House, design, renovation, decor.  Courtyard and garden.  With your own hands

House, design, renovation, decor. Courtyard and garden. With your own hands

» How to make a small greenhouse with your own hands. DIY greenhouse: the best projects and assembly recommendations

How to make a small greenhouse with your own hands. DIY greenhouse: the best projects and assembly recommendations

Appointment

Like a greenhouse, a greenhouse is used to create a favorable microclimate for the preparation of seedlings or for the full-fledged cultivation of tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage and other plants.

In a broad sense, both structures are perceived as one and the same, although in reality a greenhouse is a small and unheated structure. And the greenhouse is a larger building with a heating and ventilation system, allowing for the cultivation of many crops at any time of the year.

Design

Greenhouses are quite simple in design. A frame is assembled from pipes, metal or wood, which is covered with a film, polycarbonate, glass, acrylic and other light-penetrating materials. If the weight of the structure is very large, it is additionally installed on the foundation.

For ventilation, removable panels or opening transoms are provided. Heating is carried out using water heating with radiators, infrared heaters or hot air from heat sources outside the greenhouse.

Installation

Since sunlight is vital for plants, you need to build a greenhouse on the south side. It is advisable to place it on a slope and close to other buildings in order to protect it from the wind and have access to utilities. It is better to stay away from tall fences and trees: they provide shade, and falling leaves reduce light transmission.

youtube.com
  • Complexity of assembly: low.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.
  • Variations: the frame can be replaced with plastic pipes, and the covering material can be replaced with a film.

The simplest design option, which is ideal for a small greenhouse. A frame made of reinforcement is installed directly on the garden bed, and agrofibre or, as it is also called, spunbond is stretched over it. This material protects from the sun, while retaining heat and moisture.

1. The dimensions of such a greenhouse are chosen arbitrarily, depending on the footage of the materials available. For example, it is convenient to cut a six-meter reinforcement in half. With such a length of arcs, the width of the greenhouse is about 80 cm. The arcs themselves should be installed in steps of 1.2–1.5 m.


teplica-exp.ru

2. Arcs are bent from reinforcement with a diameter of 8 mm. Then they put on drip irrigation tubes or an old hose, leaving 10–20 cm at each end, so that it is convenient to insert the structure into the ground.


ebayimg.com

3. After marking the installation points of the arcs, scraps of steel pipes or drilled wooden pegs 20-30 cm long are driven into the ground, and reinforcement is inserted into them.


stopdacha.ru

4. Spunbond can be sewn on sewing machine, forming folds-pockets, which are put on directly on the arcs. Another option is to install plastic pipe guides on the sides of the garden bed and attach agrofibre to them using purchased clips or cut pieces of pipes. As a result, the covering material can be easily lifted by simply removing them.


stblizko.ru

5. If desired, you can attach the arcs not to pipes driven into the ground, but to metal guides rigidly fixed along the edges of the base. This design will allow you to fold the greenhouse like an accordion, simply by moving the arcs.


must.kz

6. The free ends of the spunbond at the ends must be assembled, tied in a knot and secured with a peg, earth or other method.


samara.kinplast.ru

Here are the step-by-step video instructions.


dachadecor.com
  • Complexity of assembly: low.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.
  • Variations: instead of a film, you can use agrofibre, and the door can be made on a wooden frame.

A budget version of a greenhouse made of masonry mesh and ordinary film, which is quickly assembled and has a number of advantages. The structure does not require a foundation, due to its elasticity, it is resistant to wind loads, and is also convenient for tying plants from the inside. At the same time, by folding the mesh, you can get different sizes depending on your needs.

  1. Wooden beams, steel corners, pipes or channel bars are used as load-bearing posts. They are driven in at a distance of 1.2-1.4 m.
  2. The greenhouse arch is formed from two overlapping mesh pieces. From below it is attached with a wire to the posts, and from above it is fastened together with the same wire or plastic ties.
  3. To strengthen the structure in the middle of the passage, T-shaped supports made of wooden beams 50 × 50 mm are installed. If desired, they can also be driven into the ground.
  4. A film is put on a dome assembled from a mesh, which is held by strings of twine or rope stretched over it.
  5. The side walls are also made of foil, which is rolled up and attached to the dome with tape. In several places, small windows are cut at the top and bottom for ventilation of the greenhouse.
  6. The door is made on a wooden frame or made of the same film that is cut and attached to the side wall with magnets in the manner of door mosquito nets.


stroydachusam.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: average.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.

Another way to build a greenhouse on hastily... A wooden beam is used as a frame, and a packing stretch film is used as a covering material. With a large number of layers, it transmits light a little worse than ordinary PVC film, but on hot days this is even a plus.

  1. The film is sold in rolls, so the size of the greenhouse is chosen according to the cutting of the timber and taking into account your wishes.
  2. For the base, steel corners 40 × 40 mm are used, in which holes are pre-drilled for fastening the frame racks. They can also be bitumen treated or painted to extend their service life.
  3. The corners are hammered into the ground, and pieces of timber are screwed to them with self-tapping screws. In turn, the lower frame is attached to the timber, on which the side walls and the roof are assembled. All corners are reinforced with additional oblique pieces of timber.
  4. The door is assembled on a wooden frame in one of the side walls and hinged.
  5. The film is wrapped in parts, and in several layers and with an overlap. First, the gables are installed, then the roof slopes and only then the walls. You need to start wrapping them from the bottom so that the flowing rainwater does not get inside the greenhouse.
  6. After wrapping with glazing bead or river, the door and its outer contour of the door are upholstered, and then the film is cut around the frame. In the same way, you can make a window in the opposite wall.


teplica-piter.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: average.
  • Foundation: desirable.
  • Price: minimal.
  • Variations: it is possible to combine frames with foil to make roofs, side panels or doors from it.

The main advantage of this design is its low cost. Old window frames can be found, if not for free, then for a symbolic price. In addition, glass transmits light much better than film and polycarbonate. There are already vents in the windows for ventilation, and if you pick up a balcony block, there will also be a finished door.

  1. The size of the greenhouse depends on the size of the frames and the interior space you need. Aim for a width of about 2.5 m to get a passage of about 60 cm and two beds of 80–90 cm.
  2. Windows, together with glass, have a lot of weight, so it is advisable to install them on a solid foundation. It can be a shallow strip foundation, a massive wooden beam or a metal profile.
  3. A wooden frame or pillars in the corners are installed on the foundation, and frames are attached to them and to each other. The gaps between each block are covered with putty and clogged with strips of laminate backing or a thin wooden strip.
  4. A door is made in the front wall. Its role can be played by one of the windows, a balcony door or a wooden frame covered with a film. Ventilation is carried out through the window vents.
  5. To reduce the weight, it is better to make the roof from a wooden beam and a film. You can use all the same window frames, but in this case you will have to reinforce the structure with struts in the middle of the aisle so that it can withstand a lot of weight.


maja-dacha.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: average.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.
  • Variations: the film can be replaced with agrofibre or polycarbonate

A greenhouse made of polypropylene pipes attracts with its simplicity, reliability and low price. Materials are sold in any hardware store, and assembly does not require any special skills and tools. You can even do without a soldering iron if you connect the pipes not with fittings, but with through bolts.

  1. As usual, the dimensions are selected based on the needs and materials available. Polypropylene pipe is usually sold in 4m lengths and is easy to cut and spliced ​​with couplings.
  2. The first step is to calculate the length of the pipe and the number of fittings required. It is better to take with a margin, so that later you do not have to run the store.
  3. The main parts are soldered from the pipe, tees and crosses - arches with crossbars and longitudinal inserts.
  4. Next, a greenhouse is assembled from the prepared parts. If a soldering iron is not at hand, bolts with nuts and washers, which are inserted into drilled through pipes, can be used to connect.
  5. The film is fixed on the edges of the frame with the help of purchased pipe clamps or homemade clips from a slightly larger diameter pipe cut along the length of the pipe.


legkovmeste.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: average.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.
  • Variations: the film can be replaced with agrofibre or polycarbonate.

