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New Greenhouse pictures.
- Thread starter JB_OrchidGuy
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- greenhouse
JB_OrchidGuy
Cardiac Nurse
Nope not realy. I water everything with the hose, except for the dews and Utrics that stand in water. So it takes me about 30 min. It is only 12' x 16'. Now if I decide to fertilize the orchids it takes me an hour and a half or so because I do that by hand. Hopefully this summer I can get a fert injector. My orchids need a good fertilizing.
Clint
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Clint
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JB_OrchidGuy
Cardiac Nurse
Chrono That is one thing about our water here. It is almost as pure as RO water. I was talking to a friend who does testing on his water and even though he is in richmond county and I am in columbia, it seems we have pretty good water. He has told me that he tests his water and gets an average of 40K PPM (I think I have that number right) He said he has seen it as low ar 15K PPM, roughly the same as RO water. He told me that most people assume RO water is pure as pure can get and that is not true. He said he tests his RO water and gets about 12-14K PPM from it. So we do have good water if nothing else.
Clint come this summer the D Adealea will not look so good. Atleast that is what it did last year. I grow just about everythign in peat with a few exceptions. The reason I think the adelea didn;t do so hot last year is because I gave it too much sun. I just learned it doesn't like all that much sun. And the funny think is all those plants are from the same root cuttings and some are green and others are more red.
AV. Yes it is plastic sheeting. I will have to redo it for next winter since I used the cheap lowes 6 mil plastic as a test covering. I know it lasts long enough to get through winter, but will be gone by the end of the summer. From this test I realize I have to go with something rigid on the top. I am getting water pockets collecting from the plastic stretching in the sun. So I will be looking into some form of rigid GH covering. So this layer is stapled on and then has wood strips placed over the staples to help hold it in windy conditions. If not the staples would pull through. It also helps to role the plastic befor stapling it for more support. The sandwiching makes the entire lenth bare the pull instead of just the staples. A must do step when stapling plastic.
Jerry I heat the GH with two 1000 watt space heaters. I have 2 fans setup hanging from the rafters that run 24/7 to circulate the air. Then I have a fan set to a timer for during the day. I have a control system that my grandfather designed and built, I just copied for the second) that allows me to better control the temps for less money than buying a prebuilt GH thermestat. I leave the heaters set to high and all the ay up. The controler turns on and off the receptical depending on the temp. If your interested I can share the design it is rather simple to make. Uses 15 amp breakers a 24 volt DC transformer, 24 volt DC coiled 110 volt contact replay, and some wire to connect it up. I have LEDs on them to indicate when they are on, but they are not nessisary. Oh and I almost forgot a regular old house thermastat that the control unit uses to activate the relays that turn on the recepticals and bam the heaters come on. The lowest I have gone down to this year has been 52 I believe. It went down to 45 one night , but that nght the breakers were off. I accidently tripped them to off when I replaced a relay that went bad. I am currently using 12volt car relays because my grandfather said as long as they can hold the amp load then the volts doesn;t matter. Well I have burned up 2 of them this winter. I have some relays rated for 120.240 with 24 volt DC coils I am going to be upgrading to once I get motivated to do it. I got them and sockets for easy changing from growers supply. I use the same setup for my cooling fans to, but it is running on a seperate thermostat and control unit. When I first built the GH I was thinking I would need to add another heater, but so far so good with just the two.
Leopard I just got the regia towards the end of last summer, and BobZ said the plant was a baby his mother plant produced out the bottom of the pot the year before. It is being grown in live LFS IIRC. I hope it makes it through the summer. I hear they don't like hot summers. Hopefully I can keep it happy.
Xvart it is 12 x 16. It is amazing how many plants you can fit into the GH once you box out the sides. My orriginal GH was 12 x 12 and had the rounded sides. I was going to go bigger than this, but decided to go with this size fearing I would run out of wood. I already had to scrape by with some of the wood. I will try to get you some outside pics, but it still looks the same as the first GH thread I did. I haven't changed much except for added soem plants down the front side. I still haevn't pinted the lower half of the door!!!
