lot. There are a number of factors that must be taken into account.

Light mode

The greenhouse constantly, and especially in winter, should receive maximum sunlight. Therefore, we build a greenhouse orienting it along the length from west to east.

Correct Orientation

Here you should take into account the direction and nature of the winds. In case they can violate the internal temperature regime greenhouses, you will definitely need to provide wind protection. For light and unstable structures, especially if we build a greenhouse with our own hands, the wind can pose a threat of a completely destructive nature. In this case, it is very important to ensure the stability of the structure as a whole, as well as all its fasteners and components in particular. It is important that the terrain is level and not in a low place where moisture would flow.

The soil should not be clay, and ideally it should match the type of plant chosen by the gardener.

Convenience

We are talking about a convenient and comfortable approach to the greenhouse, as well as work inside it. A wide passage and free space around the structure will provide not only easier construction, but also operation. In addition, care should be taken to supply communications to the greenhouse, which will be especially needed there in winter.

Remoteness

Ideally, the greenhouse should be located in an open area and away from other structures on the site, as well as large plantings. This allows you to by default get rid of many problems and provide optimal conditions inside the greenhouse. In the case of a small area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe site, or because of the chosen type of greenhouse, such an arrangement is not possible, then the construction of the greenhouse is carried out on the south side.

A deliberate approach to solving the issue of placing a greenhouse will achieve the maximum possible effect, as well as eliminate a number of problems and unnecessary trouble.

Shape selection

The most common form for building a greenhouse or a greenhouse with your own hands are arched and gable greenhouses. A greenhouse, which is only planned to be built, may also have a different geometric shape, such as an oval, circle, square (or rectangle) and even a trapezoid. Tent-shaped greenhouses are becoming quite popular.

Depending on the location of the greenhouse, as well as the height of the grown plants, both the shape and size of the structure will directly depend. In some areas, the greenhouse is an integral component of the whole composition of landscape design, and therefore its shape and size must be chosen to create maximum aesthetics.

One of the main advantages of building a greenhouse with your own hands instead of acquiring a ready-made store design is the ability to independently vary the shape and size of the structure for your own needs. With collapsible structures, if desired, you can experiment at all every time, combining several options for greenhouses or testing new designs. Non-separable structures can be built, providing for the possibility of their subsequent expansion or modification, without serious intervention.

Size selection

As mentioned above, the size of the greenhouse is determined not only by its location, but above all by the height of the plants that will be grown in it. Of course, for each individual case, the dimensions will be individual. However, the experience of gardeners shows that the most common and optimal greenhouse area options are structures three meters wide and six meters long. With such dimensions, the structure will not take up much space on the site, but at the same time will provide an impressive harvest. The length will be determined by the possibilities land plot, the tasks set, the area of ​​​​free space.

It is also important that when planning the size of the greenhouse, it is necessary to provide for the presence of a wide path. This is a rather important point, both for the construction and for the operation of the greenhouse. This is explained by the fact that the gardener will need to carry out a regular supply of fertilizers, tools and other items. In addition, from the track must be Free access to the plants themselves, so that there is no need to constantly step directly into the planted area. Thus, the recommended track width is about 0.6 meters.

Maintenance of the greenhouse in a bent position is unacceptable, and therefore the height of the structure should be at least two meters. In general, based on the experience of gardeners, the most optimal is the height of the greenhouse in the range of 2.2-2.5 meters.

Material selection

When choosing a material, first of all we are talking about about the material directly for the main frame when deciding how to build a greenhouse. It is determined mainly by two factors: the type of future greenhouse and the size of the budget.

Materials for the frame of the greenhouse

For the construction of the frame, various materials are used, each of which has its own purpose, as well as positive sides and disadvantages.

How to make a greenhouse the most budget option is the use pvc pipes. Due to their lightness and flexibility, it is possible to quickly and easily build the structure of a future greenhouse with your own hands. Such a greenhouse will be of an arched type, since a pipe bent in an arc in the form of an arch is attached to the reinforcement hammered into the ground. With the right approach, such a greenhouse can be erected in one day. It is best suited for those who are building a greenhouse for the first time and have not yet fully decided on the need for it on their site.

more expensive and quality material for the construction of a greenhouse with their own hands is wood. With minimal carpentry skills and tools, this material is quite easy to process and create a frame of the required dimensions from it. Then the future greenhouse can be glazed or covered with a film. On any site, such a design will look beautiful and solid. To ensure its durability, it will be necessary not only to take care of the reliability of all fasteners, but also to protect the wood from decay and other negative factors.

In order to save money, builders are advised not to use expensive branded wood processing products, but to replace them with improvised options. As an example, wooden beams can be impregnated with resin, and then greased with drying oil several times and eventually treated with a blowtorch. Protection from decay and other negative factors will be provided no less.

Metal is also one of the most commonly used materials for greenhouse construction. The advantage is that the iron is fixed only by welding, but this is also a disadvantage, since not only skills, but also welding equipment will be required. Alternatively, how to make your own greenhouse and prefabricated building that will be bolted, however this is much more laborious and time consuming. Due to the increased mass of the iron frame, often such a greenhouse requires its own foundation. In addition, care should be taken to protect the metal structure from corrosion.

Coating materials

It is possible to cover the frame of the future greenhouse to create the expected greenhouse effect with various materials. The most common are the following three options: glass, film and polycarbonate.

Polyethylene film for greenhouses can be of several types:

• Heat-saving. It incorporates an adsorbent that does not transmit infrared radiation from the soil at night. In addition, it raises the temperature inside the greenhouse itself;
• UV stabilized. Allows you to increase the life of the film under direct influence solar radiation almost ten times;
• Light-scattering. Protects plants, especially seedlings, from harsh exposure to sunlight, with its direct influence.

There are other less common types of film. In general, this is a short-lived material, designed to operate for two years, in some cases up to four. The main advantage is low cost and ease of use.

Glass is the oldest and traditional material. The main advantage is the extremely high light transmission. Among the disadvantages: heavy weight, fragility, the complexity of fastening and the need for a rigid frame. The glass must be strong enough to withstand the stress exerted by wind, hail and precipitation. The best solution would be to use triplex or tempered glass.

It is worth noting that glass has a high transmittance of sunlight, but at the same time, along with useful infrared radiation, plants are also exposed to ultraviolet radiation.

Polycarbonate is a modern and practical material that combines best qualities glass and polyethylene. For greenhouses, cellular polycarbonate is used, which is represented by a two-layer sheet structure inside, which has stiffeners. This material is quite inexpensive and elastic. It is easy to install and, if necessary, to dismantle, its service life reaches ten years. The structure of polycarbonate allows you to simultaneously provide good thermal insulation and scattering of rays.

The variety of materials allows you to meet any budget, the needs of the gardener and to match the characteristics of each site. Most materials are light enough to be transported and processed that structures can be erected literally within one day or weekend.

Foundation selection

Before you build a greenhouse with your own hands, you need to create a foundation on the selected site. To do this, you need a flat and flat area, in which a small depression of several centimeters should be made along the contour of the future greenhouse. As the main material for laying the foundation, you can use a wooden beam or boards. It is important to remember that the finished foundation should fit snugly, and if there are gaps, then they should be sprinkled with earth.

Before proceeding with the installation of the foundation, it is necessary to plan and grind the surface of the boards, and then walk along it with protective substances.

In order to strengthen the future foundation, it is recommended to fix the entire structure with additional metal elements (brackets, corners). When using wooden boards, metal corners fastened at internal joints, and if a beam is used, then the use of staples will be more appropriate and they will need to be driven into external joints designs.

In the case when the greenhouse is removable and is used during a certain season, then you should not worry about a serious foundation. However, for a greenhouse used all year round, a well-prepared foundation will be required. Ideally, this should be a monolithic strip foundation, which, with its base, is located below the freezing level of the soil. The depth of the ditch should be about eighty centimeters, and the lower part is covered with rubble. In addition, it is recommended to reinforce the base with reinforcement or reinforced mesh.

Heating

A heated greenhouse is a great way to extend the growing season and fruiting, especially if it is a greenhouse for flowers with your own hands. There are several ways to equip the heating system inside the greenhouse, which depend on the available budget, the area of ​​the greenhouse and its purpose.

You can completely mount the heating system for the greenhouse with your own hands.

Of course, heating systems are installed mainly in greenhouses with year-round use. Among the most effective ways of heating greenhouses are the following:

• Stove heating, with water or air circuit;
• Water heating based on a boiler (solid fuel, electric or gas);
• Gas gun;
• Electric convectors;
• Infrared heaters;
• Water heating pipes;
• Heating cable.

It should be noted that depending on individual needs, heating methods can be combined. Each of the presented methods is quite multifaceted and has many nuances.

Choice heating system carried out not only by the factors mentioned above, but also by a number of other aspects. For example, the type of energy consumed and its quantity, the principle of operation (heating time, cycle time, etc.), the level of heating efficiency and useful work.

Ventilation

When deciding how to make a greenhouse with your own hands, everything should be taken into account. The basis of the work of each greenhouse or greenhouse is the creation of a greenhouse effect, thanks to the special design of the structure itself. Of course, under conditions of almost complete tightness, exposure to heat and other factors, air quickly stagnates inside the room.

Such a phenomenon is a favorable environment for the reproduction of pests, diseases and other negative factors, and, therefore, this must be fought. It is recommended to create a ventilation system to regulate the microclimate in the room, provide fresh air, maintain optimal air humidity. Of course, the mode of operation of ventilation should not conflict with the operation of other devices, such as heating or shading.

You should also worry about creating devices for greenhouse ventilation. It can be roof and side windows, as well as doors. The surface of these devices should be one-fifth of the total area structures.

Airing contributes to the hardening of crops planted in the greenhouse, and is also useful for young seedlings. Before direct planting of seedlings, it is recommended to ventilate the greenhouse premises regularly, not only during the day, but also at night.

beds

Preparing beds in a greenhouse is a rather problematic process that will require a special approach. Success in growing any plants largely depends on the location and design of the beds. In the issue of the formation of beds, many different factors are taken into account, and among the main ones are the following:

• The total area of ​​the greenhouse;
• Ease of access and approaches;
• Type and specificity of plants;
• The dimensions of the beds themselves (height, length and width);
• Location relative to the cardinal points.

In addition, you will have to take care of the frame for the beds, the bedding for winter insulation, the uniformity of watering, the illumination and heating of the entire planted surface of the beds, because all this is the solution to the question of how to make a greenhouse.

Now you know enough theoretical base in order to have a complete picture of what you should know, understand and prepare before building a greenhouse with your own hands. The principle of operation of the greenhouse and step-by-step instructions on how to build a greenhouse with your own hands are topics for separate detailed articles.

Vegetables from your own garden are an order of magnitude healthier and tastier than purchased ones, every summer resident will confirm this. But although in theory such products should also be cheap, in practice, maintaining a greenhouse costs a pretty penny. Therefore, if you are planning to start growing cucumbers, tomatoes and greens only for yourself, you should consider greenhouse options from improvised materials. And we will tell you how to build them yourself.

Greenhouse from improvised materials: what can be used for construction

A diligent owner never gets rid of what else may be needed. Therefore, in the country, a lot of things are inevitably going to be put into action and equipped with a greenhouse on the site. Of course, only a summer greenhouse without heating and a capital foundation can be almost free, but even it will help you get the first harvest a few months earlier than when grown outdoors.

Greenhouse from old windows can be impressive

Before building a greenhouse, you should decide what you plan to save: time, money, or your own efforts. For example, a greenhouse made of old windows will cost almost nothing, but you will have to work hard to clean the old paint from the wooden frames. A greenhouse made of PVC pipes is mounted very easily and quickly, but you will need to buy the pipes and fittings themselves, it is unlikely that you have enough residues lying around in your country house for a full-fledged greenhouse. On the other hand, if the appearance is not particularly important, you can try to “dance from the stove” and combine several materials at once that remained after construction and repair.

Material options for an inexpensive frame

The frame of the greenhouse must be strong enough to support its own weight and the weight of the cladding. In addition, it is desirable that it does not collapse from elevated temperature and humidity, but this problem is easily solved with special impregnations or protective paints.

So, to build a greenhouse, you can use:

1. Willow rods are the cheapest and most environmentally friendly material. You can cut thin branches of willow or hazel in a nearby forest or planting along the road. It is best to harvest in late February-early March, until the sap begins to flow from the trees. When choosing, it is worth giving preference to long flexible branches with a uniform length; young trees have many of them. The only preparation of the material is to clean the branches from the bark and, possibly, thorns. Impregnation with bug and rot agents is desirable, but not required. Without protective equipment, the greenhouse will turn out to be more environmentally friendly and cheaper, and if necessary, a damaged branch will be easy to replace. A branch frame can be installed alone in just a day, but it can last up to 3 years. Willow core is only suitable for low greenhouses and regions without strong winds. Otherwise, due to the high flexibility of the frame and the windage of the skin, the greenhouse can be blown away by a strong gust of wind.

