I hope you find someone in your area who will give you advice. I have had two greenhouses. . . the first made of fiberglass, the second aluminum & glass. In the mid west, I had to contend with supplying sufficient heat in the cold months & in the warm, shade & ventilation. In all seasons, maintaining proper humidity was a concern. You are fortunate to have agreeable temps & humidity, but as you say, you will need extra shade. I used a 65% shade cover but that was still too bright for violets & even many orchids, so I had to find a way to rig up extra shade. If your temperatures go into the 80's, you will need fans along with the extra shading or you could boil the plants. Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts. Hopefully your research will bring some ideas! Terri

My friend built a nice one for his job. It doesn't need to have glass on all four walls. That can help keep temps down. Of course it's expensive but I want one. Then of course you'd need water and maybe heat but not neccesarily if it's high quality and can trap daytime heat.

My mother has one, solid build, probably worth 1/4 as much as her house ;-p

Anyhow, the only windows that open are in the roof of it, which she would need a ladder for, so I got her automatic window openers from Lee valley. They open / close at set temperatures. Not sure if she ever installed them, but the concept is brilliant.

Great advice, Terri and Karin, and Yes, dr cooper, they are pricey. Karin, what did your mom raise? This interest motivated me to get in touch with an AV club that is in more of a farming area than my suburban area. They might have some suggestions. Time for me to branch out more. I thought I was going to cut my collection in half, but a move to a bigger house and garden area makes that unnecessary. Now that not much is blooming motivates me to cut back to the favorites and let the others find new homes. The greenhouse, if we get one, would be for the growing area. The ones I saw locally on-line are kits that have to be built, yet still pricey. They have all sorts of adjustments. The electricity will have to be a consideration as fans and heaters might be needed if we were to run it year round. Just thinking. Joanne

Joanne....This could take a while, and may get a bit deep....

Once upon a very long long time ago...before I retired from the Navy, I had a six X eight foot greenhouse that I grew orchids in. We lived in a mobile home, and I would dismantle the thing and put it inside the home for transport, and rent a U-Haul to carry the orchids.

We bought it when we lived in the Charleston, SC area. Carried it to Kansas for three years, then to Jacksonville, FL for nearly 3 years, then to Williamsburg, VA for about 2 years, and finally back to the Charleston area for about a year. We finally bought a house that was anchored to the ground and I bought a Lord & Burnham about 12 X 24 or so which I attached to the back of the house.

My small greenhouse was redwood and fiberglass, and I successfully grew the orchids in the above climates, but it was a challenge in some.

Perhaps I qualify to give a bit of advice. You did not say where specifically where you are located, but I suspect in a warmer climate. You will have a more difficult time keeping any greenhouse cool, than you will keeping it warm.

First, I suggest obtaining the largest house you can afford. The larger the house, the larger the volume of trapped air to retain heat and cool. In other words, once you get the air inside to the desired temp. the more of it there is the slower it will loose that desired temp. This saves you a huge amount of heat and cooling expense.

Also, be sure you insulate the greenhouse.......The easiest way to do that is to be sure you have rafters that are at least 4 inches deep, and before you put anything in the house, attach clear or frosted plastic sheeting on the inside of those rafters. A medium to heavy grade of plastic like painters use for inside paint work is fine. 4 or more inches of dead air...the space between the glass or plastic outer wall and your sheet plastic...is the best insulation you can buy. It will again save you huge amounts of money in addition to what is mentioned in the preceding paragraph.

Next, be sure you have at least one panel of covering at the peak of the greenhouse... preferably for the entire length of the house,,,, on hinges so you can open it up on hot days.

Especially if you are in an area where you may get freezing weather, you need two different sources of heat either gas,(bottled or natural), and perhaps electric. Both should be on thermostats, with the secondary source alarmed inside the house so when it comes on it tells you inside your house that there is trouble. You should also have an alarm on the high temp. side to let you know that the temp is too high...fan failure....

No matter what you grow, in a warm summer area you will need shade cloth. Even on cool sunny days you will need shade cloth. Put a rod through the end nearest the ground, and attach a small rope near both ends so you can roll it up and down as needed.

Another huge time and energy saving....Do not just lay the shade cloth on the outer covering of the house. you will be amazed at the amount of heat that will trap inside the house. Attach spacers along at least some of the rafters to hold the cloth up off the glass/plastic to allow air to flow between the house covering and the cloth.,

You will need a large fan to keep air moving inside....larger than you probably think. I suggest you either remove one panel at the end of the house and build a water drip system. water dripping through some kind of matting that you can pull air through to cool and humidify inside the house. Your fan should be at the opposite end of the house. I used a swamp cooler arrangement. The cooler was mounted outside the house and blew the cool damp air inside which kept a positive pressure inside the house and seemed to discourage bugs inside the house. Swamp coolers are not as efficient as they might be in warm humid areas, but they do work.