Clint that is because you have well water. Of course it is suposed to be brown! Also not good for CPs either.
Clint come this summer the D Adealea will not look so good. Atleast that is what it did last year. I grow just about everythign in peat with a few exceptions. The reason I think the adelea didn;t do so hot last year is because I gave it too much sun. I just learned it doesn't like all that much sun. And the funny think is all those plants are from the same root cuttings and some are green and others are more red.
AV. Yes it is plastic sheeting. I will have to redo it for next winter since I used the cheap lowes 6 mil plastic as a test covering. I know it lasts long enough to get through winter, but will be gone by the end of the summer. From this test I realize I have to go with something rigid on the top. I am getting water pockets collecting from the plastic stretching in the sun. So I will be looking into some form of rigid GH covering. So this layer is stapled on and then has wood strips placed over the staples to help hold it in windy conditions. If not the staples would pull through. It also helps to role the plastic befor stapling it for more support. The sandwiching makes the entire lenth bare the pull instead of just the staples. A must do step when stapling plastic.
Jerry I heat the GH with two 1000 watt space heaters. I have 2 fans setup hanging from the rafters that run 24/7 to circulate the air. Then I have a fan set to a timer for during the day. I have a control system that my grandfather designed and built, I just copied for the second) that allows me to better control the temps for less money than buying a prebuilt GH thermestat. I leave the heaters set to high and all the ay up. The controler turns on and off the receptical depending on the temp. If your interested I can share the design it is rather simple to make. Uses 15 amp breakers a 24 volt DC transformer, 24 volt DC coiled 110 volt contact replay, and some wire to connect it up. I have LEDs on them to indicate when they are on, but they are not nessisary. Oh and I almost forgot a regular old house thermastat that the control unit uses to activate the relays that turn on the recepticals and bam the heaters come on. The lowest I have gone down to this year has been 52 I believe. It went down to 45 one night , but that nght the breakers were off. I accidently tripped them to off when I replaced a relay that went bad. I am currently using 12volt car relays because my grandfather said as long as they can hold the amp load then the volts doesn;t matter. Well I have burned up 2 of them this winter. I have some relays rated for 120.240 with 24 volt DC coils I am going to be upgrading to once I get motivated to do it. I got them and sockets for easy changing from growers supply. I use the same setup for my cooling fans to, but it is running on a seperate thermostat and control unit. When I first built the GH I was thinking I would need to add another heater, but so far so good with just the two.
Leopard I just got the regia towards the end of last summer, and BobZ said the plant was a baby his mother plant produced out the bottom of the pot the year before. It is being grown in live LFS IIRC. I hope it makes it through the summer. I hear they don't like hot summers. Hopefully I can keep it happy.
Xvart it is 12 x 16. It is amazing how many plants you can fit into the GH once you box out the sides. My orriginal GH was 12 x 12 and had the rounded sides. I was going to go bigger than this, but decided to go with this size fearing I would run out of wood. I already had to scrape by with some of the wood. I will try to get you some outside pics, but it still looks the same as the first GH thread I did. I haven't changed much except for added soem plants down the front side. I still haevn't pinted the lower half of the door!!!
Clint that is because you have well water. Of course it is suposed to be brown! Also not good for CPs either.
Clint
Stay chooned in for more!
LOL. I made a comment like that in the last GH thread by JB. Speaking of, the jew is doing great, Josh!
I'll go back and look at the outside pics from your other post. I forgot that you had posted some.
xvart.
edit: Dave, they are pretty weedy from everything I've heard, and Josh will agree because he told me the same thing. Kind of like a pathos. I have mine in some potting mix with some perilite and it is growing great. However, I have only just started mine from some cuttings but they did not skip a beat. Josh told me a story about how some broke off of his hanging pot and it fell into a azalea pot (I think?) and started growing from there. I wonder why yours died on you, because everything I've heard says they are near impossible to kill.