The classic version of the greenhouse, used for decades and not losing popularity at the same time. Wooden beams are easy to process, have a low weight and sufficient strength, and also retains heat well. The structure does not need a capital foundation - you can get by with a frame made of a bar of a larger section or use steel corners as a base.

  1. The standard cut of the timber is 6 m, therefore, it is from this figure that they are repelled. Most often, greenhouses are made 3 × 6 m, but if desired, the size can be either reduced or increased. The finished project with material calculations is available by this link.
  2. The assembly of the frame is the same as that of a greenhouse made of stretch film. Steel corners are hammered into the ground at intervals of about 1 m at the points of attachment of the racks. In each of them, two holes are drilled for self-tapping screws or one for M8 or M10 bolts.
  3. At the corners along the entire perimeter, vertical posts are fixed, which are tied with an upper contour of a bar. To stiffen the corners, add one jib on each side
  4. Opposite the racks, triangular roof trusses are installed and fixed. The slope angle is selected depending on the snow load. So, if there is a lot of snow in your area, the angle of inclination should be greater (the roof is higher and sharper).
  5. The door and window for ventilation are knocked down on wooden frames and installed in the front and rear walls, respectively.
  6. At the end, the frame is covered with a film, which is attached to the timber with the help of a rail stuffed over it. All sharp parts on wood are rounded or covered soft material so that the film does not break during operation.

  • Complexity of assembly: high.
  • Foundation: is necessary.
  • Price: high.
  • Variations: the foundation can be made of wooden beams or use steel reinforcement, corner or pipes driven into the ground.

Most popular and modern version greenhouses. Such a design is much more expensive than others, difficult to manufacture, but it will serve for more than one decade. Polycarbonate can withstand the open sun for 10-12 years, and the frame is made of profile steel pipe almost forever.

1. The standard size of polycarbonate is 2,100 × 6,000 mm, so it is convenient to cut it into four or two pieces with a size of 2.1 × 1.5 m or 2.1 × 3 m, respectively. Such pieces will be optimal for a greenhouse measuring 3 × 6 meters.

2. For reliable fastening and distribution of wind loads, a foundation is made under the greenhouse. It can be a strip shallow foundation, a frame made of wood treated with an antiseptic, or steel corners driven into the ground.

Yevgeny Kolomakin's YouTube channel

3. The structure of the greenhouse consists of an arch, which is formed with the help of arcs from a profiled steel pipe 20 × 20 mm, located at a distance of one meter from each other.

4. The arcs are fastened together by longitudinal sections from the same pipe, which are connected by welding.

5. A door is arranged at the front end: a 1.85 × 1 m frame is welded from the pipe, which is attached to the frame on hinges. A ventilation window measuring 1 × 1 m is made according to the same principle and is located at the rear end.

6. Covering with polycarbonate starts from the ends. The sheet is cut in half, attached to the profile on special self-tapping screws with thermal washers, and then trimmed along the arc with a sharp knife. After that, the side wall sheets are installed.


techkomplect.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: average.
  • Foundation: not required.
  • Price: low.

More simple and affordable option greenhouses made of polycarbonate. It does not use an expensive metal pipe that needs to be welded. And as a frame material, galvanized profiles for plasterboard systems are used. They can be easily cut with metal scissors and fastened with ordinary self-tapping screws.

  1. When choosing sizes, as usual, we start from the parameters of polycarbonate sheets. Since the profiles lose their rigidity when bent, it is better to stay not on an arched greenhouse, but on a gable greenhouse.
  2. By analogy with arcs from a metal pipe, a frame from a galvanized profile is assembled from ribs in the form of a house.
  3. The assembled modules are installed on a frame made of wooden beams and tied together with sections of profiles. Doors and a window for ventilation are made in the front and rear walls.
  4. At the end, the frame is sheathed with polycarbonate sheets, which are attached using special self-tapping screws with plastic thermal washers.


juliana.ru
  • Complexity of assembly: high.
  • Foundation: is necessary.
  • Price: high.
  • Variations: to facilitate the construction, the top can be made of polycarbonate or film.

The most correct, but rather laborious and expensive version of the greenhouse. The main trump card of glass is its excellent light transmission and durability. However, due to the heavy weight of the structure, a solid metal frame and foundation are required. In addition to the arrangement strip foundation, the complexity also lies in the need to use welding.

  1. When it comes to the choice of sizes, the glass greenhouse is no exception - everything is strictly individual and taking into account the materials available.
  2. The impressive weight of the glass and metal frame requires a complete foundation. Usually, a trench 30 cm deep and 20 cm wide is dug along the perimeter, a wooden formwork 20 cm high is installed on top, and all this is poured with concrete. Also, before pouring, anchor bolts are inserted into the formwork to fasten the frame.
  3. A metal channel or corner is attached to the resulting base with the help of anchors. Then, 1.6-1.8 m high posts from two folded corners 45 × 45 mm are welded to this frame. On top, they are fastened with longitudinal corner pieces.
  4. Next, rafters from the same double corners are placed on the resulting box. At the bottom, they are welded to the racks, and on top - to another corner, which acts as a ridge beam.
  5. A door is inserted into one of the walls, and a window for ventilation is arranged in the cover or wall.
  6. The glasses are installed in the frames obtained due to the use of double corners and are fixed with home-made stamps - plates bent in the shape of the letter Z made of thin aluminum or steel. The glue is attached to the corner with one hook, and to the glass with the second.


pinterest.com
  • Complexity of assembly: high.
  • Foundation: desirable.
  • Price: high.
  • Variations: the film can be replaced with polycarbonate or glass, and the frame can be made of profiles or pipes.

A domed or geodesic greenhouse attracts primarily with its unusual appearance: it entirely consists of many triangles and hexagons. Other advantages include high structural strength and best light transmission. The disadvantage of a geodesic dome is one - the complexity of manufacturing.

  1. The dimensions of such a greenhouse are selected individually, based on the required area. Since the structure of the frame is quite complex, the calculations are the most time consuming part of the project.
  2. In order not to get confused and take into account all the nuances, the calculation is conveniently carried out using a special calculator. In it, you can set the dimensions, select the "density" of the frame and get a list of all the necessary parts for assembly with dimensions, as well as their approximate cost.
  3. Regardless of the size, the domed greenhouse is highly durable and is not afraid of winds, so it is not necessary to make a foundation for it. However, since the construction of the structure is very labor-intensive, it is rational to extend its service life and equip a light strip foundation for fastening the frame.
  4. The ribs of the structure consist of triangles, which, in turn, are assembled from a wooden lath according to a pattern. First, you need to prepare the required number of such triangles.
  5. The greenhouse is assembled as a magnetic constructor from childhood. Starting from the bottom, one by one, rows of triangles are assembled, which are fastened together with self-tapping screws and form a dome. If everything is calculated correctly, it will close at the top and will be ideally correct in shape.
  6. One of the triangles in the roof is made folding or removable to provide ventilation. The door is either installed in the shape of a polygon, or it is made in a traditional shape with a mortise frame.
  7. The film covers the finished dome or is stretched over each triangle at the assembly stage. In the first case, it will be easier to replace the film when it breaks. The second one gives a more aesthetic look. Which one to choose - decide for yourself.