   Birch branches - a flexible base for a high arched greenhouse

2. Pallets or shipping pallets are a good source of planks. If desired, you can build walls from solid pallets, but you can also disassemble the pallets into components. The boards will serve to fasten wooden frame greenhouses, and for the base you will need to buy bars. If you do not plan to make the greenhouse high, you can get by with some boards and further strengthen the frame with a metal mesh. Keep in mind that this option is suitable for warm regions and places where strong winds rarely blow.

   By this principle, you can build not only a similar small greenhouse, but also a full-fledged greenhouse

3. Netting or reinforcing mesh are excellent materials to support sheathing. When there is a large distance between the frame elements, the film or non-woven membrane may sag. To prevent this from happening, first stretch the mesh and only after it cover the greenhouse with the selected material. The mesh will perfectly strengthen the frame of the structure and will not allow the skin to flap in the wind. You can attach the mesh to the frame with wire or plastic wire ties (they are inexpensive and are sold in every hardware store). Just remember to make sure that the sharp ends of the mesh do not tear the skin. If you cannot arrange the material so that the cut edges rest on the ground, you should protect them. A fine-mesh mesh can be framed with a thin water pipe by cutting the pipe on one side and hiding the tips in it. In a coarse mesh, it is easier to isolate each tail separately, for example, by putting a piece of heat shrink tubing on it.

   In the presence of a large number unnecessary wire you can build a grid yourself

4. A metal profile for drywall will also go into business. If after the repair you still have scraps of a durable galvanized profile, you can use it to strengthen the frame of the greenhouse. If this material is not enough to construct load-bearing elements, it will serve perfectly as a spacer between wooden poles or support the base of a gable roof.

   It is easy to build a greenhouse roof from a drywall profile even without special fasteners

5. Polyethylene water pipes or rubber hoses are excellent protection for the frame. The bearing capacity of this material is only enough for a small greenhouse, but if there are thin reinforcing bars or at least branches inside, you can build a good arched greenhouse. For the lower strapping, you will definitely need to build a box, since soft pipes simply stuck into the ground will not hold. The finished frame looks neat and aesthetically pleasing, resistant to moisture and high temperatures. But rubber can crack from frost, so this option is better suited for collapsible summer greenhouses.

   In a small greenhouse, pipe clips can be used to fasten the skin

6. PVC pipes - a reliable and durable basis. Craftsmen even make stairs and chairs from PVC water pipes, and it will be much easier to build a greenhouse frame from them. This material is completely immune to moisture, high and low temperatures, is not particularly afraid of animal claws and mechanical stress. To connect the pipes to each other, self-tapping screws are not needed, they are fastened due to the temperature melting of the ends of the pipes and fittings. But making a tall greenhouse with a lot of cross connections can be too expensive. To save money, it is worth building arches from the remains, and fasten them at the top with the same pipe or wooden plank using plastic ties. The ends of the pipes will need to be stuck deep into the ground or into prepared holes in the wooden piping. To strengthen the frame, the first and last arch can be made from thicker pipes.

   If you make a greenhouse made of PVC pipes arched, you will need fewer fittings

7. Glass fittings - a replacement for metal rods. You may have left unused fragments after pouring the foundation, laying glass blocks or creating monolithic walls. These trimmings can be interconnected and strengthen the spans of the arched greenhouse with them, or placed in strips above the sheathing material so that a strong wind does not tear it from the frame of the greenhouse. Glass fittings are resistant to mechanical, chemical and atmospheric influences, do not rust, and are easily bent. Therefore, when it is necessary to replace the skin film, the reinforcement can be temporarily removed and then reused. If at home there were 5–6 long rods or a bay of glass fittings, you can make an arched greenhouse frame out of them without additional materials. Only the height of the greenhouse is limited - a maximum of 2 m, for higher greenhouses it is required to make support pillars under the highest point of each arch.

   The strength of the glass fittings allows you to build high arches into which an adult can easily pass.

8. Metal fittings - a durable option, but expensive. Buying it specifically for a greenhouse will turn out to be too expensive. But if after construction you still have scraps, it is worth making a semblance of a foundation out of such reinforcement. Stick the rods around the perimeter of the greenhouse at an equal distance from each other so that a third or a quarter of the length sticks out above the ground. It will be possible to tie branches of the vine to them or plastic pipes to make the frame more reliable and moisture-sensitive materials do not come into contact with the ground.

   The reinforcement cage of the greenhouse looks very neat

9. Old logs with defects can still come in handy. Perhaps, during the construction of a dacha or a bathhouse, you rejected logs with cracks or pockets of rot and there was no use for them. Wood of this quality is great for the foundation of the greenhouse, since the load on it is very small. It is only necessary to build a rectangle of logs and deepen it into the ground by 7–10 cm, and solid foundation ready for the future greenhouse. A wooden, metal and even plastic frame is easily attached to the logs and they are compatible with all types of cladding, so such a foundation is suitable for any non-capital greenhouse.

   In order for the square of logs to keep its shape well, a recess should be cut in the upper ones as in the photo

10. Bags of earth - a well-forgotten old. At the peak of the green building craze in America, the technique of creating earthen walls was revived. The essence of the method is that plastic bags (woven, as for sugar or flour) are filled with slightly damp soil and stacked on top of each other. The volume of earth in the bags decreases from the bottom row to the top, so the wall gradually becomes thinner. The foundation is a series of the same bags, but filled with crushed stone of small or medium fraction. In an earthen greenhouse, you can equip windows and doors, the easiest way is to install wooden boxes under them at the stage of folding the wall. After the earth dries out, the walls will need to be plastered with cement or clay mortar. And the roof is best made light and transparent, for example, from polycarbonate and wooden beams. In terms of thermal insulation, such a structure is comparable to a thermos greenhouse buried in the ground. The cost of a greenhouse is the cost of bags and a roof, and its durability is calculated in tens and even hundreds of years. The only disadvantage of an earth greenhouse is high labor costs, you will have to assemble a team of assistants and dig a lot of soil.

    Bags make interesting structures with curvilinear shapes.

11. Straw blocks are another option for an eco-friendly greenhouse.. If you have the opportunity to take on the field for free or buy cheap straw briquettes, they will be an excellent basis for a warm and safe greenhouse. It is best to prefer rye straw, as rodents and insects are almost not interested in it. The blocks are simply stacked on top of each other without fasteners, but for better adhesion they can be pierced with rebar. The roof and, if possible, one of the walls of the greenhouse should be made transparent so that the plants do not suffer from a lack of light. If you want such a greenhouse to last more than one season, you should lay the blocks on the foundation or strapping of wooden bars with protective impregnation.

    Straw walls of the greenhouse - a great heat insulator

Whatever material you decide to use, try to make the frame smooth, especially if it will be sheathed with film material. Otherwise, knots and notches will easily tear the film or non-woven membrane.

Sheathing for the greenhouse: what can be found in the pantry

The cladding material of the greenhouse should provide good access to direct sunlight to the plants. It is especially important not to filter out one part of the spectrum, because the absence of red is bad for growth, and without blue, fruit does not appear. It is because of this that only transparent or white material is used as greenhouse cladding, but not colored.

Despite the variety of shades of cellular polycarbonate, greenhouses are sheathed only in white and light gray

For covering the greenhouse, you can use the remnants of building materials, the remaining unnecessary fragments of the old finish, and even the contents of the pantry, which no one has looked into for a long time.

1. Window frames with glass - a standard and unjustifiably forgotten option. The process of replacing old windows with metal-plastic or energy-efficient wooden ones is still ongoing. Therefore, even if you don’t have those lying around, unnecessary windows may well be at the neighbors or near the house where the reconstruction is being carried out. Typically, the owners of these useful materials they do not require any payment for them, so you will spend money on gasoline at worst. If the aesthetics of the design is important to you, you will have to remove the glass, clean the frames from old paint, impregnate them with protective agents and re-decorate. It is also important to choose windows that are approximately equal in size so that finished construction looked harmonious. But when only functionality is important, it is enough just to scrape off pieces of paint that are ready to fall off with a small metal spatula, and apply impregnation to the bare areas of wood. The size of the transoms is also not too important, they can be combined as you wish. But glass greenhouses are distinguished by the best environmental friendliness and light transmission. Unfortunately, glass can be broken by hail or a large amount of snow, so it is better to make only walls out of it, and choose another option for the roof or further strengthen it.

   Window blocks with vents are best placed at the ends

2. Plastic bottles are a free and durable material. In nature, the bottle decomposes for more than 300 years, therefore, as a greenhouse lining, plastic containers will last for decades. The weak point of the greenhouse can be the frame and the string on which the bottles were assembled. Bottle plastic is absolutely not afraid of moisture, frost, putrefactive bacteria and fungi, so the greenhouse does not need to be dismantled for the winter. Bottles for wall cladding are used in two versions: columns from containers with a cut bottom and sheets of sewn or glued plastics that were cut from the middle parts of the containers. Hollow bottles create the effect of a thermos, perfectly retain heat in the room and do not let light frosts inside. Inside the greenhouse, the temperature is so stable that tomatoes and cucumbers can often be harvested in early December. But with loose laying between the columns, the wind can penetrate and they will need to be additionally glued. A greenhouse made of plates turns out to be more airtight, but it is more difficult to make it and more material will be needed. It will be necessary to cut even parts of the bottles, align them with an iron and sew them together on long winter evenings, so that in the spring the prepared transparent sheets can be immediately mounted on the frame. Using plastic containers you save not only on sheathing material, but also on the skeleton of the greenhouse. Since the bottles are very light, thinner beams can be taken to build the skeleton than for polycarbonate sheathing. It is necessary to prepare for the arrangement of a greenhouse from plastic containers in advance, because it will take almost a year to collect the necessary 600-700 bottles.

   Different options for using plastic bottles for greenhouse sheathing

3. Agrofibre or non-woven membrane is a good choice for a greenhouse. This material is often bought for arranging lazy beds, but even on the frame of a high three-meter greenhouse, it shows itself no worse. Agrofibre protects crops from low temperatures (up to -5 ° C), perfectly passes moisture (unlike film and polycarbonate), provides air exchange (windows for ventilation are simply not needed), and is easily repaired (the patch is glued for 1.5 minutes). Do efficient greenhouse from agrofibre, even a beginner in gardening can do it. After all, the low weight and excellent permeability of the material fully compensate for errors in frame calculations (it can be very light), lack of ventilation and other possible errors. The only drawback of agrofibre is that it is afraid of claws, so if cats or dogs walk around the territory, the sheathing will have to be protected with a fine-mesh metal mesh.

   The width of the agrofibre allows you to cover a small greenhouse without joints

4. The film is the most popular option, it is chosen by 70% of beginners and at least 50% of experienced summer residents. Manufacturers offer many types of specialized film for greenhouses, which is capable of letting rain through, does not tear due to additional reinforcement, and can remain on the frame in winter. But if you're looking to save money, it's entirely possible to use the leftover film from the closet or buy a cheap one. It will last no more than a season, but it will provide the plants with the necessary microclimate and will not require a very reliable frame.

   For reliability, the film is always fixed through a gasket (bar, rubber strip, plastic molding, etc.)

5. Cellular polycarbonate - the second most popular sheathing material. It’s not worth buying it especially for novice summer residents, but if after building a visor at the front door, a carport or a gazebo, you still have trimmings, they can be put into action. If there is little residue, use polycarbonate for the roof of the greenhouse, since it is she who bears the shock loads from hail and mechanical from snow. It is polycarbonate that can protect the roof from old windows to prevent glass from breaking. This material is compatible with frames made of metal, wood, PVC pipes.

   Polycarbonate cladding is suitable for both arched and pitched greenhouses

Choose according to the material you choose. convenient way joint sealing. For example, the film is additionally glued with adhesive tape, polycarbonate is assembled on special clamps or sealed with foamed polymer adhesive tape, and the non-woven membrane is simply overlapped and fastened along the entire length of the joint. If you ignore this stage of work, drafts will begin to walk in the greenhouse and tender plants will die.

Improvised cladding fasteners

When finishing the greenhouse with rolled materials (film, non-woven membrane), they must not only be attached to the frame with a construction stapler, but also additionally strengthen the fixation. The net or slats outside the greenhouse will not allow the wind to fray the material in the spans between the ribs of the frame.

Clip for fixing the film from the neck of a plastic bottle - great example useful device from improvised materials

Use as a fixer:

• plastic net for cucumbers: weather resistant, cheap, but only suitable for small greenhouses;
• fishing net made of durable synthetic threads: strong and reliable, can serve for several years, but eventually collapses due to ultraviolet radiation;
• linen cord: it is inexpensive, weather-resistant, with the right tension, it insures the sheathing of roll materials well;
• wooden planks: require impregnation and sanding, do not always look aesthetically pleasing, but do not require costs;
• clips for PVC pipes: easy to install and hold securely, help to fasten the pipe and the wooden plank together but are only suitable for structures with a tube frame.

Now it's time to look into the pantry / utility room / shed and select materials from old stocks that will be useful for arranging the greenhouse.