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JB,
if you need more relays or other electronic control goodies, just hollar Ill take care of ya.... (assuming ice-cube style)
plc control would be awesome, but more dollars too
nice work...
I have hail and tornados, sub zero temps.... brrrr I use to live in Ga. LOL
oh and leave the "K" off of your water quality numbers and they will sound correct
Av
if you need more relays or other electronic control goodies, just hollar Ill take care of ya.... (assuming ice-cube style)
plc control would be awesome, but more dollars too
nice work...
I have hail and tornados, sub zero temps.... brrrr I use to live in Ga. LOL
oh and leave the "K" off of your water quality numbers and they will sound correct
Av
Clint
Stay chooned in for more!
JB_OrchidGuy
Cardiac Nurse
Leopard I jsut checked my Regia when I was taking some new pictures and it is planted in straight peat with a top dressing of live LFS.
Dave I dunno why you wandering jew died. Maybe you were keeping it too wet? I have killed spider plants that way. Other than that they just grow and grow. Xvart is right I had some break off on my porch and get swept into the azealia pushes growing around my porch and they started growing. I find them to be weeds. You also need to restart them by returning everything you cut off back into the pots. I have an older pot that I noticed looking pretty bad. It is called a wandering jew for a reason. Not a spreading jew. So the old stuff dies off while the new stuff continues to wander. So I have noticed that the older vines look worse than new vines. It grows fast enough that you can just keep putting in new stuff from its "hair cutts" to keep it looking good.
I have the green form now. Just got it from my sister. I need to nurse it back to health, but that shouldn;t be a problem. She kept it too dry. LMAO
AV yes they are the ice cube style. I only needed double pole single throw, but all they had was double pole double throw relays. Thats cool I will nonly be using one side of it anyway. I will probably be revamping everything this summer. These were prototypes and so far so good.
What are plc controls AV??
Dave I dunno why you wandering jew died. Maybe you were keeping it too wet? I have killed spider plants that way. Other than that they just grow and grow. Xvart is right I had some break off on my porch and get swept into the azealia pushes growing around my porch and they started growing. I find them to be weeds. You also need to restart them by returning everything you cut off back into the pots. I have an older pot that I noticed looking pretty bad. It is called a wandering jew for a reason. Not a spreading jew. So the old stuff dies off while the new stuff continues to wander. So I have noticed that the older vines look worse than new vines. It grows fast enough that you can just keep putting in new stuff from its "hair cutts" to keep it looking good.
I have the green form now. Just got it from my sister. I need to nurse it back to health, but that shouldn;t be a problem. She kept it too dry. LMAO
AV yes they are the ice cube style. I only needed double pole single throw, but all they had was double pole double throw relays. Thats cool I will nonly be using one side of it anyway. I will probably be revamping everything this summer. These were prototypes and so far so good.
What are plc controls AV??
"programmable logic controller" a dedicated processor used by industry to do things exactly like you are doing... and way beyond.
allows you to use ladder logic to control operations based upon inputs/timers/sequences/etc you name it...
there are some pretty inexpensive units, but allen bradley (owie) is the industry standard in the USA
an old, used allan bradley model "slick 100" would be perfect for ya
Av
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller
allows you to use ladder logic to control operations based upon inputs/timers/sequences/etc you name it...
there are some pretty inexpensive units, but allen bradley (owie) is the industry standard in the USA
an old, used allan bradley model "slick 100" would be perfect for ya
Av
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller
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JB_OrchidGuy
Cardiac Nurse
Ahhh Well These controlers were built with spare parts my grandfather had and he spent a little on the GE outdoor plastic box and breakers. So I would assume the parts were not to expencive. The PLC does seem interesting, but more pricey. Definately something to think about when I get my larger GH. Because from what I read I can connect multiple temp probes to it and have heaters come on in sections depending on the area that is cool. he he he Also hydrometers can be connected and other things. You have planted a bug in my head now. Thanks AV!!