  • The protective layer on which the inscriptions are applied must be located on the outside of the greenhouse.
  • To obtain the most durable structure, be sure (!) Pay attention to the location of the polycarbonate "honeycomb" - they should only go vertically, in inclined structures - parallel to the slope.
  • When creating arches, keep in mind that polycarbonate sheets bend only in one direction - in length, that is, along the line of stiffeners.
  • The joints of the sheets should fall on the center of the frame rack, they connect the sheets only in this way.
  • This type of plastic is cut with a construction knife, jigsaw, grinder. You can also use a hacksaw for metal or a circular saw.
  • For a strong connection of the sheets to each other, special plastic profiles are used. Manufacturers do not recommend overlapping polycarbonate. In practice, when making a polycarbonate greenhouse with your own hands, cutting and adjusting the sheets is not always ideal. Some craftsmen generally manage to do without connecting profiles, placing polycarbonate with an overlap. The most important thing is that the joint must be in the center of the rack, and not sag in the air. Moreover, even with ideal installation under the pressure of the snow, the sheet can be squeezed out of the profile. In the case of overlap, this does not happen.
  • It is undesirable to use a powerful drill for screwing in self-tapping screws - it will overtighten the fasteners and often slide off during operation. It is better to work with an ordinary screwdriver. Polycarbonate is drilled at low speeds with little effort. Next, turn off the tool, insert the screws and continue working.
  • The distance between the screwed-in screws is 25-70 cm. It all depends on the type of frame and the expected snow and wind load.
  • When assembling polycarbonate structures, rivets are sometimes used instead of self-tapping screws. However, it will be more difficult to dismantle the greenhouse or replace a damaged sheet.
  • When the temperature changes, the plastic is able to change its size. With butt joints between the sheets, a small space of a couple of millimeters in size is necessarily left - a technological gap. Otherwise, cracks will form at the junction. For the same reason, the size of the holes for the fasteners is made slightly larger. To prevent the plastic from cracking, do not twist them all the way.
  • To compensate for expansion and protection from cold bridges, it is recommended to use special thermal washers for polycarbonate (self-tapping screws are purchased separately). It is allowed to use EPDM roofing screws equipped with a gasket or standard for metal with a rubber thermal washer, in which the thread has a small pitch.

1. Greenhouse house



From window frames you can build charming houses that will help not only provide plants with comfort, but also become a stunning decoration of the summer cottage.

2. Dome



A large polygonal greenhouse, the frame of which is made of wood covered with ordinary oilcloth. Despite the complexity of manufacturing, such a domed structure is distinguished by its attractive appearance, stability and excellent illumination.

3. Plastic cap



A mini greenhouse that can be made from an ordinary plastic bottle by simply cutting off the bottom of it. Such a greenhouse is best suited for cucumbers and zucchini as these plants do not tolerate transplanting well and spend a lot of effort on adaptation. At the beginning of disembarkation, the cap should be covered with a lid later, when the daytime temperature reaches twenty degrees, the lid should be removed, and later the bottle should be removed altogether.

4. Caskets



From four planks and a window frame, you can make an original small greenhouse for flowers and plants. First, the cover from the window frame should be kept closed, and when the plants grow and get stronger, fold it back.

5. Foldable design



Convenient practical folding greenhouse, which can be made of small diameter PVC pipes and ordinary polyethylene.

6. Umbrella



A small greenhouse made of a wooden barrel and an old oilcloth umbrella or the frame of an ordinary umbrella covered with polyethylene.

7. Cozy tent



A greenhouse tent, which can be built from a children's tent, equipping its walls with oilcloth or polyethylene inserts, or buy a ready-made film greenhouse tent. The advantages of this design are its compactness and mobility.

8. Plastic house



Plastic bottles can make a wonderful greenhouse open or closed type... The creation of such a greenhouse does not require large costs and special skills, and you yourself determine the size and design of the structure.

9. Lifting cover



An original greenhouse with a lifting lid, made of wooden planks, thin PVC pipes, polyethylene and metal chains. This design is quite simple to erect and very convenient to use.

10. Flowerbed



A small greenhouse that requires a wooden frame of the desired size, two thin plastic pipes and a piece of oilcloth. The beauty of this design is that when the plants get stronger and the night temperature rises, the oilcloth can be easily removed and thereby turn the greenhouse into a neat flower bed.

11. Mini house



An adorable greenhouse made of plastic CD boxes, perfect for growing indoor plants and will become a magnificent decoration of the balcony.

12. Pallets



A small greenhouse can be easily built from old pallets and plastic wrap. This greenhouse is perfect for growing seedlings or indoor flowers.

13. Container



An ordinary plastic container will make an excellent greenhouse, which is suitable for growing seedlings on the balcony.

14. Reliable box

Large greenhouse made of wood and polycarbonate.


A large and reliable greenhouse made of polycarbonate, attached to a wooden frame, which, despite the difficulties of construction and some investment, is perfect for growing any crops and will last for many years.

Continuing the topic to the attention of readers for proper disposal.

First of all, the greenhouse is designed to protect various garden and horticultural plants from the effects of negative atmospheric factors (hail, rain, snow, wind, and so on).

A favorable atmosphere is created inside the structure, which makes it possible to grow various fruit crops, and their yield in such conditions increases several times.

As for vegetables and greens, their harvest time comes much earlier compared to the same species if they are grown outdoors.

The huge advantage of installing greenhouses in a garden area is the fact that an excellent harvested crop, and in the case of some crops and more than once, it can provide vegetables and herbs for the entire winter-spring period.

This can be very cost effective, especially considering that the price of these products in stores during the indicated period of time is quite high.

Place for greenhouse installation

The idea to build a greenhouse with their own hands comes to minds of many gardeners and gardeners. But before starting work, you must first familiarize yourself with the construction stages of this structure and, most importantly, determine the shape of the greenhouse and its location.

It must be remembered that it is not set for one year. The average time of its operation can be almost ten years.

The best option in this matter would be consultations with specialists. Their advice can be obtained either directly (if such a master is included in the social circle) or via the Internet.

  • The place where the greenhouse will be installed must be flat, protected from wind loads. At the same time, the sun's rays must completely cover and heat the structure.
  • There is no need to set up a greenhouse in dark places, near a fence or trees.

  • In the case of the winter version of the greenhouse and growing plants in the cold season, it must be taken into account that the snow falling on the covering of the structure can prevent the penetration of sunlight. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that this does not happen and remove the snow caps in time.

In addition, due to insufficient supply of light and water heat to the greenhouse, it is possible to organize the supply of electricity and arrange watering in the greenhouse by installing an irrigation system.

Where to start building a greenhouse?

When building any structure, including a greenhouse, it is best to start the process with design. Create greenhouse blueprints to reflect it external forms and basic materials that will go to its device.

The structure itself can be small, with an area of ​​about two by three meters and a height of two and a half meters. Or large, three by six meters in area with a similar height.

Of the most popular configurations that are used when installing greenhouses, arched and gable greenhouses stand out. When choosing one of the species, not the last, and perhaps the most important role, is played by the factor of choosing the types of crops that will be grown in the greenhouse in the future.

For example, the arched type is more suitable for planting low-growing crops, that is, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers. The gable type will contribute to the better growth of tall crops (this type of tomato, cucumber and flowers).

In general, it is not difficult to create a project for a good greenhouse. If you cannot do this on your own, then on the Internet various standard projects of similar structures are always available.

Selection of materials for covering and frame

One of the most common basic materials used in greenhouse construction is polycarbonate. Its attractiveness comes from a number of characteristics, the advantages of this material in comparison with other types of materials used in the construction of similar garden structures, for example, film or glass.

Note!

