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Your ways of adding heat to a green house/shed during Winter.

TerrysWorldTerrysWorld Posts: 174
in Problem solving
Always remember my Gran using an old 12in Square tin used in the 50's with a bulb mounted in the tin and hung in her green house to keep it frost free.

What efficient ways do you heat your green house/shed to try keep it frost free.
South Monmouthshire stuck in the middle between George and the Dragon
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  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    When I was a child, our car was a 1936 Morris 10, and in the winter, dad always used to hang a little paraffin lamp with mesh safety windows under the bonnet, to keep the radiator from freezing :)
    I just use an electric fan heater, set on frost free.

  • JoeXJoeX Posts: 1,783
    I will run a cable to the shed/summerhouse with an electric fan when Im going to sit inside.
  • AnniDAnniD Posts: 12,585
    edited October 2020
    My greenhouse has an electricity supply, but my OH gets so twitchy if he sees the heater in there. The bills!  The cost ! 😯
    So if the weather turns really chilly l use fleece in multiple layers depending on just how cold it gets.
    Still use electric propagators though in the Spring  B)
  • amancalledgeorgeamancalledgeorge Posts: 2,736
    With single glazed structures the least you use heat the better...what a waste of energy for a short term benefit. 
    To Plant a Garden is to Believe in Tomorrow
  • strelitzia32strelitzia32 Posts: 758
    Greenhouses are usually a few degrees warmer than the outside temperature anyway. If your climate is so cold that an unheated greenhouse, potentially with some bubble wrap etc, isn't warm enough, you're better off changing what you're keeping or moving it to a new position such as against the house. A cold frame with one side against a house brick wall will gain radiated heat and be much warmer. And if that isn't doing the trick, you should stop growing tropical plants outdoors in the Arctic circle ;)
  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 55,117
    strelitzia32 said:
     A cold frame with one side against a house brick wall will gain radiated heat and be much warmer. And if that isn't doing the trick, you should stop growing tropical plants outdoors in the Arctic circle ;)
     :D 
    My growhouse is against the house wall, and it still isn't that warm.
    The more plants you have in it, the warmer it is though. That's also something to bear in mind. Mine was 8 degrees at 10am this morning, same as the outdoor temp  :)
    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • Ferdinand2000Ferdinand2000 Posts: 537
    strelitzia32 said:
    A cold frame with one side against a house brick wall will gain radiated heat and be much warmer. And if that isn't doing the trick, you should stop growing tropical plants outdoors in the Arctic circle ;)
    In any modern house this should be minimal, even built to basic Building Regulations.


    “Rivers know this ... we will get there in the end.”
  • nick615nick615 Posts: 1,487
    I've never tried this personally but I'm told plastic containers painted matt black and filled with water, left inside a greenhouse during the day will absorb enough warmth to provide just enough background to keep the frost off during the night.  The secret will obviously be to place them on a north side of the greenhouse for maximum exposure to sunlight/solar warmth, and to stack them as high as possible for the same reason.
  • Mike AllenMike Allen Posts: 208
    This is an interesting point.  Here, we are actually dealing with two factors.  Temperature-warmth and basically frost protection.  The vascular system of plants, enable them to adapt to temperature changes, much like us.  However with plants.  Temperature changes can are dealt with.  Temperature changes especially come the winter season, present a newer problem.  That is frost, freezing and ice.  Here in the latter.  The vegetive plant structures are attacked by lower temperatures.  Then moisture.  Here the moisture attacks and coupled with the lowering of temperatures, in many case causes the moisture to turn to ice.   Ice can have many affects.  Basically. Ice and plants.  The cellular system of the plants absorb the moisture.  The latter usually containing various nutrients.  At the same time, the colder, freezing particles penetrate the plants wall and now mixed with a slightly reaised temperature, expand.  This causes splitting of the cellular walls, and the plants life blood soon becomes lost.
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