Photo gallery: greenhouses from the remains

After construction, triangular polycarbonate scraps remained - make a hemisphere greenhouse If you carefully combine the painted profile for drywall and old glass, you get a very beautiful greenhouse.
different plants require different growing conditions, so the greenhouses on your site do not have to be the same A hemispherical greenhouse made of PVC pipes and ordinary film is very stable The remains of a wooden lining - great option for sheathing a wooden greenhouse on the bottom When a brick remains after construction, you can build a side for a greenhouse from it An analogue of an industrial polycarbonate greenhouse can be made with your own hands

Getting ready for construction work

To begin with, it is worth determining which version of the greenhouse design suits you best.

Perhaps the non-standard design of the greenhouse will be more convenient for you than the usual house with a gable roof.

When choosing, consider the size and shape of the area allotted for the greenhouse, the number and type of building materials available, the number of beds, etc. When free space remains only near the house itself, it is worth saving on materials and organizing a wall-mounted greenhouse. And for those who prefer not to spend a lot of time on garden work, a small rounded greenhouse is quite suitable.

According to this drawing, it is supposed to build a greenhouse from wood, but if you remove the extra braces, you can assemble a metal or tube frame from it

Among gardeners and gardeners, the most popular are medium-sized greenhouses in the form of a house with straight walls and a gable roof. For the construction of the 3x4 m option presented in the drawing, about 150 m of beams, boards or metal pipes will be needed. They will need to be cut into fragments of 1.5 m (vertical racks) - 30 pieces and 1 m (horizontal lintels) - 110 pieces. The rest will be useful for braces and the frame of the door leaf.

For sheathing the walls, 35.5 m 2 of a film or membrane is needed, which is almost 24 linear meters from a roll 1.5 m high. This roll width is optimal, since it allows you to close the walls with a minimum number of joints. To finish the roof, 24 m 2 of material is needed, which corresponds to 16 running meters from 1.5 m of a roll of film or 4 sheets of cellular polycarbonate measuring 1.2x5 m. For gables (triangles in front and behind) you need another 8 m 2 of material, that is, 5.5 m of running film 1.5 m wide or 2 sheets of polycarbonate size 1.3x3 m.

How to make a cheap greenhouse from leftovers with your own hands

We will consider step-by-step construction using the example of the given drawing, but we will implement the project with the help of thick branches and ordinary packaging film. Branches left after cleaning the garden or cut in the nearest forest are the cheapest and most environmentally friendly material for the frame. So that you do not doubt the strength of the structure, choose branches with a thickness of at least 5 cm (in section) without visible defects. For this purpose, the trunks of young acacia trees are excellent, which accumulate after cleaning forest belts along roads or forest areas. You can negotiate with the forester, who will tell you what material can be taken for your purposes.

Thanks to this manual holder, winding the film on the frame is simplified by an order of magnitude.

Wrap film at first seems unsuitable for our purposes, but it is no less durable and no less light-transmitting than specialized greenhouse materials. It will have to be wound in several layers and due to this it turns out to be stronger than a conventional thin film, less prone to windage and sagging in the spans between the frame ribs. It is as simple as possible to work with the material; you don’t even need to call an assistant to cover the greenhouse. At the same time, the stretch film provides excellent protection against low temperatures, so the plants in the greenhouse will bear fruit even with light frosts. The brand of the material does not matter, you can buy any packaging film in the store or order it online. You need 2 large rolls.

Since the casing of the greenhouse will turn out to be very light, the frame can also be made lightweight by reducing the number of vertical racks and struts. In this economical option, you will need 6 posts of 2.5 m, 3 of 3 m and 2 of 6 m for a horizontal connection.

Sheathing with boards around the perimeter will significantly increase the life of the film

So that the film below does not suffer from mechanical damage, beaks of chickens and cat's claws, it is better to finish the frame with boards. It is desirable to impregnate them with a protective agent, as they will constantly be in contact with wet soil. It will take about 40 m of boards.

Of the consumables you will need:

• butterfly loops for hanging doors and vents (the easiest to install);
• door handle;
• latch or latch for fixing the door and vents in the closed state;
• wood screws (the simplest stainless ones with a black coating, 76–90 mm long);
• spare files for a jigsaw;
• long reinforced staples for a construction stapler;
• thin rubber hose or drip tube - about 40 m;
• stationery or packing tape;
• metal corners for attaching vertical racks (you can cut wooden ones, or make additional braces from boards).

The length of the screw should be almost twice the diameter of the cross section of the fastened part.

Required tools:

• jigsaw for cutting bars;
• a screwdriver for fastening wood (if you have a construction gun, you can use it and fasten the frame with nails);
• construction stapler for fastening the sheathing.

Let's get to work.

1. Prepare required amount thick branches, free them from branches and cut to size. If desired, you can completely remove the bark, sand the posts and impregnate them with protective agents. The bottom can also be dipped in used machine oil or creosote.
   

   It will be great if you can pick up even stems of uniform thickness

2. Dig 9 recesses around the perimeter of the greenhouse, pour some gravel inside and place vertical posts in the holes, carefully compacting the ground. In front of the greenhouse, there should be 4 posts at the end, so that two of them protect the doorway. Fasten horizontal jumpers from branches along the top of the posts and at a height of 1 m from ground level. Sheathe the lower part of the frame with boards.
   

   Sheathing with boards gives the frame additional rigidity

3. Connect the highest poles with a branch so that a ridge is formed. Make a roof frame from six long branches, resting one end of the branch on a vertical pole, and the other on a ridge.
   

   With a height of the central pillars of 3 m and side pillars of 2 m, an optimal slope of the gable roof is obtained.

4. If you haven't spent time cleaning and sanding the posts, wrap the frame with tape. If this is not done, the stretch film will tear already in the process of wrapping the greenhouse and will last very little later.
   

   When wrapping, do not pull the tape too tight so that the notches on the branch become invisible

5. Wrap the frame with a film in a circle, trying to make an even layer over the entire area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe walls. You do not need to leave a hole for the door, it will be cut out in the next step.
   

   You will need to wind at least three layers of film

6. Cover the roof of the greenhouse with a thicker film and carefully seal the joint with tape. On the outer contour of the building, fill the fixing bar over the film. It should be fastened with nails, since the self-tapping screw will crumple the material a little when screwing, and this can subsequently lead to a rupture. But if the film for the roof is reinforced, you can not be afraid of such consequences.
   

   The film must hang just below the slopes so that it can be fixed with a bar

7. Fix the film on the frame elements with construction brackets. To ensure that the fastening is strong and the film does not tear, use a thin rubber tube as a gasket.
   

   Fasten the staples along the width of the tape at a distance of 20 cm from each other

8. Cut a hole in the film for the door and window (in the opposite end) and further strengthen the film at the cutout, especially carefully processing the impromptu threshold. Knock down the rectangle of the door and window leaf from the remaining branches and sheathe it with a film according to the described technology. Butterfly loops can be attached to the frame directly through the film.
   

   The edge of the door frame should be insulated with foam tape

   The greenhouse is ready for the first tests. Leave it closed overnight and the next day check how big the temperature difference is between inside and outside. If it is less than 10 ° C, then you should look for the remaining gaps and additionally strengthen all joints of materials.

If you fence off the beds with boards and fill the path with rubble, the shoes will remain clean after working in the greenhouse.

Additional finishing of such a greenhouse is not required. You can start arranging the beds and building a path for easy access to all plants.

As you can see, a home greenhouse is not always very expensive. Perhaps a greenhouse from the remnants will not become the main decoration of your summer cottage, but it is definitely able to please you with excellent home-made vegetables when the season has not yet begun or has already ended.

Unfortunately, we live in an era of catastrophically polluted ecology, and the desire of most people to eat organic products all year round is quite understandable. Hence the interest of those who have at least some piece of land in their use for the construction of greenhouses.

Construction of winter greenhouses

Greenhouses are different: seasonal or capital, large or small, factory-made or home-made. But they have one goal - to get an environmentally friendly crop as early as possible and as large as possible.

There is currently big choice greenhouses of various designs . It is very difficult for a beginner to understand what to choose and where to start building in general. How to calculate the area of ​​the greenhouse to obtain the planned crop, whether a foundation is needed and what kind, how to conduct heating, which roof to give preference to and much more. So let's start with the basics.

Types of greenhouse structures

Winter greenhouses differ from seasonal ones in many ways.

But the variety of winter greenhouses in terms of architectural design is especially great.

1. Wall. Good for a small conservatory or vegetable garden. The presence of a common wall with the house makes it possible to reduce the cost of construction.
2. Arched. The traditional dimensions of such structures are 2 x 4 x 3 m. Undersized crops, greens and vegetables feel comfortable in them. Arched greenhouses are not suitable for growing climbing and tall plants.
3. Single, double, triple.
4. Farm. These are multifunctional devices designed for year-round operation in almost all climatic zones. They are distinguished by a large area, sometimes they are entire mini-plantations that allow growing a large volume of products (not only in the ground, but also by hydroponics).

Photo gallery: types of winter greenhouses

Wall-mounted greenhouses are small in size and economical in construction It is convenient to grow low-growing crops in arched capital greenhouses
Farm greenhouses are used in all regions and are designed for high yields The teardrop-shaped gable roof withstands heavy loads and removes snow well in winter

But whatever the configuration, it should be remembered that the winter greenhouse is a solid building with heating and lighting. And frankly, building it is not a cheap pleasure. On the other hand, having spent finances and efforts once, you will long years enjoy quality products throughout the year. And the result of your work will no longer depend on the vagaries of the weather or on the soil, but only on your diligence and skill.

Thermos greenhouse: pros and cons

A thermos greenhouse is especially popular among domestic gardeners, primarily because it allows you to get high yield while minimizing the cost of its maintenance (lighting and heating). It got its name because it is a structure completely isolated not only from atmospheric conditions, but also from cold ground.

The thermos greenhouse fully justifies its name, because it is a structure isolated from the external environment, in which even the most exotic plants can be grown.

Advantages of a thermos greenhouse:

• getting an excellent harvest all year round;
• possibility of application in any climatic conditions;
• high light transmission ability;
• good thermal insulation performance (energy savings);
• ability to for a long time retain the heat received through solar energy. This is what creates the effect of a thermos;
• the possibility of growing any crop, even such capricious as grapes.

Flaws:

• laboriousness and cost of construction;
• the need to have at least elementary skills and understanding of the design of the heating system, ventilation and household communications.

It is easy to see that this design has more advantages than disadvantages, therefore, in today's realities, this is perhaps the best option for all-season cultivation of greens, fruits and vegetables, not only for your family, but also for sale.

Video: do-it-yourself wooden thermos greenhouse

Do-it-yourself greenhouse construction

Before you start building, ask yourself a few questions:

1. Do you really need a capital greenhouse and why?
2. What result do you expect from its use?
3. Where are you planning to build it?

Agree, if you live in a private house and will build a greenhouse in your backyard - this is one thing, but building a greenhouse in a summer cottage where no one lives in winter is quite another.

If you are building a greenhouse on a site that remains uninhabited in winter, it is hardly worth making it all-season.

An important criterion is your financial capabilities at the moment and their at least the slightest security for the future, so that instead of the planned harvest, you do not get a long-term construction.

If you have thought everything over and decided, then there is a certain sequence of construction that you need to know.

Preparing for construction

The amount of materials is calculated individually depending on the size and configuration of the building.

Stages of construction of a winter greenhouse

1. Foundation laying. The winter greenhouse must be mounted on the foundation. It not only securely fixes the structure, but also protects crops from weeds, and also prevents atmospheric water from entering the greenhouse from the outside. The choice of the type of foundation depends on the nature of the soil, the depth of groundwater, the presence of a drainage system on the site and the size of the future structure. For small-sized winter greenhouses, any foundation is suitable: block, brick, point, tape, on piles, etc. For overall buildings, a concrete foundation is laid (sometimes timber is used). When pouring the foundation, soil should be sampled from the pit to the depth of the freezing layer (80–90 cm).

   Shallow strip foundation ideal for small greenhouses

2. For capital greenhouses, the frame is assembled from a profile pipe, a corner, a hat profile. The corner is considered the best (galvanized corner profile). Since the hat profile and profile pipe do not withstand a large amount of snow, they are best used in regions with little snow, despite the fact that they are mounted easily and quickly. The corner profile is assembled without welding on bolts, withstands snow cover up to 100 kg per 1 m². The finished frame is attached to the foundation using anchor bolts. They provide sufficient strength and rigidity to the fastening, and the difference in the heat capacity of materials protects the structure from negative impact heat or severe frost. In order to save money, you can make the frame not galvanized, but aluminum, but here you need to take into account the weather conditions in the region (winds and snow cover). The aluminum structure can be deformed under their influence.
   

   The metal frame of the winter greenhouse can be reinforced with transverse stiffeners

3. Frame cover. Most commonly used:
   
4. Roof arrangement. The most common is a gable shape with a slope of 20–25°. The angle of inclination is individual for different forms roofs. It determines the runoff of rainwater and the bearing capacity of the greenhouse in relation to the snow load. Therefore, do not neglect this indicator. It is not difficult to make such a roof yourself. To do this, the lower strapping bars in the amount of 2 pieces are laid along the side walls. A ridge beam is attached to them with the help of paired rafters. For wooden greenhouses, it is recommended to use a beam with a section of 120 x 150 mm for the ridge and strapping and 70x100 mm for the rafters. In metal greenhouses, the roof is made of the same elements as the main frame.
   