Among the main characteristics are: light transmission, thermal conductivity and strength. One of the main advantages of the material is its lightness and plasticity. The internal composition of polycarbonate allows the sheets to be bent without the risk of breaking.

In addition, the price component serves as an additional advantage. Polycarbonate is considered a cheap material, which further increases its demand.

Already with the direct process of installing polycarbonate sheets, it is best to use a double sheet fastening system. Hard and open. Thus, a ventilation system is formed in the greenhouse.

Having decided on the material for covering the greenhouse, you can proceed to the selection of the frame. There is a wide selection of profiles that can be used when installing the frame system. This includes metal pipes with a round, rectangular or square section.

Each designated type has its own advantages and disadvantages. Galvanized pipes are considered the most suitable. square section... This profile is excellently characterized by high strength, as well as the presence of galvanized, which protects the structure from corrosion.

However, today plastic is gaining wide popularity among materials. Metal pipes are in many ways inferior to plastic pipes, and many have already appreciated this.

Note!

A plastic greenhouse is a modern high-quality construction that has many positive qualities due to the special properties of the material.

Of these, it should be noted that plastic pipes can be easily cut, glued and welded. It is an environmentally friendly material that is not subject to corrosion, mold, and can withstand various atmospheric loads.

Given the appearance of the greenhouse, you can choose either rigid PVC pipes for gable or single slope structures, or flexible PP or PVC for arched types.

In the end, whatever the choice of someone for whom a greenhouse made of pipes with his own hands is an already made decision, he can always compare and choose the most optimal frame option.

Greenhouse foundation

Installing the greenhouse on clean ground is certainly not worth it. A foundation is needed. Based on the fact that the structure itself belongs to lightweight types, however, requiring stability, the basis for it is made as follows:

Note!

  • A trench is being dug.
  • A sand bed with compaction with a thickness of 20 centimeters is being arranged.
  • Formwork is placed along the entire perimeter of the trench on both sides.
  • Reinforcement mesh is laid on the bottom of the trench over the entire area of ​​the sandy base.
  • The trench is filled with concrete. The upper concrete level mark is equal to the width of the installed formwork board.

When performing these works, it is imperative to remember that if the greenhouse itself is installed very quickly (within one or two days), then when installing the foundation it will take almost a month for good adhesion. Therefore, such work should be done in advance.

The final stage

When the structure is completely ready, it will be possible to proceed with the internal equipment. Placement of beds and aisles, determination of places for piping for irrigation, and so on.

Many people like to photograph their work. Some people prefer to shoot the whole process of work, while others like to take pictures based on the results of their work.

But with special pride, friends and acquaintances are always presented with a photo of a greenhouse made with their own hands, where already in full height tomatoes, eggplants and other all kinds of vegetables and greens ripen.

DIY greenhouse photo

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

We still feel the consequences of insufficient and malnutrition on a global scale today, but if the situation is not improving radically, then at least not significantly worsening, although less than 0.5 hectares of farmland per person remain on Earth. It is the greenhouse that helps to hold out until better times (while he is alive - hope!): the yield of fruit and vegetable crops in a greenhouse can exceed it in the open field by several times(see fig.), and the harvest is not harvested in one gulp on a market day, but gradually all year round; this makes it possible to sustainably meet demand and free up land for animal husbandry.

Note: from UN stuff. Also in 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 ones to taste, now they are confused in about 50% of cases. This means they do not feel a noticeable difference and speak at random. With an indispensable condition: samples for testing were grown in modern greenhouses using modern agricultural technologies. Which, in turn, in old greenhouses are either ineffective 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 can create a strong greenhouse effect. But he did not transform the greenhouses by himself, but only after they learned to produce it in the form of sheets of a honeycomb structure. This made it possible to create strong and durable 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, the greenhouse economy has also become a publicly available help: a greenhouse on a quarter of a hundred square meters of land is able to provide families with fruits and greens all year round and even give a surplus for sale.

Polycarbonate is easy to process, and the technology of creating structures with working cladding from it is simple. WITH widespread pipes made of structural plastics and methods for their quick and durable connection ceased to be a serious problem and the construction of the frame. Currently on sale there is a wide range of kits for assembling small backyard greenhouses, 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 in 2009-2014 increased more than 20 (!) times.

Note: structural plastics are those that are capable of bearing mechanical operational loads for a long time. PVC, for example, for all its advantages, plastic is not structural, although it can be very useful in the greenhouse business, which will be discussed below. Of the engineering plastics, polyisopropylene (PP) is the most used: it is not expensive, and its mechanical properties are comparable to steel. Further, unless otherwise stated, plastic will always mean 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 you not only how to make a greenhouse yourself, 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 well-developed design by others in these specific circumstances may turn out to be unsuitable for any reason, and we will create our greenhouse for our own local conditions, costing 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 grow 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, bell peppers, zucchini, squash. They are cultivated here as annuals, but in fact they are evergreen and with minimal heating costs can produce marketable products 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 fresh air and coolness more. Therefore, and also for a number of other reasons, a good old greenhouse made of wood is better suited for their small-scale production and growing for our own consumption, so we will also deal with them. We will not ignore the mini-greenhouses for the dining room of greenery, flowers and seedlings, especially since this can be arranged in a city apartment.

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

Greenhouse or greenhouse?

Greenhouses with greenhouses are usually distinguished by size. They say that the greenhouse is large, you can enter it and work there as in a vegetable 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: a large building can be a greenhouse, and a small box can be a greenhouse.

Note: about visibility and essence. The famous ancient Greek philosopher-sophist was once asked: "What is a man?" He thought about it and replied: "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. For this, the soil in it is mulched deep enough with manure; the best is horse. By decomposing, biofuel heats the earth from the inside. 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 plant nutrients - green mass - by the vegetation. If plants have their own depots of supplies (bulbs, rhizomes), then they are primarily spent on this, and the root system is still lagging behind in development. Plants, figuratively speaking, do not yet think about fruiting in such conditions.

Greenhouses are used primarily 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 feathers, fresh watercress and lilies of the valley by a predetermined date: New Year, March 8. Forcing the plants are so depleted that they either die or require a long rest in the vegetative phase. Forcing table greens gives products of excellent quality if the planting material was environmentally friendly, because the plants take very little from the soil.

Note: The simplest full-fledged greenhouse for seedlings and forcing onions for greens can be built in half an hour or an hour, see fig. The fertile soil layer is removed with a bayonet, folded into a pile. Choose another half bayonet and lay a layer of manure. Put the soil on top, make a cover from the film - and you're done! In central Russia, such a greenhouse produces production 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 soil, air from above and / or from the side. This gives the “high spring effect”: the plants strive to bear fruit as quickly as possible in order to start accumulating nutrients for the winter or dry season. Well, if a paradise with an eternal spring is arranged for them, then you can "fatten" as much as you like without depleting yourself, if only 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 industry.

Note: a greenhouse cannot be a greenhouse, but any greenhouse can become a greenhouse. In general, this requires increasing the soil heating and weakening the air heating. But the intricacies of handling forcing crops are already a topic from agricultural technology, and not the device 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 direct the rays of the Sun inward at a steeper angle. On the one hand, this is good: in winter, the stingray works as a light concentrator - it collects oblique winter light over a larger area and directs 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 of total reflection, then only half of the scattered light will pass inward, and the straight line will be reflected completely. Based on this:

  • In middle latitudes, the angle of inclination of the slopes should be selected within 30-45 degrees from the horizontal.
  • The further north the greenhouse is located, the steeper the slopes should be.
  • Greenhouses of conventional construction must be gable and oriented with the ridge of the roof 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: In this respect, cellular polycarbonate has an additional advantage over glass - light refracts each layer of its structure and the degree of light concentration turns out to be higher. But the layers of polycarbonate are thinner than the thinnest glass, so its light transmission is almost the same as that of single-layer glass.

