Well, I built a greenhouse this year.....but I never considered keeping fish or aquatic plants in it.

Is your plan to have it heated all year long? If thats the case, I don't see why it wouldn't work. If you heat the environment of the tanks to the proper temps, you won't even have to use heaters in the tanks. However heaters still might be a good idea for back up incase the environment heater breaks down.

Good luck with this and keep us posted.

Sierra: Thanks for the encouragement.

I have the ususal love/hate relationship with tank heaters, but try to protect myself with good ones, and am planning to try some of the newer ones with digital thermostats that I've heard are really super accurate and more reliable. For what they cost, I sure hope so.

The GH will be heated with a nat. gas double combustion heater, so it will only burn fresh, outside air, and we have a stand-by generator, but I doubt I'll be heating the entire space to insure a high enough temp in the tanks.

I do plan some plants, if nothing else some veggies, because I have a passion for old fashoned, vine ripened tomatoes and want them in January, and hanging baskets of flowers, to keep me from becoming depressed in the middle of winter.

But the temps to keep the tanks warm enough to keep the fish happy would cook me and the plants. 72 will really have to be the highest I'd set the heater thermostat.

If anything, cooling it down after it's sealed against the cold may prove a greater challenge. We get some pretty dreary days here in winter, but when the sun shines, it's amazing how much that solar energy heats up a GH, even in very cold weather. I'll have to see how it goes this winter.

I'm only going to put plant tanks in there to start, to see how the water temps hold over the course of a winter, but am really looking forward to getting my powerful but loud, 50 cfm blower out of the house.

I love having so much air I have to bleed most of it off, but oh, the racket!

I'd still like to hear from someone who has done it and find out what I've forgotten to plan for, because I am sure there is something, probably obvious.

Hi
How do you intend to keep the fish and plants?? Pools or tanks?? I live in s. florida but still have the cold problem.lol Probably not as low or as long but still enough to kill everything.
Another problem is summer heat. Much harder to deal with than cold . have been struggling with that problem for many years and still don't have a year around solution.
gary

Gary:

Tanks only. At only 12 x 16, a pool large enough to deserve the name would blow out too much of my floor space. I'd love to have one in my GH, but it will have to remain one of those things I can enjoy only seasonally, in the garden.

The only solution I can think for your heat problem is what I'm planning for my own, because we get pretty hot weather here too. Abet it's for a shorter time, but July-Aug in the midwest can be literally, killers.

You hit the nail on the head about the difference between heat and cold. Build a good one (mine is a Cross Country) seal it well and install a really good furnace, and other than heart failure over gas bills, it can be kept hot enough to grow orchids at -40.

But I doubt AC is a practical notion for a GH so all we can do is use shade nets, ventillate, and run fans.

However, there is one gadget that helps a lot. I have a large floor fan in the barn, facing the stall in which I keep a very old horse, who in spite of his desert heritage, suffers from extreme heat as much in his old age as I do in mine, so I bought a plastic misting ring that fits onto the face frame of the fan.

The first time I used it was on one of those blistering days when the poor old thing would have otherwise needed a cold shower, but the cold water being misted in front of his stall, dropped the temp 20 degrees in just a few minutes.

So I might get one for the GH, just in case. They are cheap enough.

By only keeping aquatic plants in the GH for the winter, I hope to learn enough to risk some fish later, but I also sited it under some natural shade, so hopefully, when the next hot months arrive, I will have it all figured out.

Frozen tank safe water might be a handy thing to have on hand, in shoe box sized blocks. Ice will pop out of plastic shoe boxes just like jumbo ice cubes. Then, just zip bag them and stack in the freezer. It helps keep the freezer from running as much too, by filling what would have been air space, with something solid and frozen.

SW tank keepers use small fans in their hoods, to cool their reef tanks, so the same should work on a FW set up.

LOTS of possibilities. But only testing them under real conditions will tell.

What do you do to keep your Fla GH from becomming an oven?

Hi
Mine is really a shade house located in the SE corner of the house..Two walls and the roof are kept open year around .Misters and swamp coolers don't really work here as the humidity is too high.Refrigeration is too expensive.
I can usually get enough natural circulation to squeak by with enough shade. I run a 7x5 foot waterfall on the north wall which emptied into a 150 gallon aquarium.
The main problem for me is heat in the winter. Even during the coldest nights the next day the temps usually go back into the 70's. So any type of wall covering won't work
except for a few hours.. I pump heat from the house and heat a small pool and the aquarium.. This works against frost but of course has cold spots.
I'm thinking of heating the lily pool and expanding the shadehouse from 12x25 to 25x25 this should allow me to keep several climate zones year around. i grow mostly warm orchids and epiphytes and in the water areas mostly tropicals.
I had some damage to the roof area from hurricane Wilma
and thought it a good time to turn it into a GH but can'r figure out how lol. The only thing i can't grow is high altitude tropicals. So maybe I should be happy?? lol
gary

Gary: I don't know that being in a hurricane zone should make you happy, but otherwise, living in the warm- you should be.:)

BTW: If you suffered hurricane damage; have you thought of just tearing it all out, and starting over with any of the well made kit lean-to GH's now on the market?

With the latest in materials and construction techniques, coupled with the popularity of home GH's and competition in the market, ready to install GH kits have become quite reasonably priced.

Also check out what is available from ACFGreenhouses.com and Farmtek.com

You may be in for a pleasant surprise. If nothing else, it may give you ideas of what you can do with your present structure using materials available now, that were unheard of just a few years ago.

You could also pop over to the GH Forum and meet the same GH experts I did. If anyone can give you really useful ideas and suggestions, it's them.

Good luck.

Hi
I've been over to the GH forums ,not much info on warm climate GH's. A real gh here would actually be a handicap most of the year.not to mention how expensive it would be to operate. The local zoo built an indoor rainforest and used polarized glass but still must rely on refrigeration
10 months of the year.
They built a high altitude gh at the Singapore botanic gardens. haven't been able to find many details
on what they used or how they operate. One thing I'm sure of their budget is probably well above mine lol.
gary

Gary:

There are many hot climate GH folk on the GH forum, and a post specific to your issue would attract them. Do keep in mind that you are no more alone in your needs in a hot climate, than I am, in a cold one.

Each has it's challenges, but keeping a GH cool in hot, muggy weather is far more a universal problem than you may realize. Most areas in the US except those in upper Pacific NW and Atlantic NE experience extreme heat, even if only seasonally.

One poster in particular "nathanhurst" is a brilliant young evironmental scientist in Austrailia, who comes in with really good counsel. We often need to get past his scientific language, but he really knows his stuff.

Try a post asking for feedback for a hot, muggy climate GH and see what you get.

You have nothing to lose by trying.

Hi
The main problem here Is a gh worth the expense for the return?? The fish are no problem as I can get by with just a standard aquarium heater. A little bubble wrap if extremely cold.. The surrounding air is the main problem
but only for about a week a year lol.
they make Gh specificly for this climate but are very expensive to buy as well as operate.
In zone 8 or 9 they might be worthwhile but in 10 a definite handicap.
I can expand the shadehouse to 25x25 for under a thousand dollars with less than a hundred dollars a year operating expense.
A gh that size would cost at least 10 times that and I suspect at least 10 times to operate.
On a year around basis about all it would do is save me a bit of work.
Now if I could have a high altitude gh without winning the lottery lol that might be worth it lol
gary