The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse: How to Design and Build a Net-Zero Energy Greenhouse

Mother Earth News Wiser Living

by Lindsey Schiller, Marc Plinke (Primary Contributor)

Build your own passive solar greenhouse for year-round food production in any climate Fresh, local nutrient-dense fruits vegetables are hard to find in winter in cold climates. Growing warm-weather crops like tomatoes, bananas, avocados, and other perennials is nearly impossible using conventional structures. The solution for millions of backyard and small-scale commercial growers is self-heating solar greenhouses. The Year-round Solar Greenhouse is the one-stop guide to designing and building greenhouses that harness and store energy from the sun to create naturally heated, lush growing environments even in the depths of winter, covering principles of solar greenhouse design and siting, glazing material properties and selection, controlling heat loss, ventilation, and construction methods. Additionally, an in-depth section covers sustainable ways of heating the greenhouse without fossil fuels, including using thermal mass and storing heat underground with a ground to air heat exchanger. Variations include attached solar greenhouses, earth sheltered greenhouses, plus integrating hydroponics and aquaponics. More than a dozen case studies from across North America provide inspiration and demonstrate specific challenges and solutions for growing year-round in any climate. Grow your own food, anytime, anywhere using the power of the sun!

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Sustainability, Agriculture, Environment

320 pages, Paperback

Published October 17, 2016

Reviews

[cellomerl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is good technical guide that manages not to be too dry. It’s quite amazing that by boosting the efficiency of heat storage in your greenhouse, you can greatly expand its performance. This book is a comprehensive guide that I’m sure I’ll refer to later. The casse studies are interesting too. I only wish it had more colour illustrations.
It’s interesting that the source material and reference books cited by the authors are over forty years old. It’s as if all the published activity on solar greenhouses went to sleep in the seventies and it’s only just waking up again now.

[Two Readers in Love · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid, realistic information on what you can achieve with a solar greenhouse. As a bonus, the information on the effects of glazing, light angles, and heat storage in different climates and seasons is also useful for three season rooms. Does not include detailed plans but offers good resources for further, project-specific information.

[Katinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

My husband and I are planning on turning an old gazebo into a greenhouse to extend our growing season this year. I read this book to see if it could help me with the planning stages of a greenhouse. (It's currently winter here, so nothing can be done for a few more months.)

Reading this book gave me a lot of information that I didn't know anything about previously. While much of what I learned won't work for what we want to do, I did gain a lot of ideas that should work and will get us a long way towards actually building our greenhouse and having it work without needing to use electricity to keep it warm enough as the temps begin dropping in the fall and allow us to start our plants earlier in the spring.

In other words, while this was not a step by step guide on how to get our DIY greenhouse built, it did provide a lot of help in understanding what we'll need to do and how to go about doing it. Will we still run into other unconsidered problems along the way? Most likely, yes. But after reading this book, we learned what won't work for us and why, as well as providing us with a lot of ideas about what will work.

So I would recommend this book for anyone who needs to learn about different types of greenhouses and is considering buying or building one for themselves. I found it to be very helpful overall.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really like how the authors don't provide a one-size fits all approach. Instead they explain the concepts and provide tables a of information so that the reader can design the most effective greenhouse based on your needs, your location and whether or not you want to use supplemental heat and light. A very useful and helpful book.

[Joan Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very technical but good resource

it is somewhat technical reading which may be offputing initially but good resource for alternate methods and additional source material.

[Heather Culley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly feasible and sensible planning. A great instruction manual.

[Joshua Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good primer for the curious

I’ve been doing research online for several months and could’ve saved considerable time if I had read this book first. Highly recommended!

[Jody Schwarz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best greenhouse and book I have ever read!

[Maria Jansson · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many great ideas! The photos and in-depth descriptions of different methods, pro’s and con’s are thoroughly described. Definitely going to be a part of my homesteading library.

[Joan L Huffman MD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me some good background information to aid my research into the construction of a geothermal greenhouse.

[Joanne McKinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read

So much great info for anyone wanting to build a greenhouse in an environment friendly way. Also a lot on different growing methods. Great reference.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good information but not what I need really. Total overkill for the plans here.

[Heidi Burkett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains lots of sound scientific information to help in the initial decision making and planning process of a year-round greenhouse.

[Jamie Vogt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a few years ago, mostly jumping around to subjects I was interested in. I recently read it cover to cover. While this it is a little dense at times and at the same time a bit elementary on other subjects, it is a great overview of the various needs and considerations for a year round greenhouse. I live at 8000’ in the Colorado mountains and while I do think I need to do more reading and research before embarking on constructing a true 4 season greenhouse, this book gave me a great foundation to build my knowledge base from.