   The angle of inclination of the roof must be selected based on the requirements of aesthetics and the ability of the greenhouse to withstand layers of snow on its surface

5. Heating device. In fact, heating must be determined at the very beginning of construction, since this is perhaps the most expensive and most important expense item. It is heating that allows us to grow crops all year round in our latitudes.

Video: greenhouse construction steps

1. The foundation and frame of the greenhouse. First you need to drive out the base at least 90–120 cm. It can be monolithic (solid) or brick (ceramic) at your discretion. Fix a frame (metal-plastic, wooden, metal) on it and sheathe the walls with cellular polycarbonate (preferably 8-10 mm thick). Greenhouse frames must be equipped with transoms for atmospheric air access and, if necessary, equipped with special valves (supply ventilation).

   Ventilation windows can be opened manually or with an automatic system that analyzes the atmospheric conditions inside and outside the greenhouse

2. Greenhouse cover. To cover the frame, double glass 4 mm thick or cellular polycarbonate is used, which has undeniable advantages in front of glass. First of all, they lie in the fact that when using polycarbonate, heating costs are reduced, therefore, at current energy tariffs, you can save a lot on the operation and maintenance of the greenhouse.
3. Glazing. If glass is still chosen as a coating, then the scheme of its fastening is as follows. You need to start glazing from the strapping beam, moving up in the direction of the ridge. Glasses are placed on a putty up to 2 mm thick and fastened with wooden (or plastic) glazing beads using metal pins. Between the glasses themselves and the glazing beads, putty should also be applied, which is used as modern plastic mixtures or sealants.

   After the glass is inserted into the frame, it must be smeared along the contour with sealant, and then fixed with a wooden or plastic glazing bead

4. Water withdrawal. A visor will help protect the walls of the greenhouse from water leakage. According to him inside a drainage chute is laid through which excess condensate is removed. Use a galvanized profile. A correctly installed visor should recede from the plane of the wall by about 6–8 cm.
   

   To protect the walls of the greenhouse and collect rainwater, various roofs and gutters are used.

Greenhouse heating

Heating is the most important engineering system for a winter greenhouse. When constructing it, it is important to observe a compromise between economic feasibility and providing the necessary microclimate for grown crops.

For small greenhouses, the useful area of ​​​​which is in the range of 15–20 m², it is enough to equip stove heating. For heating larger greenhouses use:

1. Water heating. This is the most traditional type of greenhouse heating. The system consists of a water heating boiler, pipes (forward and return), as well as an expansion tank. Pipes are placed in the ground or under container racks (if the plants are grown in containers and not in the ground).
   

   The water heated in the boiler is distributed through pipes, where it gives off its heat to the surrounding soil.

2. Electric heating - infrared, cable or air. This type of heat generation is most often used when the water supply is burdensome (for example, in summer cottages where water is supplied according to the schedule) or in those areas where there is a preferential nightly tariff for electricity. The connection scheme for such heating resembles a floor heating system - electrical cables are laid at the bottom of the pit, which are covered with a layer of sand and then soil. The undoubted advantage of such heating is additional heating of the soil, and if a sensor and controller are installed, then the required temperature can be maintained automatically without human intervention.

   Electric heating is produced by cables that heat up when an electric current passes through them.

3. IR heating. This is a kind of electric heating system, which is much easier to implement: UFO-type heating elements or fan heaters are placed under the greenhouse ceiling.

   To heat the greenhouse, you can hang electric heaters under the ceiling

4. Heating on biofuel. It is the most economic type of heating for today type of heating. The use of biofuels is as easy as shelling pears - organic matter is laid on a layer of fertile soil. Further, it is necessary to provide and maintain required humidity(up to 70%) and aeration (air flow). Waste waste is subsequently used as humus. The soil and air in the greenhouse are heated due to the decomposition of organic matter:
   • horse manure is able to maintain a temperature of up to 38 ° C for three months;
   • cow dung provides heating up to 20 ° C for 100 days;
   • straw gives temperatures up to 45 ° C, but not for long (within 10 days).

When using organic matter, it is imperative to take into account the level of its acidity so as not to ruin the soil, and, accordingly, the crop.

Video: greenhouse water heating using a gas boiler

Useful systems for increasing yields in the greenhouse

So, you have decided and decided - to be a greenhouse! Then you need to think about the illumination of plants in order to artificially extend daylight hours. This is especially true for the northern regions, where natural sunlight is not enough for plant photosynthesis.

It's easy to do it yourself. The main thing is to correctly calculate the total power of special lamps based on the area of ​​​​the beds and set the time and duration of work on the light sensor and timer.

It does not hurt to make automatic drip irrigation for timely replenishment of the root system of plants with moisture. The principle of operation of such automation is simple, if desired, any owner can handle it. Water is drawn into a tank where a heating element is installed, and then, using a pump, strictly according to a timer, through supply hoses, compensated droppers and root pegs, it enters the plants.

In order to have fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables all year round, not only on your table, but also to quickly recoup the financial costs of construction, you need to have a greenhouse with a usable area of ​​at least 50–60 m², and ideally 100 m².

Video: building a winter greenhouse

In this article, we have highlighted the main aspects of building winter greenhouses with our own hands. We hope that now you will be able to quickly build a winter greenhouse and enjoy the fruits of your labor for many years.

As a rule, planting is done in the spring, but you need to take care of the conditions, in particular, we are talking about protection from low temperatures. Especially when it comes to vegetables.

Greenhouses and greenhouses do an excellent job with this task. How to make it from almost improvised materials and see below.

How is a greenhouse different from a greenhouse?

Before delving into the question of how to make a greenhouse, let's decide what is the difference between a greenhouse and a greenhouse:

• The greenhouse is used for growing seedlings and further planting in open beds, while plants can be in the greenhouse all year round;
• The required temperature level in the greenhouse is maintained due to the presence of compost or manure in the soil, while in the greenhouse there is an additional, third-party heating source;
• It is possible to grow trees in a greenhouse, but this cannot be done in a greenhouse.

What are greenhouses?

A greenhouse can be stationary or portable (a photo of a greenhouse in the country is presented below).

A stationary greenhouse can have all kinds of shapes, the most common model is a butterfly (it got its name due to the doors opening on both sides).

Portable more often in the form of a tunnel. The main material in both cases is a polymer film.

From all this it follows that it is quite possible to make a greenhouse with your own hands, this is the same creative process as growing cucumbers, tomatoes, etc.

Material selection

Before considering how to make a greenhouse with your own hands, let's deal with the issue of choosing a material.

When choosing a material, it must be borne in mind that it must meet the following requirements:

• Good light transmission;
• Resistance to various kinds of deformations, with strong gusts of wind, for example;
• Easy to install and assemble the whole structure;
• Durability.

As for the materials used, the cheapest, and most importantly practical, is the film, and here are its types:

• polyethylene;
• stabilized film;
• polyvinyl chloride.

Covering materials include:

• agril;
• lutrasil.

In order to finally decide and understand which material is preferable, it is necessary to compare them, and consider the pros and cons of each.

Glass

The advantages of glass include: it transmits approximately 94% of the light, serves for a long time, retains heat.

By cons: it gets very hot in the summer, a strong load on the main frame.

Film

The advantages of this material include: low cost, low weight, no foundation is needed.

Note!

By cons: fragility, difficult to wash.

Polycarbonate

Pros: good light transmission, high level of thermal insulation, lightweight and durable.

What to use to make a frame for a greenhouse

The frame is a kind of basis for a greenhouse, most often it is made of wood or plastic, less often of metal pipes.

wooden frame

The main plus is its environmental friendliness. It is also worth noting that it is very simple in terms of installation.

For installation, you will need the following tools: hammer, screwdriver, saw, nails, rubber as a sealing element, wooden bars, ruler.

Note!

It is advisable to cover with drying oil before the installation process wooden elements future design.

Execution sequence

First of all, a beam is attached to the mortgage mount, which will then become the base. Then the main beam is placed around the perimeter of the foundation, and temporarily everything is fastened with nails.

Side and corner beams are fastened with a bar diagonally. door frame installed on the side rails. The cornice is attached to the top of the side and corner beams.

Roof

In the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe points where the vertical beams are fixed, it is necessary to remove a beam, the length of which is 2 m. The roof beams must be fixed at an angle equal to 30 degrees, they are connected to each other by a beam. In the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe end points, they must be supported by vertical guides.

The final fixing of the roof frame is done with the help of corners and strips on self-tapping screws.

Note!

Doorway

The door frame is attached first. Do not forget in the middle and upper part of the opening is fixed with special stiffeners.

Application of metal pipes

A greenhouse, as mentioned above, can be made from metal pipes, and also with your own hands. This design is more durable.

You will need: a welding machine, a hammer, a grinder, a special nozzle for working with metal (disk).

The pipe is divided into two identical parts. Tees are welded to the edges of the base pipe, crosses are welded every half a meter. The cut off elements must be welded to the crosses.

Special tees are attached to the arc to secure the door pillar.

Covering the greenhouse

After the frame is ready, you can start covering.

Film

The easiest material to use is film. It is necessary to cover the entire structure, leaving a margin of 15 cm, and then cut off.

Polycarbonate

The front side of polycarbonate, the one where the picture is shown. First you need to cut the sheets. Seal the cuts from above with sealing tape, perforated from below.

First, polycarbonate is attached from above, then on the sides. Mounted on the frame with a special profile, as well as rubber gaskets.

At the end, a seal and door fittings are installed.

Ventilation

In greenhouses, in order to create ventilation (ventilation), you just need to open the doors, but it is advisable to do this in warm weather.

A greenhouse is an indispensable thing for a gardener who is going to harvest a large crop of tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables in the future, having approached the design wisely and following all the instructions, everything will definitely work out.

DIY greenhouse photo

The greenhouse is as much a symbol of the modern age as space flights, computers with the Internet, robots and nuclear energy. This is not an exaggeration. According to WHO data for 1975, then 3/4 of the world's population lacked animal protein (without which, roughly speaking, a person becomes dumb and stupid), half were chronically malnourished, and a third, in addition, had never tasted either meat or meat in their lives. fish, no eggs.

We still feel the consequences of malnutrition and malnutrition on a global scale today, but if the situation is not improving radically, then at least it is not significantly worsening, although there are less than 0.5 hectares of agricultural land left on Earth per person. It is greenhouse farming that helps to hold out until better times (while still alive - hopefully!) the yield of fruit and vegetable crops in a greenhouse can be several times higher than in open ground(see fig.), and they harvest not in one gulp on a market day, but gradually all year round; this allows us to consistently meet demand and free up land for livestock farming.

Note: from the UN stuff. In the same 1975, UN experts zealously promoted vegetarianism. And last year they also recognized him as a mental disorder.

In turn, greenhouse agricultural technology was completely transformed quantitatively and qualitatively by a polycarbonate greenhouse. It is simple, cheap, durable and technologically advanced. In addition, if in the same 1975 expert tasters accurately separated greenhouse fruits and vegetables from ground fruits and vegetables, now they confuse them in about 50% of cases. This means that they do not feel a noticeable difference and speak at random. Under an indispensable condition: the test samples were grown in modern greenhouses using modern agricultural technologies. Which, in turn, in old greenhouses are either inefficient or simply not applicable. For example, a greenhouse made of wood and glass from drip-fog irrigation in it becomes completely unusable in 2-3 years.

Polycarbonate is a type of organic glass that reflects infrared (IR) rays well and thus is able to create a strong Greenhouse effect. But he did not transform greenhouses on his own, but only after they learned how to produce it in the form of sheets of a honeycomb structure. This made it possible to create strong and resistant prestressed greenhouse structures on a lightweight frame; You can build a polycarbonate greenhouse in almost any climate, from the Sahara to the Putorana Mountains and from the Mojave Desert to Northern Labrador. Thanks to this, greenhouse farming has also become a public help: a greenhouse on a piece of land of a quarter of a hundred square meters is able to provide a family with fruits and herbs all year round and even provide a marketable surplus for sale.

Polycarbonate is easy to process, and the technology for creating structures with working skin from it is simple. With the widespread use of pipes made of engineering plastics and methods for their quick and durable connection, the construction of the frame has ceased to be a serious problem. Currently, there is a wide range of kits for assembling small garden greenhouses on sale, but - demand dictates prices! Therefore, everyone who wants to build a greenhouse with their own hands arrives: in the Penza region alone. number of self-made private greenhouses for 2009-2014 increased by more than 20 (!) times.

Note: engineering plastics - those that are able to bear mechanical operational loads for a long time. PVC, for example, with all its advantages, is not structural plastic, although it can be very useful in greenhouse business, which will be discussed later. Of the engineering plastics, polyisopropylene (PP) is most commonly used: it is not expensive, and its mechanical properties are comparable to steel. Further, unless otherwise specified, plastic will always be understood as PP.

