Greenhouse / Sugar Shack combo

[SGFarm]

Good Day guys:

I want a sugar chack and my wife wants a greenhouse.

Can these be combined into one building? Is there something that I am forgetting that would make this a bad idea? Need to heat the greenhouse anyway to start the seeds; high humidty would be good for the seeds starting? We only have 50 pails and we may upgrade to 150 or 200 so we will be small scale with no large sap tanks or anything like that.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Mike

[mklarenbeek]

I don't know much about the sugar house part so I'll leave comments on that to the others.

As far as your wife's greenhouse goes, I think you might have some problems. Yes if she wants to start this early she will need heat. I'm about an hours drive SW of London and I'm not likely to get into my unheated 2 layer poly greenhouse until the sugaring season is nearly over. I have enough lights in my basement right now that I keep waiting for the OPP to show up questioning the spike in my hydro.:o

My greenhouse gets plenty warm during the day but it still gets below freezing at night. Were you planning on boiling through the night - every night. It only takes one freeze to kill all your wife's plants. Even if your were planning on boiling every night, plants typically germinate best at 18-24 C. That might sound like a large window but I think you might have a hard time maintaining it while boiling.

Sorry to be such a downer.

As for the humidity, I think you'd have too much of a good thing and would increase your chances of your seedlings suffering from damping off.

[KenWP]

Nothing worse then a cool greenhouse and lots of humidity. Those little plants topple over left and right. That and it would be raining in there not just a bit of condensate on the roof. My greenhouse has 2 oil furnaces which I wouldn't dare run with the price of oil but I could see some kind of wood heater later in the year working.
Now if you can figure out how to have it in a closed off separate room and use the stack with some kind of heat exchanger you could keep a small green house warmer at least.

[barkeatr]

this IS A great idea, i built a combination wood storage building, outdoor wood boiler enclosure and a greenhouse..i make syrup in another building however.

steam would be a problem, but maybe you can make a mini envelope inside the greenhouse to shield from humidty and make a smaller area to control untill late march or so. it seems as though a big cupola would help you cool the greenhouse and allow it to be usable into the summer.

if you went to the arborist discussion group, and went to the wood heat category and typed in greenhouse you would probably find pictures of my set up nearing 70 percent completion..

the greenhouse is a northern climate greenhouse, insulated glazing is on the south side only...

[hardermaple]

This is a good idea. And one that my wife and i looked into. She's the Head Grower/Production Manager at Five Acre Farm Greenhouses. There is plenty of moisture in the greenhouse alone by itself. During the day the greenhouse will heat up fine by itself with minimal sun. It's at night when it freezes that is most important. You have to heat the greenhouse every night! So we will add a woodstove as a second source of heat, and run that when we are not boiling. Remember there is such a thing as too much moisture in a greenhouse. Plants can rot from too much. i think if you can make sure that most of the steam goes outside, that it would work. Killing two birds with one stone. Firing the arch/heating the greenhouse. good luck.

[northwoods_forestry]

I know some folks who put a greenhouse up next the sugarhouse and then piped the condensate from their steamaway into a holding tank in the greenhouse.

It seemed to work pretty good, keeping the greenhouse pretty warm for the most part, but they have 2500 taps and run a 4x12 evaporator, so put out a lot of hot water from the steamaway. They also had to supplement with heat in the greenhouse during lapses in the sugaring season.