How do plants sense light?

Refraction in the greenhouse cover is also important: it smooths out fluctuations in lighting and temperature in it during the day and season. Most horticultural crops are quite tolerant 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 is understood by plants as a signal of the approach of unfavorable conditions. At the same time, their physiology switches from growth and fruiting algorithms to survival and accumulation of their own reserves: yield falls, product quality deteriorates. Cucumbers are a classic example. Let it be for a short time, but it got abruptly cold or breathed in heat - that's all, they dimmed and went to taste 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? By marketability, greenhouses are divided as follows:

  1. Winter, or year-round - allow you to grow any crops all year round. Today, physiologically, only durian and cherimoya do not lend themselves to greenhouse farming.
  2. Seasonal capital, or semi-winter - give marketable products from Central Russia for 8-10 months. a year. In these, either annuals or plants with a physiology that require / endure a period of dormancy 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; they are usually referred to as seasonal greenhouses. As a rule, early / late common vegetables and greens are cultivated in them.
  4. Temporary - used for growing seedlings in natural soil, forcing or for one, two or three times the harvest of crops that greatly deplete the soil: root crops, strawberries, etc. When the plot is depleted, the greenhouse is dismantled, transferred to a new place, and the land is left to rest under fallow or sown with nitrogen-fixing crops, legumes, etc.
  5. Greenhouses - they are placed (it is difficult to call it a building) once for seedlings and forcing. How to make a greenhouse as such is stated above. Greenhouses for exotic flowers are more complex in design, for example. orchids or gesneria, 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 orchid species, suitable for mass culture for cutting. Flowers of all orchids are long-lasting and are stubbornly cut. There are many among them that in Hollywood there is not enough cocaine to deliberately invent, on the left in Fig. There are cases when wealthy connoisseurs paid $ 5,000 and even $ 20,000 for just 1 flower of a rare species. In countries that love rarities, renting out live, blooming potted orchids is a lucrative small business; rare orchids need to be cared for and nurtured until flowering for 7-8 years. Many orchids have a subtle scent; vanilla is an orchid. Orchids grow up to the tundra, but in our area they are either small and do not strike the eye (for example, orchis), or very rare, like Venus's shoes - cypripediums, in the center in Fig. The culture of the Gesneriaceae is simpler, and they are also very spectacular and simply luxurious, on the right in fig. True, they are not suitable for cutting.

The purpose of the greenhouse determines the start-up and operating costs for it. In winter, a capital foundation is required with complete concreting of the underground part and insulation, as well as full lighting and heating. The costs of heating them make up the lion's share of current ones, so winter greenhouses are most profitable in large sizes (from about 200 cubic meters) in large farms. The own heat supply 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 initial version of a winter greenhouse is a greenhouse, it does not require constant heating in middle latitudes at all. Heats the greenhouse-greenhouse mulch decomposing under the soil layer. But its production cycle is difficult to vary, it is necessary to extract large quantities of manure 1-2 times a year, and food crops from it, according to modern sanitary requirements, most often do not pass, because are oversaturated with nitrates. In the greenhouse phase of the cycle, only chives are more or less edible. Large greenhouses are used mainly as greenhouses, and small backyards are used for cut flower growing.

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

Semi-winter greenhouses- also quite solid structures; the foundation is most often strip monolithic or from ready-made blocks of lightweight type, because the upper structure is light and has little fear 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 greenhouse effect. A light lantern in a semi-winter polycarbonate greenhouse on a PP frame will be inexpensive and can last more than 15 years, and with minimal illumination and heating, perennial subtropical crops up to citrus fruits can be grown from Moscow and further south; they still have a dormant period. Harvesting will be seasonal, and heating in the coldest months to a slight plus will help the plants endure the winter.

Seasonal greenhouses most of all and are built independently. Conventional table crops, with skillful management in the Moscow region, give up to 10 months. a year, and to the south of Rostov-on-Don, they are able to function all year round. In either case, the cost of light and heat will not exceed more than 2 times those for a city apartment of equal area. With the shortening of 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 the stoves is available to the owners; see the section on heating greenhouses for details.

The skylights of seasonal greenhouses are generally the same as those of semi-winter ones, but the foundation is made light columnar. Most often, rolled metal is used for it (pipes, corners, channels), but a very cheap wooden one will serve a period equal to a greenhouse, if pieces of a bar or block of wood for it are boiled in bitumen for 10-20 minutes (sprinkled with bitumen) and before installing their ends in the pits wrap with roofing material. 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 hotbeds used in the middle lane from about April to October. Grow quickly maturing crops in them; mainly bulbous and root vegetables, as well as table greens. Temporary greenhouses are most often made with soil (see below) and covered with foil. Backlighting and heating are not done, because natural light is already / is 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 intensity of the illumination, because Plants emit carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. Therefore, the light in the greenhouse needs an eye and an eye - less light, less carbon dioxide, it has become colder, photosynthesis has weakened, the greenhouse effect has weakened, it got colder, and so very quickly until freezing.

Greenhouse and ground

The next factor that must be borne in mind when, so to speak, preliminary thinking about the greenhouse is the nature of the use of the soil. According to it, greenhouses are divided into ground, box and trench or bulk greenhouses.

Unpaved, as the name implies, are built right on the ground. They are temporary and seasonal. The basis of such a greenhouse is simple: wooden formwork with a height of 200-300 mm on a flat area, see fig. Outside, the formwork is propped up with pins made of reinforcing rods, onto which the ends of the arches 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 depletes, its top layer is selected and changed. This kind of agriculture will be enough for 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 to the top with crushed stone along the waterproofing, on which boxes filled with earth are placed, with perforated bottoms. The depleted earth from the boxes is simply thrown away and new is poured. Excess irrigation water flows into crushed stone and then into drainage. Thus, the scourge of non-professional greenhouse farms is excluded - soil acidification from the cold from below. If there is no drainage system on the site, then the drainage of the greenhouse is taken out into the attached cesspool... It is impossible to reuse wastewater for irrigation, harmful micro-living is teeming in them!

Most of the highly profitable homemade greenhouses are box ones. Manufacturing of formwork and foundations for a box greenhouse is also possible from wood (see fig.), Because in this case, it hardly comes into contact with the ground and is less exposed to harmful influences. If lumber, in addition to being treated with biocides, is also impregnated twice with hot bitumen, then the formwork will last 12-15 years. For a longer design 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 trenches (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 collection common for the site, and earth is poured over it. Plots for different crops in the trenches are separated by removable partitions that extend to the drainage layer.

It is more difficult to care for a trench greenhouse than for a box one, and the likelihood of the spread of diseases in it is greater, which requires sufficiently skillful agricultural technology. But with proper construction, cooling the soil from below is completely excluded, even in 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 by trenching in places with a harsh climate.

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

When form is key

The most important factor that determines the functionality of a greenhouse is the configuration of its lantern. In terms of the variety of architectural forms, greenhouses can compete with public buildings, but most often they independently build frame greenhouses-houses, pos. 1 in the figure, tunnel faceted, pos. 2, and tunnel arches with semicircular (pos. 3) and lancet (pos. 4) arches of the arches.

Small house

In a greenhouse-house, the entire operational load is borne by the frame, so the glazing can be of any kind. With the required strength for a backyard greenhouse, a wooden frame turns out to be the simplest technologically and cheapest. 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 cultivation in a greenhouse, see above. The roof, when the sun is high, shades the plants a little and cuts off ultraviolet light, which protects them from burns. In the southern regions, sometimes the slopes of the roof in the very heat are also covered with gauze or old washed sheets.