There are different ways to build a greenhouse from PP, at least this:

Video: greenhouse made of polypropylene pipes

But we will further try to tell not only how to make a greenhouse ourselves, but also how to design it, and without complicated calculations, and during construction to avoid excessive costs and labor costs. Ready-made sets of parts are calculated for all occasions and therefore are not cheap, a design well developed by others in these specific circumstances may turn out to be unsuitable for any reason, and we will create our own greenhouse for our own local conditions, getting by with the minimum necessary.

We will focus primarily on polycarbonate greenhouses on a tubular plastic frame, as the most versatile. But there are a number of garden crops that can vegetate and bear fruit all year round at a relatively low above-zero temperature and relatively low light. These are people from the tropics who have taken root in temperate latitudes: cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, sweet peppers, zucchini, squash. We cultivate them as annuals, but in general they are evergreen and, with minimal heating costs, can produce marketable products for 9-10 months a year, and the demand for them is always good.

Such crops do not require high agricultural technologies, but they are afraid of overheating in summer; Here they need more fresh air and coolness. Therefore, and also for a number of other reasons, for their small-scale production and cultivation for their own consumption, the good old greenhouse made of wood is better suited, so we will also deal with them. We will not ignore the mini-greenhouses for table greens, flowers and seedlings, especially since you can arrange one in a city apartment.

Finally, greenhouse business is being improved not only by venerable specialists in large research centers. Craftsmen sometimes come up with designs that are surprisingly effective and promising; some of them will also be discussed.

Greenhouse or greenhouse?

Greenhouses with greenhouses are usually distinguished by size. Like, the greenhouse is large, you can enter it and work there like in a garden. And the greenhouse is small, you can only climb into it with your hands, and then squatting, so do pruning, hilling, etc. uncomfortable. But this is only a visible difference, and the essence is much deeper: big building can be a greenhouse, and a small box - a greenhouse.

Note: about appearance and essence. The famous ancient Greek philosopher-sophist was once asked: "What is a man?" He, after thinking, answered: "A biped without feathers." The next day, the students shook out of the bag in front of him ... a plucked chicken.

The greenhouse creates the so-called. spring awakening effect. To do this, the soil in it is deeply mulched with manure; the best is horse. As biofuels decompose, they heat the earth from within. Root heating of plants at a lower air temperature than on the soil surface, in combination with an excess of nitrogen, stimulates, first of all, the rapid growth of vegetation of its nutrient factory - green mass. If plants have their own depots of supplies (bulbs, rhizomes), then they are primarily used for this, and the root system is still lagging behind in development. Figuratively speaking, plants do not yet think about fruiting under such conditions.

Greenhouses are used mainly for forcing and growing seedlings. Forcing is a process of controlled acceleration of vegetation; in some species - up to flowering. By distillation, for example, you can get onion feathers, fresh watercress and lilies of the valley by a predetermined date: New Year, March 8th. Plants are so exhausted from forcing that they either die or require a long rest in the vegetative phase. Distillation of table greens gives products of excellent quality if the planting material was environmentally friendly, because. plants take very little from the soil.

Note: the simplest full-fledged greenhouse for seedlings and forcing onions on greens can be built in half an hour or an hour, see fig. The fertile layer of soil is removed on a bayonet, folded into a pile. Another half bayonet is selected and a layer of manure is laid. The soil is laid back on top, a shelter is made of a film - and you're done! In central Russia, such a greenhouse produces products from about the end of March to mid-October or early November.

In the greenhouse, root heating takes place, but moderate. The main thing here is that the plants should feel the influx of warm, warmer than the soil, air from above and / or from the side. This creates a “mid-spring effect” whereby plants tend to produce as quickly as possible in order to start accumulating nutrients for the winter or dry season. Well, if a paradise with eternal spring is arranged for them, then you can “fatten” as much as you like without exhausting yourself, as long as there is enough soil nutrition: the root system is now working with might and main. This is the basis for the high productivity of the greenhouse economy.

Note: a greenhouse cannot be a greenhouse, but any greenhouse can become a greenhouse. In general, for this it is necessary to strengthen the soil heating and weaken the air. But the subtleties of handling distilled crops are already a topic from agricultural technology, and not the construction of greenhouses.

About refraction

Polycarbonate and silicate glass have a refractive index of light significantly more than 1. That is, the slopes of the greenhouse, the rays of the Sun falling on them, are directed inward at a steeper angle. On the one hand, this is good: in winter, the ramp works as a light concentrator - it collects oblique winter light over a larger area and directs it inward to a smaller one, see Fig.:

On the other hand, with a decrease in the slope of the slope, the degree of reflection of direct rays also increases. If the angle of their incidence decreases to a critical one, the so-called. angle total reflection, then only half will pass inside scattered light, and the straight line will be reflected completely. Based on this:

• In mid-latitudes, the angle of inclination of the slopes must be chosen within 30-45 degrees from the horizontal.
• The further north the greenhouse is located, the steeper the slopes should be.
• Greenhouses of a conventional design must be made gable and oriented with a roof ridge from north to south, i.e. slopes to the east and west. In this case, the angle of incidence of most of the light that has passed inward onto the surface of the shadow slope will be less than the critical one and it will be reflected back inward.

Note: Cellular polycarbonate has an additional advantage over glass in this regard - light refracts each of the layers of its structure and the degree of light concentration is higher. But the layers of polycarbonate are thinner than the thinnest glass, so its light transmission is almost the same as that of a single layer of glass.

How do plants sense light?

Radiation refraction in the coating of the greenhouse has another important role: it smooths out fluctuations in lighting and temperature in it during the day and season. Most horticultural crops are quite hardy to the amount of light and temperature, if they are kept more or less stable or change smoothly. But a sharp jump in any of these parameters of the plant is understood as a signal that unfavorable conditions are approaching. At the same time, their physiology switches from growth and fruiting algorithms to survival and accumulation of their own reserves: productivity drops, product quality deteriorates. A classic example is cucumbers. Let it not be for long, but it suddenly became colder or breathed with heat - everything became smaller and went bitter.

Own greenhouse

The first thing to start with is why do we need a greenhouse? What do we, speaking in Odessa, want to have from her? According to marketability, greenhouses are divided as follows:

1. Winter, or year-round - allow you to grow any crops all year round. To date, only durian and cherimoya are not physiologically amenable to greenhouse farming.
2. Seasonal capital, or semi-winter - give marketable products from Central Russia for 8-10 months. in a year. In these, either annuals or plants with physiology that require / endure a dormant period at sub-zero temperatures are cultivated.
3. Seasonal lightweight - the active phase of the production cycle for 2-3 months. shorter than semi-winter ones; usually they are meant by seasonal greenhouses. Cultivated in them, as a rule, early / late ordinary vegetables and herbs.
4. Temporary - used for growing in natural ground seedlings, forcings or for a one-two-three-fold crop of crops that strongly deplete the soil: root crops, strawberries, etc. When the site is developed, the greenhouse is dismantled, transferred to a new location, and the land is left to rest under fallow or sown with nitrogen-fixing crops, legumes, etc.
5. Greenhouses - they are put (it is difficult to call it a building) once for seedlings and forcing. How to make a greenhouse as such, said above. It is more difficult to arrange greenhouses for exotic flowers, for example. orchids or Gesneriaceae, but this topic is already from floriculture, and not gardening.

Note: phalaenopsis common in flower shops - only a few representatives of about 800 genera and more than 35,000 species of orchids, suitable for mass culture for cutting. The flowers of all orchids are long-lived and stand-up cut. Among them there are many such that in Hollywood there is not enough cocaine to purposely invent, on the left in fig. There are cases when rich connoisseurs paid $5,000 and even $20,000 for just 1 flower. rare species. In countries where all sorts of rarities are loved, renting live flowering orchids in pots is a lucrative form of small business; rare orchids need to be groomed and nurtured until flowering for 7-8 years. Many orchids exude a delicate fragrance; vanilla is an orchid. Orchids grow up to the tundra, but in our area they are either small and do not catch the eye (for example, orchis), or very rare, like venus slippers - cypripediums, in the center in fig. The Gesnerian culture is simpler, and they are also very showy and simply luxurious, on the right in fig. True, they are not suitable for cutting.

The purpose of the greenhouse determines the initial and operating costs for it. In winter, a capital foundation is needed with complete concreting of the underground part and insulation, as well as full lighting and heating. The cost of their heating is the lion's share of the current ones, so winter greenhouses are more profitable than the larger ones (from about 200 cubic meters) in large farms. The own heat reserve of a large greenhouse is enough to maintain the vital activity of plants, taking into account the greenhouse effect, for several days, up to 2 weeks. Therefore, heating systems for them do not rely on peak frosts, but on the average seasonal temperature, which is much higher.

The original version of the winter greenhouse is a greenhouse-greenhouse; it does not require constant heating in the middle latitudes at all. The mulch that decomposes under the soil layer heats the greenhouse. But its production cycle is difficult to vary, it is necessary to extract manure in large quantities 1-2 times a year, and food crops from it, according to modern sanitary requirements most often they do not pass, because are oversaturated with nitrates. In the greenhouse phase of the cycle, only chives are more or less edible. Large hotbeds are used mainly as greenhouses, and small home gardens are used for cut flowers.

Note: in certain climatic conditions, it is possible to build a completely non-volatile winter greenhouse, the so-called. thermos greenhouses; a separate section will be devoted to them. But the complexity of construction and the cost of it for a thermos greenhouse turn out to be much higher than for a conventional one. True, exceptions are possible, see later in the same section.

Semi-winter greenhouses- also quite solid structures; the foundation is most often tape monolithic or from ready-made blocks of lightweight type, tk. the upper structure is light and is not afraid of uneven shrinkage. But the working area is illuminated and heated here only at the beginning and end of the season of use, and 6-7 months. The greenhouse operates on natural light and the greenhouse effect. The light lantern of a semi-winter greenhouse made of polycarbonate on a PP frame will be inexpensive and can last more than 15 years, and with minimal illumination and heating in such a one from Moscow and to the south, you can grow perennial subtropical crops up to citrus fruits; they still have a dormant period. Harvesting will be seasonal, and heating in the very cold to a slight plus will help the plants endure the winter.

seasonal greenhouses Most of all, they build themselves. Ordinary table crops, with skillful management in the Moscow region, give up to 10 months. per year, and to the south of Rostov-on-Don, they are able to function year-round. In both cases, the cost of light and heat will not exceed more than 2 times those for a city apartment of equal area. With a reduction in the time of use in the cold season, heat costs fall rapidly, so most of these greenhouses live up to their name. The profitability of seasonal greenhouses increases significantly if inexpensive solid fuel for stoves is available to the owners; see the section on heating greenhouses for more details.

Light lanterns of seasonal greenhouses are generally the same as those of semi-winter greenhouses, but the foundation is made light columnar. Most often, rolled metal is used for it (pipes, corners, channels), but it will serve a period on a par with a greenhouse and very cheap wood, if the pieces of timber or logs for it are boiled in bitumen for 10-20 minutes (scalded with bitumen) and before being installed in the pits, their ends wrap with ruberoid. If the life of the greenhouse does not exceed 5-7 years, and the lantern is plastic, then it can be built without a foundation.

Temporary greenhouses and greenhouses used in middle lane approximately from April to October. They grow fast-ripening crops in them; predominantly bulbous and root vegetables, as well as table greens. Make temporary greenhouses most often ground (see below) and cover with a film. Lighting and heating are not done, because. natural light is already / still enough for photosynthesis, and the greenhouse effect gives an increase of 7-12 degrees to the seasonal temperature.

Note: the degree of the greenhouse effect depends on the strength of the lighting, because. Plants release carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Therefore, behind the light in the greenhouse you need an eye and an eye - less light, less carbon dioxide, it became colder, photosynthesis weakened, the greenhouse effect also weakened, it got colder, and so very quickly until freezing.

Greenhouse and soil

The next factor to keep in mind when, so to speak, preliminary consideration of the greenhouse is the nature of the use of the soil. According to it, greenhouses are divided into soil, box and trench or bulk.

Ground, as the name implies, are built directly on the ground. They are temporary and seasonal. The basis of such a greenhouse is simple: wooden formwork height 200-300 mm on a flat area, see fig. Outside, the formwork is supported with pins made of reinforcing bars, on which the ends of the arcs of the lantern from pipes are put on. The frame of the lantern is lightweight, designed for more or less favorable weather conditions. Cover it mainly with a film.

Fertile soil is poured into the formwork; mulch if necessary. As the soil is depleted, its top layer is selected and changed. Such agriculture will last no more than 5-7 years: the smaller the plot of land, the more difficult and expensive it is to maintain its fertility for a long time. But by that time, the formwork will rot, the film, if it is not disposable (see below), will wear out, and the frame of the greenhouse is made collapsible or, if it is made of PP pipes, completely transferred by two or three to a new place.