Hows that for a start? This is just a scratch of the surface. I could go on and on, and will be glad to if you desire. Ball is in your court.

Bill

Hi Bill

This is great advice and sharing. Impressive that you took the GH with you. I noticed that those who have greenhouses in California, where we reside, are mostly orchid growers. There were some AV growers as well, but they might be out of business. Or at least, not doing a lot of commercial selling, maybe just for loal shows and conventions. I will keep your information. As I go further along in this research, I might ask you and Terri more questions. There is one supplier I found called Santa Barbara greenhouses, however, these are pricey. We will check out Home Depot, maybe they have some of the basic supplies to build one. Neither or nor DH are handy, but our gardener is and probably could build one from scratch. It would be a milestone if I took the plunge. At least it motivated me to get off the fence and send out feelers to the local AV clubs that are more rural and more serious about growing their own AVs in professional nurseries. Joanne

Joanne, I posted some more info on Sheri's forum last night that may add to what is here. I also looked at the Santa Barbara Greenhouses. I see several nice features there, and what appears to be well thought out and designed houses. I also noted that their kits come with heaters, fans, and vent risers of some sort or another. You are going to have to purchase these no matter what, so it is probably less expensive to have them included in the kit. That way they are designed into the plans, and having them fit the openings will not be a problem. If the included heater is electric, and you want to go with gas as primary heat (gas is much less expensive here in the sunny southland) you could use the electric as your backup heater.

I would suggest using the redwood houses for several reasons. first the metal framing tends to transmit heat and especially cold into the house. They apparently have some kind of double wall construction on all their larger models, but if any of that metal actually is exposed to the inside, it will transmit heat and cold sooooo much better than the wood, and you don't need that. Also, the wood is so much easier to attach things to, and redwood will last and last.

Another feature I noticed was that the larger sizes in the wood houses have both top vents and bottom vents....excellent features. I would use an evaporative cooler (mentioned in Sheri's forum), and mount it in one of those bottom vents so as to force cool moisturized air into the house.

A little tid bit on benches.....I attached a piece of corrugated fiberglass (much like the material they use for the outer covering of these houses) under the very front of the benches, and ran it about 3/4 the width of the benches back toward the side wall, and attached the back to a hanger several inches lower than the front. That way when you watered plants at the front of the bench, it would run back toward the outer wall about 3/4 of the total distance and fall on he ground back there......that way you don't get splattered with water every time you water. Around here in winter that was a great comfort enhancer!!!

Good luck on your search......I'll do my best with any questions you have.

Bill

My mom grows anything and everything. Veggie starts mostly, but I think she still has an avocado tree I started as a kid and a few lemons as well...

I think her ex built her the greenhouse because he didn't like every surface in the house covered in plants ;-p

Bill, This is great advice, thank you so much for researching the Santa Barbara houses! I really wanted o get an opinion. I am going to save all your comments. I might look around for a used greenhouse, if such can be found. I realized we do have a shady spot in the yard where there is a canopy over a sort of arbor. Should it go on the cement or concrete platform rather than on the lawn? Seems that the concrete areas would level it and allow for drainage and less chance of critters like gophers or lizards. I will try to find the other forum you mentioned, is it another one on Garden Web/Houzz? Thanks again!

Karin, That makes sense and a motivating factor. Somehow, it seems perfectly reasonable to me to rooting flowering plants indoors. But veggies seem to belong outdoors.

Oh, thank you so much, Bill. This is excellent information here and I will study the forum you recommended as well.

I have been thinking of a greenhouse for a long time, a couple of years. I knew it was complicated .... so that was why I never got past the research stage.

We live in earthquake country, so all the concrete slabs are cracked. There is no such thing as "level" and there is drainage from the cracks. The ground would have more of a give than the concrete in the event of an EQ.

When I was a kid, our friends had a farm with many long greenhouses, it did not seem complicated at the time. The greenhouses were unused all winter. They were rough and ready. Our family had a mini greenhouse my father built that was ugly. It got the job done, though.

I would definitely want something aesthetic. Once I spend some time on the forum you referred me to, I will be back with more questions. Thanks again, Joanne

I visited the Greenhouses and Garden Structures Forum. It is eye-opening and provides info for planning and consideration. Thanks to Bill for recommending it.

I had a wholesale nursery ten years ago. I used 30% shade for my plants. I think AV's would need a higher numbered shade cloth than that. My hubby built two greenhouses for me. Mostly from scrap wood he got for free at the dump. Even my greenhouse tables were built from throw out items. Check with your local wholesale growers. We've gotten free greenhouse plastic twice in three years from our local grower when it gets a hole in it. My hubby bought house windows really cheap to use in my new greenhouse. It will only be 14"by 14", but my current one is 8" X".

Thank you for sharing, this is great advice.

It may not be pretty to look at, but the plants don't know the difference.