The roof of the 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. To plants it is like caviar for cognac: the harvest is riot, and the fruits are one to one.

In regions with a harsh continental climate, a wooden greenhouse-house will be optimal 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 tastes like watermelon.

Note: Yakut watermelons may seem incredible, but we, not limiting ourselves to verbal assurances, refer the reader to the book by Yu. K. Efremov "The Nature of My Country", M., "Mysl", 1985 (see fig.) With the science fiction writer Ivan Efremov, his namesake geographer Yuri Konstantinovich is not related.

Watermelons and melons are from deserts, they are able to develop as half-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 the specification of the frame of 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 made from scrap materials, for example. old window frames, see below.

Note: a wooden greenhouse with polycarbonate is not at all hostile. 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 flooring will cost less than glazing, and the entire wooden greenhouse under polycarbonate will be stronger and cheaper.

Faceted tunnel

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

It is impractical to make the frame of the 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 arcs of the frame are curved. 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 joints of the frame elements arises.

Welds in a greenhouse corrode intensively, especially the external ones, sandwiched between the pipe and the casing. Non-destructive visual inspection in such places is impossible, therefore the frame is prone to sudden destruction.

Note: do not try to make steel frames prestressed - ordinary rolled steel is completely unsuitable for use in this capacity! Have you heard about the fatigue and fluidity of the metal?

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 on sale separately, but they are expensive and require an additional large amount of fasteners, therefore, home-made steel frames of greenhouses are still welded, but without external seams: the workpiece is cut with an angle, bent and boiled from the inside, on the right in Fig. This requires special precision and accuracy in calculating the frame and marking the workpieces, but 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-timber frames are assembled by welding or special joints. In plastic branded kits for self-assembly, the parts in the connectors are nevertheless fixed with self-tapping screws, because a set that requires special tools for assembly, few people will buy. But serious manufacturers carefully calculate the location of the fasteners, the entire structure is simulated 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 out models.

Arched tunnels

A tunnel greenhouse made of semicircular arches is the easiest to manufacture, the most wind-resistant and best concentrates light. Pay attention again to item 3 fig. with greenhouse shapes: most of the sides of the semicircular seem darkish. This means that most of the light went inside and did its useful work there. And in summer, in hot weather with a high sun, an almost flat roof gives the same effect as a greenhouse-house.

The material consumption of a semicircular 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 the figure are possible, even if the structure is structurally executed completely correctly. Therefore, in regions with abundant snow, it would be more correct to build a lancet greenhouse. It will cost 3-5% more, but it is easy to make several large vents in it for summer ventilation, which is important east of the Urals, mountains and rivers.

Any arch shows all its advantages only when it is stressed, operational load as part of the structure or in advance. 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 the details from prestressed pipes. In combination with a working polycarbonate sheathing, this brings greenhouses out of it on a plastic tubular frame at a record ratio of strength, resistance and durability to cost. Hence, another record follows - the popularity of structures of this type. Therefore, a little below we will deal with them in more detail, but for now we will briefly consider another arch.

Arch from profile

In thin-walled volumetric parts with bending radii characteristic of arched greenhouses, the stresses in ordinary steel are far from its yield point, on the one hand. On the other hand, galvanized C- and U-profiles for drywall are inexpensive, lightweight, and it seems elementary to assemble a greenhouse frame from a profile of this type (see Fig.): A Phillips screwdriver and metal scissors are enough. When reinforced with struts and crossbars, the "fresh" structure comes out quite strong, even stronger than from PP pipes. And the casing can be fastened 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 cost a lot. And fingers clenched by a convulsion and bleeding calluses just scream: "Well, finally buy you, the owner of a kind of screwdriver!" Secondly, the blanks marked by hand and cut without a profile cutter (and there are many of them!) Do not connect exactly and the whole frame goes, as they say, a sycamore. It’s easier in production, where the computer will calculate, transfer the data to the stamp-robot, and that one will chop it perfectly, it just doesn’t know how badly.

But the main disappointment awaits even before the end of the first season: the frame is rusting before our eyes. What, it would seem, was worth reading right away in the specification for profiles - they are not intended, like drywall, for outdoor use ...

Plastic arches

Both snow and wind ...

Correctly assembling and assembling the plastic greenhouse itself is possible only knowing the wind and snow loads on it at the place of construction. The maps in Fig. 1 will help you decide on them for your greenhouse. With the numerical values ​​of the loads, as they say, do not bother and do not wait for 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, the largest one in this place is meant. 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; peculiarities of snow and wind, if in this case they exist, are discussed.

Frame

Branded greenhouse frames are assembled from special pipes on shaped connectors (see, for example, fig.): Glasses, flat and three-dimensional crosses, straight and oblique tees, splitters at several angles. They are on sale, but they are expensive and are usually designed for a specific design. Having pushed around in attempts to adapt it for yourself, you still have to buy the remainder to the full set. Which at once and the whole would be half the price.

We will go the other way. We'll get by with 3/4 '' PP plumbing pipes and cheap fittings sold everywhere: straight couplings, flat tees, and right angles. We will connect the parts, as well. Renting a soldering iron (more precisely, a welding machine) for propylene is inexpensive, it consumes little electricity (plugs into a regular outlet), and you can learn how to weld a PP in half an hour. A ready-made frame of such a design will come out no worse than a branded one, but much cheaper. A novice master will be able to assemble it in a weekend. Since aerodynamics and icing are more important for the greenhouse than the weight of the upper floors, the frame is designed according to aviation, not building principles. Good planes fly longer than ordinary house costs.

Zero cycle

The main thing about the preparation of the base of the greenhouse was already mentioned earlier. It is only necessary to add that the area 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 installing the formwork for gravel, and for capital ones - after pouring the strip foundation. The slopes of the drains of winter trench greenhouses and thermos greenhouses are formed by the screed of their floors. Don't forget slope waterproofing!

The arches of the arches of the design in question are tightly put on pins from reinforcing rods protruding upwards by 40-50 cm. It is not necessary to make a protrusion less, the arcs will not hold well. More is also not needed, it will bend incorrectly. Under a lightweight greenhouse, reinforcing bars are hammered into the ground close to the formwork by 1 m or more, and under the capital one they are walled up into the foundation for the same 40-50 cm.After assembling the frame, the arcs are attracted to the formwork by clamps of a thin perforated steel strip and self-tapping screws 5-8 mm long 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, the frames are made without thresholds, and their racks are put on pins made of reinforcing bars, like arcs.

How to make a wireframe?

Dimensions (edit)

The standard lengths of water pipes are 6, 5 and 4 m. Semicircular arches with a span of 3.6, 3 and 2.3 m are obtained from them, taking into account the waste for cutting and shrinkage of the welding joints. These values ​​should be used as a guide when calculating the overall dimensions of the greenhouse. Pointed 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 to scale on graph paper (the upper angle is necessarily straight!), The length of its wing is measured with a curvimeter, a flexible ruler or laid out along the contour of a thick thread, followed by measurement, and translated into the length of the workpiece. Add 20 cm for trimming-shrinkage.You can do the other way around: measure a piece of soft wire on a scale (for example, a copper winding wire with a diameter of 0.8-1.2 mm), bend it as necessary on graph paper and beat off the profile of the arc wing along it ...

Assembly

The arches of the arches are going to flat surface straight. Are put in place one by one; during the assembly process, the ridge and longitudinal bearing beams are mounted - stringers, pos. 1 in fig. Door and window frames, pos. 2, assembled separately at corners, tees and straight couplings. Couplings - the basis of hinges and latches; segments of frame racks are welded into the sleeves of the couplings. Then, hinge holders and latches from pipe sections of 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 the door leaves and vents begins by threading their rear pillars into the hinge holders, then the rest is added by weight. Sheathed with anything, on self-tapping screws in the frames of the canvases, tk. and these nodes are not load-bearing.