The box greenhouse is suitable for all greenhouse crops for at least 10 years; theoretically - forever. This is achieved by the fact that the reinforced formwork is filled up with crushed stone along the waterproofing, on which boxes are placed filled with earth, with perforated bottoms. The depleted earth from the boxes is simply thrown away and a new one is poured. Excess irrigation water flows into the rubble and then into the drainage. Thus, the scourge of non-professional greenhouse farms is excluded - acidification of the soil from the cold from below. If there is no drainage system on the site, then the drain of the greenhouse is taken out into a cesspool attached to it. It is impossible to reuse wastewater for irrigation, harmful micro-animals are teeming with them!

Most highly profitable home-made greenhouses are box-type. The production of formwork and foundation for a box greenhouse is also possible from wood (see Fig.), because. in this case, it almost does not contact the soil and is less exposed to harmful effects. If lumber, in addition to being treated with biocides, is also soaked twice with hot bitumen, then the formwork will last 12-15 years. For a longer estimated service life, it is better with a blind area (for a semi-winter greenhouse - with insulation) and build a brick base on it.

Note: for plants with a superficial root system (onions, radishes, carrots, melons, watermelons), the boxes can be on stands. Then the greenhouse can be multi-storey, in whole or in part.

A trench greenhouse is, roughly speaking, a series of concrete gutters (trenches) with technological passages between them. They are cast together with the foundation and covered with a common lantern. In each trench, crushed stone drainage is made with access to a cesspool or a collector common to the site, and earth is poured on top of it. Plots for different cultures in trenches are separated by removable partitions reaching the drainage layer.

Caring for a trench greenhouse is more difficult than a box greenhouse, and the likelihood of the spread of diseases in it is greater, which requires quite skillful agricultural technology. But with proper construction, soil cooling from below is completely excluded even on permafrost. In addition, it is possible to cultivate plants with a powerful deep root system, up to woody ones. Therefore, most of all winter and semi-winter greenhouses are built with trenches in places with a harsh climate.

Note: the author knows a resident of the Kola Peninsula, who, on income from potatoes, onions, garlic and tomatoes from a makeshift trench greenhouse, built himself a mansion of 230 residential squares in 5 years. When asked: “Mortgage?”, He asked in response: “What is it?”

When Form Matters

The most important factor determining the functionality of a greenhouse is the configuration of its lantern. Diversity architectural forms greenhouses can compete with public buildings, but they most often build frame greenhouses-houses on their own, pos. 1 in the figure, tunnel faceted, pos. 2, and tunnel arches with semicircular (pos. 3) and lancet (pos. 4) arcs of arches.

small house

In the greenhouse-house, the entire operational load is carried by the frame, so the glazing can be of any kind. With the required strength for a backyard greenhouse, the simplest technologically and cheapest is a wooden frame. Modern methods of processing commercial wood make it possible to achieve its durability in greenhouse conditions up to 30-40 years. The best type of wood for construction is larch.

The easiest way to make a wooden greenhouse-house is fully ventilated; this is important for summer greenhouse cultivation, see above. The roof at a high standing of the Sun slightly shade the plants and cuts off the ultraviolet, which protects them from burns. In the southern regions, sometimes the roof slopes in the very heat are also covered with gauze or old washed sheets.

The roof of a wide-open greenhouse-house plays another role: an excess of carbon dioxide is formed in the greenhouse, because. it is heavier than air, and when heated, it cannot go up. For plants, this is like caviar for cognac: the harvest is rampant, and the fruits are one to one.

In regions with a sharply continental climate, a wooden greenhouse-house will be the best choice, especially if local lumber is cheap. In Yakutia (Republic of Sakha), for example, it is very hot in summer and watermelons have time to ripen on a layer of soil 20-30 cm above the permafrost. Small, with a large apple or orange, but it tastes like watermelon like watermelon.

Note: Yakut watermelons may seem incredible, but we, without limiting ourselves to verbal assurances, refer the reader to Yu. Yuri Konstantinovich is not related.

Watermelons and melons come from deserts, they are able to develop as semi-ephemera, quickly. However, it is useless to experiment with tomatoes, cucumbers and radishes in the open ground of Yakutia: the warm season is not enough for ripening, the roots either reach the permafrost and the plant withers, or the Sun burns it - the air is clean, transparent, UV burns. A fully hinged greenhouse-house allows you to create a suitable microclimate at the right time for early ripening varieties. True, with heating at the beginning / end of the season, but here the fuel is inexpensive, and the sale of products is ensured.

A drawing with a frame specification for a winter-semi-winter wooden greenhouse suitable for installation on permafrost in a harsh climate is shown in fig. In European Russia, a greenhouse-house can be significantly lightened and its frame can be made from improvised materials, for example. old window frames, see below.

Note: a wooden greenhouse with polycarbonate is by no means at enmity. On the contrary, lightweight but durable polycarbonate takes on some of the operational loads, which silicate glass is not capable of. At current prices, polycarbonate coating will cost less than glazing, and the entire wooden greenhouse under polycarbonate will be stronger and cheaper.

faceted tunnel

Greenhouse houses have a significant drawback, which manifests itself in places with low insolation: when the Sun is low, the angle of incidence of its rays on the slopes is close to optimal once a day for a short time. Simply put, the greenhouse-house does not concentrate the light well and turns out to be a bit dark in winter. In an attempt to solve this problem, a faceted tunnel greenhouse appeared.

It is impractical to make the frame of a faceted tunnel from plastic, because The mechanical properties of PP turn out to be the best in the case when the cross-links of the frame are prestressed, i.e. if the frame arcs are curvilinear. Therefore, a faceted tunnel is, as a rule, a metal greenhouse made of pipes, sheathed with polycarbonate; pipes can be round, but profile pipes are more often used. However, here the problem of the joints of the frame elements arises.

Welds under greenhouse conditions are intensively corroded, especially external ones, sandwiched between the pipe and the casing. Non-destructive visual inspection in such places is not possible, so the frame is prone to sudden failure.

Note: don't try to make steel frames prestressed - regular rolled steel is completely unsuitable for this use! Have you heard of metal fatigue and fluidity?

In the industrial production of metal greenhouses, welding is generally abandoned, and frames are assembled on shaped plastic connectors, on the left in Fig. These are sold separately, but they are expensive and require an additional large amount of fasteners, so home-made steel frames of greenhouses are still welded, but without external seams: the workpiece is cut at an angle, bent and cooked from the inside, on the right in Fig. This requires special accuracy and accuracy in the calculation of the frame and the marking of the workpieces, but the weakened joints are immediately visible, because. the weld seam rusts faster than solid metal.

Speaking of connections

In greenhouse frames, except for wooden ones, it is impossible to drill holes and drive fasteners into them: a sharp difference in environmental conditions inside and outside will give centers of corrosion and / or dangerous mechanical stresses in such places. Non-wood frames are assembled by welding or special connecting nodes. In plastic branded kits for self-assembly, the parts in the connectors are still fixed with self-tapping screws, because. a set that requires special tools for assembly, few will buy. But serious manufacturers carefully calculate the location of the fasteners, the entire structure is modeled on computers, and the prototype is run through full-scale tests before the series. And frivolous locals, not bothering themselves with painful thoughts about copyrights, simply copy the worked models.

arched tunnels

The greenhouse-tunnel of semicircular arches is the easiest to manufacture, the most wind-resistant and best of all concentrates the light. Pay attention again to pos.3 fig. with greenhouse shapes: most of the semi-circular sides seem darkish. This means that most of the light went inward and did its useful work there. And in the summer, in the heat with a high Sun, almost flat roof gives the same effect as a greenhouse-house.

The material consumption of a semi-circular greenhouse and the cost of its construction are also minimal, however, snow resistance is low, and in places with a large snow load, incidents like the one in Fig. are possible, even if the structure is structurally completely correct. Therefore, in regions with heavy snow, it would be more correct to build an lancet greenhouse. It will cost 3-5% more, but it is easy to make several large vents for summer ventilation, which is important east of the Urals, mountains and rivers.

Any arch shows all its virtues only when it is tense, operating load as part of the design or previously. For a greenhouse, as a light one-story structure, only the second option is possible. At the same time, the excellent mechanical qualities of PP are fully manifested in parts made of prestressed pipes. In combination with a working polycarbonate cladding, this brings greenhouses from it on a plastic tubular frame to a record ratio of strength, resistance and durability to cost. This implies another record - the popularity of structures of this type. Therefore, a little lower we will deal with them in more detail, but for now we will briefly consider one more arch.

Profile arch

In thin-walled three-dimensional parts, with bending radii characteristic of arched greenhouses, stresses in ordinary steel turn out to be far from its yield strength, on the one hand. On the other hand, galvanized C- and U-profiles for drywall are inexpensive, lightweight, and assembling a greenhouse frame from a profile of this type (see Fig.) seems to be elementary: a Phillips screwdriver and metal scissors are enough. When hardened with struts and crossbars, the “fresh” design comes out quite strong, even stronger than from PP pipes. And the skin can be attached to it not with clamps (see below), but somehow simpler and easier.

However, the first disappointments await the profile enthusiast already during assembly. Firstly, you have to twist a lot of screws and they are expensive. And the fingers cramped into a claw and bleeding calluses simply scream: “Well, buy, finally, you, the owner of such a screwdriver!” Secondly, manually marked and cut without a profile cutter (and there are a lot of them!) Do not connect exactly and the whole frame goes, as they say, sideways. In production, it’s easier, where the computer will calculate, transfer the data to the robot stamp, and the robot will cut it perfectly, it simply doesn’t know how badly.

But the most important disappointment awaits even before the end of the first season: the frame is rusting before our eyes. What, it would seem, should be read immediately in the specification for the profiles - they are not intended, like drywall, for outdoor use ...

plastic arches

Snow and wind...

Correctly arranging and assembling the plastic greenhouse itself is possible only if you know the wind and snow loads on it at the place of construction. The maps in fig. With the numerical values ​​of the loads, as they say, do not bother and do not expect complex formulas in the future: everything has already been reduced to the numbers of the load zones. If one of them is indicated in the text, it means the largest in this place. For example, the greenhouse will be in the 2nd wind and 6th snow zone, or vice versa. Then you need to do it for the 6th zone; features in snow and wind, if in this case they are, are negotiated.

frame

Branded greenhouse frames are assembled from special pipes on shaped connectors (see, for example, Fig.): glasses, flat and three-coordinate crosses, straight and oblique tees, splitters for several angles. They are on sale, but they are expensive and, as a rule, are designed for a specific design. Pushing around in an attempt to adapt it for yourself, you still have to buy the rest to complete the set. Which immediately and entirely would be half the price.

We will go the other way. We will get by with 3/4 inch PP water pipes and cheap connectors for them sold everywhere: straight couplings, flat tees and right angles. We will connect the details, as well as. Soldering iron rental welding machine) for propylene is inexpensive, it consumes little electricity (plugs into a regular outlet), and you can learn how to weld PP in half an hour. The finished frame of this design will come out no worse than the branded one, but much cheaper. A novice master will be able to assemble it over the weekend. Since aerodynamics and icing are more important for the greenhouse than the weight of the upper floors, the frame is designed according to aeronautical rather than building principles. Good planes fly, sometimes longer than an ordinary house costs.

Zero cycle

The main thing about preparing the base of the greenhouse has already been said earlier. It is only necessary to add that the site for the greenhouse must be planned with an accuracy of 5 cm / m, otherwise the probability of soil acidification increases. If the greenhouse is not ground, after planning, a soil slope of 6-8 cm / m is formed towards the drain into the drainage. For lightweight greenhouses, the slope is formed before the gravel formwork is installed, and for capital greenhouses, after the strip foundation is poured. The slopes of the drains of winter trench greenhouses and thermos greenhouses are formed by a screed of their floors. Don't forget about slope waterproofing!

The arcs of the arches of the considered design are tightly put on the pins of reinforcing bars protruding upwards by 40-50 cm. It is not necessary to make a ledge less, the arcs will not hold well. More - also not necessary, bent incorrectly. Under the lightweight greenhouse, the rebars are driven into the ground close to the formwork by 1 m or more, and under the capital they are walled up in the foundation for the same 40-50 cm. in the thickness of the formwork boards.

Note: in zones 1-3, the thresholds of the door and window frames are also attached to the formwork with clamps and self-tapping screws. In the upper zones, frames are made without thresholds, and their racks are put on pins from reinforcement, like arcs.

How to make a frame?

Dimensions

Standard lengths water pipes- 6, 5 and 4 m. From them, semicircular arches are obtained with a span of 3.6, 3 and 2.3 m, taking into account cutting waste and shrinkage of welding joints. These values ​​should guide the calculation of the overall dimensions of the greenhouse. Lancet arches are more reliable if the snow zone is 4th and higher. Then they go, on the contrary, from the size: the arch is drawn on a scale on a graph paper (the upper corner is necessarily straight in this case!), The length of its wing is measured with a curvimeter, a flexible ruler or laying out along the contour of a thick thread, followed by measurement, and transferred to the length of the workpiece. 20 cm are added for cutting-shrinkage. You can also do the opposite: measure a piece of soft wire (for example, a copper winding wire with a diameter of 0.8-1.2 mm) on a scale, bend it as it should on a graph paper and beat off the arc wing profile on it .

