Twojugglers

Hi All.

I am a 58 year-old UU pastor, general ontractor, and yoga teacher, living in Illinois, USA. My wife is a professor of horticulture at our local university. I started on a greenhouse project here at home in the summer of 2004. Our plan was for a sunken-pit solar greenhouse, attached to our bedroom. Size, roughly 14' x 24'. As a transition I am building a sunroom. It has a basement that leads to what will be the floor of the greenhouse. This is deeper than is necessary for a pit greenhouse, but was necessary since I needed a basement you could stand up in. I'm acutally about 5-6 feet underground at this point. The sunroom/basement will be on the west wall of the future greenhouse and the east wall of our bedroom. The east wall of the greenhouse will exit on a hillside and will be open to daylight and our outdoor garden.

I've just recently (March 2005} stumbled upon Sola Roof and bubble greenhouses. I'm looking for a way to integrate what I've started into what I am learning here. At this point I can envision a solid structure with a conventionally-built and insulated North Roof. The south roof would be two layers of soild plastic with spacing for bubbles. I'm not sure what to do about the fact that I've ended up about 3' deeper under ground than is typical for pit greenhouses. I'll be well bermed for sure.

I'm looking forward to learning and contributing here.

Regards,

Juggsy

btw, my alias comes from my earliest registration with Yahoo years back. I like to teach juggling, and tried "thejuggler" and variations on that. Yahoo kept offering up "juggler3586" and stuff like that. "twojugglers" wasn't taken so I took it. Has nothing to do with human anatomy and nothing sleazy is intended.

Welcome Juggsy - the extra depth that you have could provide for more volume of water for a Liquid Thermal Mass system. The soap solution is built like a tank inside a larger pool. The regular water can also be used for growing the plants. The more "thermally active" liquid volume, the better. It would be helpful to see a sketch of your cross section. I think that a lot of our community is interested in such sunroom home additions. Perhaps we should start a group called Sun Room ? and your project could be documented their and serve a a pattern for others to work with and improve. - Solaroofguy

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your reply and welcome! My sunroom attaches to the East wall of our bedroom. It is 14'x14', Just large enough to accomodate a stairway to its basement. Then there is a doorway on the east wall of the basement which leads to the "Pit", which, as I said, is a good 5 - 6' underground. And, the east end of the pit is open to daylight, as we are on a hillside. We will be able to walk out the east end of the greenhouse to a yard. I'd be happy to submit a photo of the project so far. How do I do that?

Thanks,

Juggsy

Richard/Rick?

Hi, I've added a photo to the photos page at the Yahoo Solaroof site. Does this help?

Thanks,

Juggsy/Ron

The wiki is less like email. We just sign at the end of an individual page edit, whether it is one paragraph or more. I think that with your project and the interest a number of members will have that you could have a Personal Wiki and I would suggest that you set it up with group name of Ron Green ? or Two Jugglers ? - making a Wiki Word out of your nickname. Then you can try out the Wiki Blog and this page will not continue to grow day by day, but will continue to be your contact page. I will help set you up if you are interested and you can try out the Wiki How To group to see if it is useful as a guide for setting up a personal wiki here at Sola Roof. What do you say? - Sola Roof Guy