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

How often should you place arcs?

The step of installing the arcs is determined as follows:

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

The dependence of the step of the arcs on the zone, as we can see, is nonlinear. This is due to the fact that as the number of the zone increases, stringers take on more and more load, see below. So the design comes out a little more material-intensive, but significantly less labor-intensive.

Note 15: the 8th zone, and that, and the other, generally speaking, problematic. Here, it happens, the snow breaks the concrete floors, and the wind moves the houses from the foundations. Any independent construction is carried out here 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 discussed later in the course of the presentation.

Gain

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

Attention! Pairs of stringers of the same level are necessarily performed in a mirror image, pos. E!

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

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

After crimping, the mandrels are removed, the clamp is cut to size and shape, and holes are drilled for M6 bolts. Such an artisanal crimp is obtained with an undershoot, but here it is only for the best: compressed with bolts in place, the clamp and pipes will grab tightly, and it will acquire a monstrous rigidity for such a thin metal.

Arrows and legs

The location of the stringers on the pointed arcs is determined based on the base semicircular with the same span as shown in pos. E. Note that this method is only valid for arrows with a 90 degree apex angle! You cannot make a single skate of an arrow without a gusset, well, it is not necessary. An additional pipe, corners and tees for a double-girder ridge, pos. I. Its halves are performed, like stringers, mirrored. The maximum distance from the top is indicated; the beams must be moved as close to it as possible, in accordance with the size of the available tees and the PP welding skills. By the way, it is easiest to bring out the chimney through the double ridge, and it will make the semicircular arch stronger.

If the arches rest on vertical legs no higher than 60 cm, counting from the top of the reinforcing bar, then an additional stringer is placed at the junction of their wings with their legs, position D. Strengthening in zones 7 and 8 is performed according to the same schemes, moving down a cell, those. there should be no empty cells under the reinforced ones. If the legs are higher than 0.6 m - alas! - should be considered separately, 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 mandatory, and in the lower ones, it is highly desirable to attach the door and window frames not directly to the arc (slightly beveled tees create unwanted stresses in the frame), but to hang in it on semi-rails and short longitudinal holders, pos. K, K1, K2. Such an attachment seems rather weak to an inexperienced eye, but remember: the still working sheathing made of durable polycarbonate will lie on the gables. In the end, the frame will not be weaker and will last no less than the fuselage of a DC-3 or An-2.

And under the film?

The current film greenhouses are not at all flimsy disposable "polyethylene" of the past. A greenhouse cover made of a modern reinforced film will last 5-7 years and will cost several times cheaper than a hard polycarbonate cover. 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. The airing of film greenhouses in the heat does not cause problems either: 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 perfectly go under the film. It has quite an airplane safety margin, and when calculating for the film, it is enough to take the zone numbers 1 higher. The racks of the door and window frames must be left, see fig., Because they take part of the loads. 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 straight couplings under the Velcro and screw the screws into their thickened cases.

Rigid roof

Film greenhouses justify themselves mainly in cases when they are placed temporarily for a relatively short period. For example, someone bought a plot for a forest plantation or a pasture for livestock. As it is now with loans - everyone knows. In order to raise funds for its arrangement, I decided to wait 3-4 years, and for the time being it is inexpensive to lease the land. This is where the subleasers and the agricultural colleague can help out, and make a good profit for themselves.

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

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

and how to attach it to the frame:

We will consider only certain points that are not sufficiently illuminated in known sources.

Structure

Cellular polycarbonate plates are available in different thicknesses and structures. Plates of the same thickness can have different structures, and vice versa. The 2R structure (see fig.) Is not suitable for greenhouses either in terms of thermal insulation or mechanical qualities.

Structures of the R type (without diagonal ties in the cells) are more transparent than the 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 below -20 lasts for more than a day no more often than once every 3 years. In other cases, you need to take 5R.

The temperature ranges for the 3RX and 6RX are the same, but in cases where the wind zone is 5 and higher. For any 8th zone, the only acceptable option is 6RX. There is no need to take 5RX, it is not very transparent. 6RX and was designed to replace the 5RX in greenhouses.

The thickness of the slabs is determined as follows:

  • If both zones are not higher than the 2nd, take 6 mm.
  • For other cases, we find the summary number N, as for the frame.
  • For the 3 and 4 largest zones N, we leave it as it is.
  • For the largest 5 and 6 zones, we take N + 1.
  • If there is a 7 or 8 zone, take N + 2.
  • The resulting value is multiplied by 2.
  • Round the result to the nearest larger 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 plates are 6x2.1 m and 12x2.1 m. The overall 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 product, please note that the inspectors and the greenhouse will check the entire form.

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

Note: RX structures are only laid lengthwise, otherwise sudden breakage 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 at a given location. It is advisable to seal the upper joint gaps with construction 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 the board, some of the seams between the slabs 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 the strips and patch on the joint from PVC. For such a case, it is strong enough, reliable and resistant. But its main advantage is in the joint - PVC pretty quickly sticks tightly to the gasket and it never squeezes out from under the linings.

Mountings

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 cladding is longitudinal, then both ends of the plates must be pasted over with perforated self-adhesive and framed with an end profile.

The greenhouse frame, as indicated above, is highly undesirable to weaken with holes and fasteners. The casing 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 folded back. The bend must be done taking into account the thickness of the rubber gaskets, and they, in turn, according to the thickness of the walls of the frame connectors of the frame. The thermal gap between plates 3-5 mm wide is filled with silicone sealant.

Hut from windows

A greenhouse made of frames of unusable windows appeared during the mass construction of Khrushchev. Firstly, then the carpentry for new buildings of quality was the most disgusting: “Come on, plan! Come on! The current generation of people will live under communism! " Therefore, many new settlers immediately changed the windows-doors to custom-made ones, since the materials and work then cost a penny. Secondly, to workers, i.e. officially permanently employed, summer cottages then they were distributed to everyone right and left. Thirdly, penny government rates and affordability are by no means friends. It is appropriate here to recall an old Soviet political anecdote. The chairman of the collective farm "Svet Ilyich" opens the general meeting: "Comrades! We have two issues on the agenda: repairing the cowshed and building 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 can be useful. Now, too, many windows are being changed to metal-plastic with double-glazed windows, but the frames are still strong. A completely reliable and durable house can be assembled from them, if you help the frames to carry the load a little. It is not worth covering such a Khrushchev-style structure with a disposable film, it is better to spend money on a couple of sheets of inexpensive polycarbonate 3R 6 mm, which, with a greenhouse size of about 6x3 m, will make it possible for the roof, in addition to the gables, to use only one truss. We will get a completely seasonal and marketable 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 greenhouse frame for the frame is shown in Fig. for clarity, the proportions of the parts are given arbitrarily. Dimensions in the plan - 5.7x2.7 m; internal space - 5.4x2.4 m. In addition to polycarbonate and frames, it will need 15-16 boards 150x40 mm 6 m long and 1 bar 150x150 mm of the same length; only 0.675 cubic meters m of coniferous wood, 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. The timber 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 along it with a hydraulic level. It is not necessary to deepen the pillars according to the calculation of freezing, the structure will play with the soil for many years, it has been tested on Khrushchev's "polyethylene"

The beams of the lower support frame - the grillage - and the upper - strapping - are sewn on nails from the 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 thorn, and the strapping into a prefabricated quarter (pos. 2) is also on nails, 5 envelopes per corner. Trim boards 150x150 in size are dissolved in three, these blocks will come in handy later.