Assembly

The arcs of the arches are assembled straight on a flat surface. They are put in place one by one; during the assembly process, a ridge and longitudinal load-bearing beams are mounted - stringers, pos. 1 in fig. Door and window frames, pos. 2 are assembled separately on corners, tees and straight couplings. Couplings - the basis of hinges and latches; sections of frame racks are welded into the nozzles of the couplings. Then, hinges and latches from pipe segments of a larger diameter are attached to the coupling bodies with self-tapping screws. In this case, it is possible, because there will be no permanent loads in these places, and malfunctions of hinges with latches do not affect the strength of the frame and are easily eliminated. The assembly of door panels and vents begins by threading their rear pillars into the hinge holders, then the rest is added by weight. They are sheathed with anything, on self-tapping screws in the frames of the paintings, because and these nodes are not load-bearing.

The lightest frame of this type is shown in pos. 3. Pay attention - the ridge beam, like the stepped stringers, is assembled from pipe sections on tees. In this case, the door and window frames are also fastened on tees flush with the gables.

How often to put arcs?

The installation step of the arcs is determined as follows:

• If zones 1 and 1, take a step of 1100 mm.
• In other cases, put the zone numbers and get the summary number of the load zone N.
• With the largest zone up to the 3rd inclusive, 4800 is divided by N, and the resulting value is rounded to the nearest smaller integer, a multiple of 50, and the step is obtained in millimeters; e.g. for 2 and 3 zones it will be 950 mm, and for 3 and 3 - 800 mm.
• If the largest zone is 4 or 5, 5600 is divided by N; further - similarly to 2 and 3 zones.
• In the largest 6 and 7 zones, 5500 is divided by N.

The dependence of the arc step on the zone, as we see, is non-linear. This is explained by the fact that as the zone number increases, stringers take on an increasing load, see below. So the design comes out a little more material-intensive, but significantly less labor-intensive.

Note 15: The 8th zone, both of which, generally speaking, is problematic. Here, it happens that snow breaks concrete floors, and the wind shifts houses from foundations. Any independent construction here is carried out at your own peril and risk, and this applies to greenhouses in full. How to get out, with a certain degree of risk, will be said later in the course of the presentation.

Gain

You can rely on the lightest frame with some apprehension in 1-2 zones, but even here it is desirable to reinforce it with at least a couple of stringers. The schemes of their location for different zones are shown in pos. A-V. Do not forget only that the coordinates are given for the longitudinal axes of the ties, and the beams themselves are stepped, like the ridge beam. With this in mind (and shrinkage for welding), it is necessary to mark the workpieces.

Attention! Pairs of stringers of the same level are always made in mirror image, pos. E!

In the 6th zone, the upper pairs of stringers are connected with crossbars (pos. E), in the 7th, the ends of the tunnel on both sides are reinforced at the bottom with braces according to the 2-1 scheme (see Fig.) In the 8th, you need to reinforce according to the 3-2 scheme -1 (see ibid), but, again, without any guarantee. It is useless to increase the number of stringers in the upper zones: figuratively speaking, they begin to push loads away from each other and, in general, the structure weakens.

How to put braces without a gusset? Moreover, the angles are fractional? By using homemade clamps galvanized 0.5-0.7 mm, see fig. on right. The workpiece is bent in a U-shape, mandrels are inserted into it from segments of a steel pipe and the ears are pressed with a vise. It is convenient to use 2 pairs of vices: in stationary desktops, they squeeze a long ear, and with smaller adjustable ones, a short one.

After crimping, the mandrel is removed, the clamp is cut to size and shape, and holes are drilled for M6 bolts. Such handicraft crimping is obtained with a shortage, but here it is only for the better: compressed by bolts in place, the clamp and pipes will grab tightly, and it will acquire monstrous rigidity for such a thin metal.

Arrows and legs

The location of the stringers on the lancet arcs is determined based on the basic semicircular with the same span, as shown in pos. E. Please note that this method is only valid for arrows with a 90 degree tip angle! You can’t make the arrowhead single without a gusset, well, you don’t need to. An additional pipe, corners and tees for a two-beam ridge, pos. I. Its halves are performed, like stringers, in a mirror. The offset from the top is the maximum; beams need to be moved as close to it as possible, according to the size of the available tees and the skills of PP welding. By the way, it is easiest to bring out both the chimney and the semicircular arch through the double ridge, it will make it stronger.

If the arches rest on vertical legs no higher than 60 cm, counting from the top of the armatures, then an additional stringer is placed at the junction of their wings with legs, pos D. Reinforcement in zones 7 and 8 is performed according to the same schemes, shifting one cell down, those. there should not be empty cells under reinforced ones. If the legs are higher than 0.6 m - alas! - must be considered especially, because the bottom of the frame will no longer work as a continuation of the arches, but as a separate box.

Door and window

In zones starting from the 3rd, it is necessary, and in the lower ones it is highly desirable to fasten the door and window frames not directly to the arc (slightly beveled tees create unwanted stresses in the frame), but hang them in it on half-bars and short longitudinal holders, pos. K, K1, K2. Such a mount, to an inexperienced eye, seems rather weak, but remember: a still working sheathing made of durable polycarbonate will fall on the gables. Ultimately, the frame will be no weaker and will last no less than the DC-3 or An-2 fuselage.

And under the film?

The current film greenhouses are not at all the flimsy disposable "polyethylene" of the past. A greenhouse cover made of modern reinforced film will last 5-7 years and will cost several times cheaper than a hard polycarbonate one. The special greenhouse film has another valuable property: hydrophilicity. It retains a layer of moisture up to 2 mm on its surface, which improves the transparency of the coating and enhances the greenhouse effect. Thanks to this, a modern film greenhouse can be seasonal and even semi-winter. It does not cause problems and airing film greenhouses in the heat: it is enough to tuck the edges of the canopy; they do not need a door with a window. In general, for places with a mild and temperate climate, a greenhouse under a film is the best option, but in others it makes no sense to build it.

The frame described above will go perfectly under the film. It has quite an aircraft margin of safety, and when calculating for a film, it is enough to take the zone numbers 1 higher. The pillars of the door and window frames must be left, see Fig., because they take part of the load. You can fasten the Velcro to the racks not with self-tapping screws, as in the figure, but with clamps made of thin soft wire. Not so aesthetically pleasing, but simpler, cheaper and no less reliable. If with self-tapping screws, then it is better to install direct couplings under the Velcro and wrap the self-tapping screws into their thickened cases.

Rigid roof

Film greenhouses justify themselves mainly in cases where they are temporarily installed for a relatively short period of time. For example, someone bought a plot for a forest plantation or pasture for livestock. As now with loans - everyone knows. In order to raise funds for its development, I decided to wait 3-4 years, and for the time being, rent out the land inexpensively. This is where subtenants and a farmer colleague can help out, and it’s not bad to profit from it yourself.

For long-term use, greenhouses with a rigid polycarbonate coating are more profitable. With an estimated service life of 20 years (and this is not the limit), it will cost less than 2-3-fold replacement of the film cover. In addition, you do not need to mess with its washing, removal and installation twice a year and allocate space for its winter storage. So let's take a closer look at polycarbonate.

It has already been said above that the greenhouse, in terms of its coverage, differs from other structures in a sharp difference in environmental conditions inside and outside. A coating up to several cm thick has to withstand the same loads as a half-meter stone wall. Therefore, the methods of working with polycarbonate for a greenhouse are somewhat different from them for and. How to cut polycarbonate for a greenhouse, gives an idea of ​​the video:

How do you attach it to the frame?

We will consider only individual points that are insufficiently covered in well-known sources.

Structure

Cellular polycarbonate slabs are produced in different thicknesses and structures. Plates of the same thickness can be of different structure, and vice versa. The 2R structure (see Fig.) is unsuitable for greenhouses either in terms of heat-insulating or mechanical qualities.

R-type structures (without diagonal connections in cells) are more transparent than RX type, but they hold dynamic loads worse, therefore they are suitable for places where the wind zone is not higher than the 4th one. 3R is used where the average winter temperature is above -15 degrees or frost is below -20 for more than a day no more than once every 3 years. In other cases, you need to take 5R.

The temperature ranges for 3RX and 6RX are the same, but in cases where the wind zone is 5th and higher. For any 8th zone, the only acceptable option is 6RX. 5RX does not need to be taken, it is not very transparent. 6RX and was designed to replace the 5RX in greenhouses.

The thickness of the plates is determined as follows:

• If both zones are not higher than the 2nd, we take 6 mm.
• For other cases, we find the summary number N, as for the frame.
• For the 3rd and 4th largest zones, N is left as is.
• For the largest 5 and 6 zones, we take N + 1.
• If there is a 7 or 8 zone, we take N + 2.
• The resulting value is multiplied by 2.
• The result is rounded up to the nearest higher standard slab thickness.

Thus, for example, for 4 and 4 zones, a thickness of 16 mm is obtained, and for 8 and 8 - 40 mm. However, there are no both 8 zones in the Russian Federation.

sheathing

The standard dimensions of polycarbonate slabs are 6x2.1 m and 12x2.1 m. The general dimensions of the greenhouse are chosen such that an overhang of at least 10 cm is formed above the gables of the arched and faceted houses and along the entire perimeter of the roof of the houses. According to SNiP, the overhang should be at least 15 cm. If the greenhouse is commercial and you intend to obtain a sanitary certificate for the products, please note that the inspectors and the greenhouse will check the entire form.

The radii of curvature of the greenhouse arches allow the slabs of the most commonly used structures 3R and 5R to be laid on the frame both along and across. How would be more correct? And so, and so. It all depends on what loads in a given place are greater, static from snow or dynamic from wind. If the number of the snow zone is greater than the wind zone, it is better to lay it across, on the left in Fig. Otherwise - along, on the right there.

Note: RX structures are only laid lengthwise, otherwise sudden failure of the coating due to material fatigue is possible.

Longitudinal joints are assembled on standard FP (straight) and RP (ridge) connectors, depending on the bending radius in a given place. It is desirable to seal the upper gaps of the joints with building silicone, marked with yellow circles. It is better to take one-piece connectors, they are cheaper and there is nothing to rust in them. In extreme cases, it is still possible to separate the joint by dripping it with brake fluid and pulling the plates along in different directions.

When sheathing across, some of the seams between the plates may be hanging. In this case, the plates are connected in a known amateur way (shown in the inset): strips of flexible plastic 3-6 mm thick with sealing gaskets made of rubber or silicone and self-tapping screws. It is better to take strips and an overlay for a joint from PVC. It is strong enough, reliable and resistant for such a case. But its main advantage is in the junction - PVC quite quickly sticks tightly to the gasket and it never squeezes out from under the lining.

Mounts

Methods for attaching polycarbonate to the frame with thermal washers (pos. 1-3 in the figure) have been described many times and we will not dwell on the details. We only note that if the sheathing is longitudinal, then both ends of the plates must be pasted over with perforated self-adhesive tape and framed with an end profile.

The frame of the greenhouse, as indicated above, is highly undesirable to weaken with holes and fasteners. The skin is attached to it with clamps made of steel 1.5-3 mm thick, pos. 4 and 5. A strip 40-60 mm wide is bent along the mandrel in a U-shape, clamped together with the mandrel in a vice and the mustache is bent. The bend must be done taking into account the thickness rubber gaskets, and them, in turn, according to the thickness of the walls of the cage connectors of the frame. The thermal gap between the plates 3-5 mm wide is filled with silicone sealant.

Hut from the windows

The greenhouse from the frames of unusable windows appeared during the mass construction of Khrushchev. Firstly, then the carpentry for new buildings was of the most vile quality: “Come on with the plan! Val come on! The current generation of people will live under communism!” Therefore, many new settlers immediately changed the windows-doors to custom ones, since the materials and work then cost a penny. Secondly, the workers, i.e. officially permanently employed, summer cottages were then distributed to everyone right and left. Thirdly, penny state prices and availability are by no means and by no means friends. It is appropriate here to recall an old Soviet political anecdote. The chairman of the collective farm "Light of Ilyich" opens the general meeting: "Comrades! We have two issues on the agenda: the repair of the cowshed and the construction of communism. On the first question: there are no boards, no nails, no bricks, no cement, no lime. Let's move on to the second question.

We will move on to technical issues, they are of some use. Now, too, many windows are being replaced with metal-plastic with double-glazed windows, but the frames are still strong. Of these, you can assemble a completely reliable and durable house, if you help the frames a little to carry the load. It’s not worth covering such a structure in Khrushchev’s style with a disposable film, it’s better to spend money on a couple of sheets of inexpensive 3R 6 mm polycarbonate, which, with a greenhouse size of about 6x3 m, will make it possible to do for the roof, except for the gables, with just one roof truss. We will get a completely seasonal and commercial greenhouse for zones up to the 4th inclusive, i.e. for most of the territory of the Russian Federation suitable for agricultural use.

