Are you sure you want to deal with open flames in your GH and concurrently, lose precious heat through a hole in the roof?

If you only need supplimental heat for a few hours per 24 hr cycle during the winter; I honestly believe you would be far better off investing in additional insulation to reduce heat loss, particularly on the roof, a small ceramic electric heater, and a thermostat plug; the kind that will turn the heater on/off when the temp drops/reaches your desired deg.

Then you can go to bed with the new little furbaby and sleep secure in the knowledge that you will awake to a still warm, but not smoke filled or worse; melted GH.

Good advice :) thanks!!

I dont understand why you dont just get a gas heater and be done with it. Gas heat is by far the best and easiest to use. My greenhouse is on automatic for the most part in the winter. I do go down there and water, and if its going to be hot or warm during the day, I will turn the gas off. Its just to easy. I have basicly got my cost down to about $300 a winter for heat. You can sell a few plants in the spring to cover that and it works out great.

The fire place would be alot of trouble unless you lived out there with it, and just think of the smoke.

Just my ideas. :-)

I knew it was a goofy idea, but I saw someone who had a small wood burning stove that once stoked put out a consistent heat from the embers. Just thought it might work? But I have an oil filled radiator heater, the only problem is that it really didn't feel like it heated the space very well. I'll work it out, thanks for the responses.

I see no reason why you couldn't put a small wood stove out there. The only problem would be regulating the heat, having to fire it up every day and cutting the wood. You could probably put in a peller stove with a thermostat just as easily but they're kind of pricey.

Hi rjinga,

That is where innovations come from is crazy ideas. The indians had fires in their teepees. We have a stove we took out and replaced this fall. We are planning on putting it into the gh when we add on. The only problem is the humidity. We will have none... It is such a dry heat. The plants in my family room just dont do good in the winter time. But what the heck. We heat by wood so some more wood wont bother us. Could you imagine a teepee gh that would be neat! Barb

The first greenhouse I ever saw was when I went with my Daddy when I was about four or five to get some tomato plants for his garden. It was a little business run by an elderly lady from a glass greenhouse in her yard in a residential area of town. She heated it with a wood pot belly stove. That's how they did it before modern conveniences. I think she mostly sold vegetable starts, and it would have been a royal pain......but that's how we heated on the farm, and if stoked properly before we went to bed, it burned gently all night. I presume the g'house served to buy about a month's to six weeks of lead time before the gardens were ready to plant. So, she didn't have a long heating season.

I too have seen old GH's heated with wood stoves but they were as described by calliope: Pot bellied stoves, with chimneys, not holes in the roofs, and dampers that could be closed to prevent the heat from escaping after the flames died down and all that remained were some pretty smoke free hot coals and an even hotter cast iron stove, slowly giving off heat in a closed space.

BTW: The plains people who heated their teepees with open fires vented through a hole in the roof slept wrapped in thick fur blankets and often as not bundled for warmth under them. They also had members able to do so, assigned to reach out to toss extra wood onto the fire in the middle of deep, freezing nights. Those folk may have lived what Europeans deemed to be primative lives, but they weren't stupid, or any more eager to freeze their bums off on cold nights than we are.

I would be very careful with putting a wood burning fire pit in a GH. Your best bet would probably be a gas burning fire pit, which you can find almost anywhere online.