Next, the grillage is mounted on the foundation and 2 boards are dismantled in three along the length. Here you will have to go from the new tree to the old one, sort the frames. 8 solid highest (or better 10, if there is one), put it off immediately (on the left in the figure), they will go to the corners and, if there are 2 more, to the frame of the doorway. The rest are scattered over the estimated area of ​​the walls somehow, if only there are fewer holes, on the right in Fig.

Now 4 racks are cut from the 50x40 rail into the length of the highest frame plus 10 mm and nailed to the grillage vertically at the corners flush with their outer sides. The corners on the outside are sheathed with boards with a length in the height of the now racks plus 220 mm (grillage height + strapping height). The harness is placed in the nest at the top and the whole box is finally sewn with nails.

The 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 the swing window, they put the racks of the door and window frames made of solid boards. They are fastened to the grillage, strapping and adjacent frames with nails using the same pieces of scrap. On them, if necessary, you can dissolve another 1-2 boards.

Now it's the roof's turn. Roof trusses are made according to pos. 6. Polycarbonate roof lengthwise. A longitudinal strip with a width of 40 cm is cut off from each slab. In this case, roof overhangs of about 15 cm are formed, and the strips will go to the cladding of the pediments.

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 cohesion and strength. Secondly, the dimensions of the door and vents are measured in place and their frames are made according to Fig. on right.

Before the drainage device and the start of the greenhouse, it remains to arrange the basement. In Khrushchev's times, slate or roofing material was put on it, sprinkled with earth on the outside. It's easier for us: now there is such wonderful (no irony) material like empty plastic bottles. 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; ecologists all over the world are ready to howl, what should they do with these bottles? And for us - free benefit.

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

Bottle

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 increases the greenhouse effect and thereby reduces heating costs and extends the greenhouse's operating cycle. Therefore, if it is possible to get at least 400 PET containers, it makes perfect sense to make a greenhouse entirely from bottles.

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

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

The third option - bottles are stacked horizontally with their necks inward, 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 not at all invented by Ukrainian craftsmen today, as Ukrnet broadcasts with might and main, but in Israel more than half a century ago. By the way, it was for greenhouses-thermos that the same cellular polycarbonate and special thermoblocks, combining good insulating and mechanical properties, had to be invented. From a bare idea to a workable design, it usually takes a very long time ...

Israel is the world leader in greenhouse farming. Greenhouses are built there in deserts and mountains. In summer, the surface of the soil 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 there is a constant temperature equal to the average annual temperature in a given 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. Bottom, ordinary concrete, in essence an air conditioner. In winter, mother earth warms it, and in summer a hot lung will not flow into a hole with cool dense air. As a result, the temperature in the greenhouse can be regulated only with vents without the cost of heating and air conditioning. To enhance the lighting in winter, we orient one roof slope to the south, and cover the other with aluminum foil from the inside.

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 flux. To get to the bottom of the "air conditioner" of the required power, you have to go down to the freezing depth of at least 2 m. Already in the Rostov region, this requires a hole of 2.5 m. Secondly, peak cold weather lasts not hours, but days ... Therefore, the volume of the greenhouse is needed large. In the same Rostov region. the minimum dimensions of the pit in the plan are 5x10 m.

Indeed, in our area it is possible to remove 400-600 kg of pineapples and up to 1.5 tons of bananas from such a half a hundred. How do I sell them? Okay, let's say we live in some kind of distant kingdom, where consumer control for a moderate bribe in national currency is always ready to readily and happily formalize heroin as food additive, and weapons-grade plutonium is like children's toys.

But half a ton of even small pineapples by the 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 situation, only the excavation of 120-130 cubic meters of soil will pay off? In general, a home garden thermos in the boreal zone can be classified as a project in which common sense and sober calculation are completely replaced by an irrepressible desire to achieve something uterinely, contrary to the obvious.

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

The top cracker should be triggered by the slightest blow back and forth, therefore, its flap is made extremely light, free-walking and spring-loaded to zero balance in the closed position with a thin, 0.15-0.25 mm, steel wire. The firecracker still does not save from frost, so the control hatch must be closed manually at night.

The specified dimensions are the minimum; the greenhouse can be made larger. If it is performed in the form of a ridge, but for every complete and incomplete 1.5 m of length along the front, its own hood with an air duct is needed so that the stove warms up evenly. So, a greenhouse with a length of 2 m should have 2 air ducts and 2 hoods. You don't need to pull the hood high up, it's still not an oven; The draft here needs minimal, if only the heated air seeps through the heater.

When minimization is needed

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

In plant growing, 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 the arches to the boxes from metal-plastic pipe and cover everything with foil, on the left in Fig. For pot crops, you have to make smaller copies of large greenhouses, in the center in the same place.

In the dacha and vegetable garden, 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 stages of development. In addition, with this no hassle: I took it out and put it on.

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 its clumsy appearance, it is high-tech: it uses a two-stage greenhouse effect and drip irrigation. With a skilful selection of varieties, one rack of the "auto greenhouse" can produce up to half a bucket of tomatoes or 700-800 g of strawberries per day.

So how about in winter?

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. And 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 supporting, when calculating the coverage, the zone number is taken 1 less. Flowers and feather onions are grown in winter. By the end of February, when the mulch is almost crumbling, they sow tomatoes with cucumbers and get the harvest at the end of April. In the summer they "hothouse" as usual, and in the fall, when the soil harvest is cheap, the trenches are refilled; this is not a matter of one day, tk. Fresh biofuels get very hot at first. Then the cycle repeats.

The second is a box greenhouse-dugout without drainage; diagram on the next. rice. Dugout is a relative name, because the concrete floor screed will not damage it in any way. 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 the blind area of ​​the greenhouse-dugout, but the foundation does not need to be insulated. In the plus zone around it, the soil will not fall asleep for the winter, which will provide additional heating in low light. In this respect, the dugout can be considered a semi-thermos greenhouse.

How to get warm?

Heating, as already mentioned, accounts for most of the winter costs of a greenhouse. If the heating is water from the boiler, then the optimal system diagram will be. It was specially designed for industrial premises, therefore it fits into residential premises poorly, but it is simple, inexpensive and very economical at the required temperature up to +16 degrees, and in a greenhouse it will add the greenhouse effect to the optimum.

However, the best option for heating a greenhouse is a stove from a heater-heater such as buleryan or buller. The obliquely upwardly set nozzles of its convector direct hot air to the roof slopes; here he does not allow them to freeze, and he cools down to a comfortable temperature and a warm shroud falls on the plants, creating the effect of the height of spring. More information about the features of furnace heating of greenhouses can be found in the video below.

Video: stove heating a greenhouse

For greenhouses less than 10 sq. m the smallest buller turns out to be powerful, tk. with a very low fuel load, the efficiency of the bullers drops sharply. In this case, a potbelly stove from a gas cylinder of 12 or 27 liters will help out, the efficiency of the 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 turns out like in the desert.

About lighting

Greenhouse lighting requires a separate detailed discussion. Here we will share only little secret:1 special phytolamp of 24 W can be replaced by 3 conventional housekeepers of 13-15 W with spectra at 2700K, 4100K and 6400K. The power consumption is doubled, but it 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 must be hung so that the same spectra do not coexist either in a row or between rows.

Finally

Let's summarize - what kind of greenhouse to build? For a start - from bottles. It quickly, simply and cheaply will allow you to learn how to run a greenhouse and feel its benefits.

Further, in temperate climates, polycarbonate greenhouses on a PP pipe frame are clearly dominant. In harsh places, a wooden covered one is also preferable with polycarbonate. It is also good in that it itself has a minimal impact on the environment. In permafrost, this is vital.

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