The design of the frame of the greenhouse under the frame is shown in fig. for clarity, the proportions of parts are given arbitrarily. Dimensions in plan - 5.7x2.7 m; internal space - 5.4x2.4 m. It will be needed for it, in addition to polycarbonate and frames, 15-16 boards 150x40 mm 6 m long and 1 beam 150x150 mm of the same length; only 0.675 cu. m of softwood, and about 5 kg of nails 70, 100 and 150 mm.

The foundation is a wooden columnar, of 6 pillars in 2 rows 1 m long. A beam is needed just for the foundation. The protrusion of the pillar at the highest point of the site above the ground is 30 cm; the rest are aligned with it by the hydraulic level. It is not necessary to deepen the pillars according to the calculation of freezing, the structure will play along with the ground for many years, it was checked on Khrushchev's "polyethylene".

The beams of the lower support frame - grillage - and the upper - strapping - are sewn on nails from boards as usual, in a zigzag, pos 1. The driving step in a row is 250-400 mm. The grillage is assembled into a prefabricated spike, and the harness into the prefabricated quarter (pos. 2) is also on nails, 5 envelopes per corner. Trimmings of boards measuring 150x150 dissolve into three, these sticks will come in handy later.

Next, the grillage is mounted on the foundation and 2 boards are spread in three lengths. Here, from the new tree, you will have to go to the old one, sort the frames. 8 solid highest ones (and preferably 10, if there is one), set aside immediately (on the left in the figure), they will go to the corners and, if there are 2 more, to frame the doorway. The rest are scattered over the estimated area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe walls somehow, if only there were fewer holes, on the right in fig.

Now, from a 50x40 rail, 4 racks are cut into the height of the tallest frame plus 10 mm and nailed to the grillage vertically at the corners flush with their external parties. The corners are sheathed on the outside with boards with a height of now racks plus 220 mm (grillage height + strapping height). The strapping is laid in the nest that has turned out at the top and the entire box is finally sewn with nails.

Frames are installed starting from the corners. How to fasten them to the box and to each other is shown in pos. 3-5. Approaching from 2 sides to the places of the future door and swing window, they put the racks of the door and window frames from solid boards. They are fastened to the grillage, strapping and adjacent frames with nails using the same scrap bars. On them, if necessary, you can dissolve another 1-2 boards.

Now it's time for the roof. roof trusses do according to pos. 6. Polycarbonate is laid on the roof along. A longitudinal strip 40 cm wide is cut from each slab. In this case, roof overhangs of about 15 cm are formed, and the strips will go to the sheathing of the gables.

The penultimate stages of work, firstly, close the gaping openings in the walls with foam plastic, and foam all the gaps. Foam in this case is not only a sealant and insulation; it will give the whole structure additional connectivity and strength. Secondly, they measure the dimensions of the door and vents in place and make their frames according to fig. on right.

Before the drainage device and the launch of the greenhouse, it remains to arrange the base. In Khrushchev's times, slate or roofing material was put on it, sprinkled with earth on the outside. It is easier for us: now there is such a wonderful (without irony) material as empty plastic bottles. From they are simply stuffed under the grillage with the necks inside, only the plugs do not need to be removed. You will get excellent thermal insulation with ventilation, absolute manufacturability with maintainability and long-term durability; environmentalists all over the world are ready to howl, what should they do with these bottles. And we are free.

Note: this type of box will also go under a disposable plastic film, only it needs to be reinforced with the same 50x40 rails, see fig:

Bottled

Plastic bottles are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Among the remarkable qualities of this material, there is a unique one: it transmits UV almost without loss. This allows you to enhance the greenhouse effect and thereby reduce heating costs and extend the operating cycle of the greenhouse. Therefore, if it is possible to get at least 400 PET containers, it makes complete sense to make a greenhouse entirely from bottles.

There are 3 options here. The first is to dissolve the bottles into sheets on long winter evenings and sew them on a typewriter with nylon or, better, propylene threads into panels of a suitable size, pos. 1 in fig. Stitching with a furniture stapler, as is sometimes advised, is not worth it: staples will cost more than threads and rust pretty quickly. You can also find tips to sew not with a thread, but with a fishing line. If their authors know where to get a machine that sews with a fishing line, or they themselves know how to sew with their hands at the same speed, then it doesn’t matter - the fishing line both in length and in weight will cost many times more than threads, and the seam will not drag out, because. the line is solid, not twisted.

The second option is to assemble something like sausages from bottles (fig. on the right), string them on steel bars and fill the frame frame with such “kebabs” vertically, with their necks down, so that condensate drains, or horizontally, pos. 2 and 3 in fig. with types of bottle greenhouses. If the street is below +10, there will be no sense from such a greenhouse without closing the gaps between the bottles, but with spring warmth it will give a greater concentration of light, which will accelerate the development of plants.

The third option - the bottles are stacked horizontally with their necks inside, pos. 4. Thermal insulation and light concentration are maximized (even houses are built this way), but you need not hundreds, but thousands of bottles. They are connected with glue or cement, which is laborious and expensive, so bottle greenhouses, so to speak, horizontal, are rare.

Is it possible in winter without heating?

The greenhouse loses a lot of heat, and its heating costs a pretty penny. The marketability of self-heating greenhouses is very limited by an excess of nitrates in the soil. In order to obtain products that meet modern sanitary standards without winter heating, a thermos greenhouse was invented.

It was invented not at all by Ukrainian craftsmen today, as ukrnet is broadcasting with might and main, but in Israel more than half a century ago. By the way, it was for thermos greenhouses that we had to come up with the same cellular polycarbonate and special thermal blocks that combine good insulating and mechanical properties. From a bare idea to a workable design, most often it takes a very long time ...

Israel is the world leader in greenhouses. Greenhouses are built there in deserts and mountains. In summer, the ground surface heats up to +60, and in winter it can be -20 for a short time. And the idea itself is that in the soil at a certain depth a constant temperature is maintained, equal to the average annual temperature in this place; in the subtropics it is about + 18-20. With an increase of 7-12 degrees from the greenhouse effect, we get just the optimum for plants up to pineapples.

The thermos is only the upper belt of the underground structure of the greenhouse, see fig. Lower, ordinary concrete, in essence air conditioning. In winter, mother earth warms it, and in summer, hot light will not flow into the pit with cool dense air. As a result, the temperature in the greenhouse can be regulated only by vents without the cost of heating and air conditioning. To enhance lighting in winter, we orient one roof slope to the south, and cover the other from the inside with aluminum foil.

In the temperate zone, the situation is different. Firstly, although the average annual here is about +15, however, heating depends not only on temperature, but also on the incoming heat flow. In order to get to the “air conditioner” of the required power, you have to go down beyond the freezing depth by at least 2 m. Already in the Rostov region, this requires a pit of 2.5 m. Secondly, peak colds do not last hours, but days . Therefore, the volume of the greenhouse needs a large one. In the same Rostov region. minimum dimensions pit in terms of - 5x10 m.

With such fifty, indeed, in our area you can harvest 400-600 kg of pineapples and up to 1.5 tons of bananas per year. How to sell them? Okay, let's say we live in some distant kingdom, where consumer control for a moderate bribe in the national currency is always ready to willingly and joyfully sell heroin as a food additive, and weapons-grade plutonium as children's toys.

But half a ton of even small pineapples per piece will give about 1000 fruits. How much is 1 (one) pineapple? In a supermarket, with a branded sticker and a quality certificate for the batch? How often and how many pineapples are bought? When, in this scenario, will only the excavation of 120-130 cubic meters of soil pay off? In general, a backyard thermos greenhouse in the boreal zone can be classified as a project in which common sense and sober calculation are completely replaced by an indefatigable desire to achieve something uterine-his own contrary to the obvious.

Of much greater interest is a small ground-based greenhouse-thermos with its own heat accumulator in the form of a heater, operating on the principle solar oven with heat storage, see fig. on right. At -5 outside, its interior near Moscow can warm up to +45. Therefore, in the arch there is a sliding hatch-temperature regulator with a clapper valve and a deflector that diverts a cold stream from plants to the zone of greatest heating.

The upper clapperboard should be triggered by the slightest breath back and forth, so its sash is made extremely light, freely moving and spring-loaded to zero balance in the closed position with a thin, 0.15-0.25 mm, steel wire. The cracker still does not save from frost, so the hatch-regulator must be closed manually at night.

The indicated dimensions are minimum; the greenhouse can be made bigger. If it is made in the form of a ridge, but for every full and incomplete 1.5 m of length along the front, you need your own hood with an air duct so that the heater warms up evenly. So, a greenhouse 2 m long should have 2 air ducts and 2 hoods. You don’t need to pull the hood high up, it’s still not a stove; the thrust here is minimal, if only the heated air seeps through the heater.

When to Minimize

The mini-greenhouse is used firstly in city apartments. Here, a part of the insulated balcony or loggia is taken under it. It is better to make a partition from the same polycarbonate. Boxes with earth are hung on the wall; at the same time, it is possible to grow exotic flowers and supply the family with radishes, strawberries, and greens in winter.

In crop production, mini-greenhouses are used to create special conditions for a certain group of plants. In an ordinary box greenhouse, for this it is enough to nail arcs from a metal-plastic pipe to the boxes and cover everything with a film, on the left in fig. For potted crops, you have to make small copies of large greenhouses, in the center there.

In the country garden economy, a mini-greenhouse made of bottles will be an excellent help, on the right in fig. higher. Due to the high concentration of light, it can be transparent, and fresh air has a beneficial effect on plants in the early phases of development. In addition, with such no hassle: he took it out and put it.

There are also types of highly productive mini-greenhouses available for self-production. Here, for example, in Fig. on the right is a greenhouse made of tires. Despite the clumsy appearance, it is high-tech: a two-stage greenhouse effect and drip irrigation are used. With skillful selection of varieties, one rack of "auto-greenhouses" can produce up to half a bucket of tomatoes or 700-800 g of strawberries per day.

So what about in winter?

A small winter greenhouse can pay off either north of approximately the parallel of Kotlas, or in the very south, in the Krasnodar Territory and Stavropol Territory. In the first case, the matter is decided by rather high prices and demand, in the second - a mild winter. Both there and there, for a small private trader, in general, 2 designs are possible.

The first is a classic trench greenhouse-greenhouse, only covered with polycarbonate, see fig. below. Because the frame is fully load-bearing, when calculating the coverage, the zone number is taken 1 less. In winter, flowers and onions are grown. By the end of February, when the mulch is almost overgrown, tomatoes and cucumbers are sown and harvested at the end of April. In the summer they “greenhouse” as usual, and in the fall, when the soil crop is cheap, the trenches are refilled; this is not a matter of one day, because fresh biofuel warms up very strongly at first. Then the cycle repeats.

The second is a box greenhouse-dugout without drainage; next diagram. rice. Dugout is a relative name, because. concrete screed The floor won't hurt her. Excess water flows into the trays, where, under the influence of heat from the heating registers, it evaporates and humidifies the air.

It is advisable to insulate the basement and blind area of ​​the dugout greenhouse, but the foundation does not need to be insulated. In the positive belt around it, the soil will not fall asleep for the winter, which will provide additional heating in low light. In this regard, the dugout can be considered a semi-thermos greenhouse.

How to get warm?

Heating, as already mentioned, accounts for the majority of winter greenhouse costs. If the heating is water from the boiler, then the optimal system layout will be. It was specially designed for industrial premises, therefore it does not fit well into residential premises, but it is simple, inexpensive and very economical at the required temperature up to +16 degrees, and in the greenhouse the greenhouse effect will add heat to the optimum.

However the best option heating of the greenhouse - stove from a furnace-heater such as buleryan or buller. Its convector nozzles placed obliquely upward direct hot air onto the roof slopes; here he does not let them freeze, and he cools down to a comfortable temperature and falls on the plants with a warm veil, creating the effect of the height of spring. You can learn more about the features of furnace heating of greenhouses from the video below.

Video: furnace heating of the greenhouse

For a greenhouse with an area of ​​​​less than 10 square meters. m, the smallest buller turns out to be powerful, because. at a very low fuel load, the efficiency of bullers drops sharply. In this case, a potbelly stove will help out from a gas cylinder of 12 or 27 liters, the efficiency of potbelly stoves is just quite high with a weak firebox. As for long-burning stoves, they are unsuitable for greenhouses: they create a weak convection center and a strong heat radiation that burns plants. Spring is like a desert.

About lighting

Greenhouse lighting requires a separate detailed discussion. Let's share a little secret here: 1 special phytolamp for 24 W can be replaced by 3 ordinary housekeepers of 13-15 W with spectra at 2700K, 4100K and 6400K. Power consumption doubles, but is still three times lower than that of incandescent lamps.

One such triad under flat conical reflectors provides sufficient illumination of an area of ​​4-6 square meters. m. Lamps should be hung in such a way that the same spectra do not coexist either in a row or between rows.

Finally

To summarize - what kind of greenhouse to build? For starters, bottles. It will quickly, simply and cheaply allow you to learn how to run a greenhouse business and feel its benefits.

Further, in a temperate climate, greenhouses made of polycarbonate on a frame made of PP pipes definitely dominate. In harsh places, a wooden roof is also preferred with polycarbonate. It is also good in that it itself has a minimal effect on environment. On permafrost, this is vital.

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