My new greenhouse

[Dorsetman]

I think its quite smart - and since it will be seen by all visitors to the garden and main greenhouse it needs too be ; dark green, powder coated aluminium. Nice details too - the nuts and bolts holding it together are hidden by discreet black plastic caps - etc. It is built on 18 inch square concrete slabs, simply laid on the "gravel" - which in this are where the underlying rock is chalk, consists of flint lumps the size of a walnut or thereabouts - excellent drainage, needful when I am pouring hundreds of gallons of water into the base.
The frame is bolted to brackets screwed to the slabs , so that storm winds won't be able to move it ; I am only 12 miles from one of our famous weather stations - Needles Battery in the English Channel, where storm force winds of over 100mph are regularly reported in the winter gales - but my garden is very sheltered . I occasionally get pots blown over, but thats all.
I have finished the main assembly, now putting together the benches - professional quality very thick solid aluminium extrusions. These will be low, because I shall not be lifting pots off and putting them back all the time as I do in the main house - I am using automatic watering with drip lines to each pot, so they will only be taken off for serious maintenance - repotting- maybe staking etc. This will give me great head room, and chances for the flower spikes, some of which are four feet high above the pot, to develop naturally.
The roof has four large ventilators ; not sure how much I shall use them ! I have bought the makers roller blinds for shading - same applies - but I won't install them until after the benches are finished.
I am using electric tubular heaters - taken out of my last cymbidium house when I moved here 16 years ago - makes a nice bit of space in my garden shed which has been cluttered up with them for that time . They will be mounted on a wooden frame below the benches, and resting on the floor insulation ( 3 inch thick Celotex or similar - only used under the benches) Stat' controlled. I shall set to a mean 11˚C - which after experiment will probably mean setting to 10, this is a favoured area, for climate. The presence of so many trillion tons of sea-water, still with some warmth from the Gulf Stream, which never gets below say 8˚C in the winter or above say 15˚ C in the summer, only a mile away means that my temperatures are much more even and equable than they are inland ; when there is a heatwave ( more frequently now, with global warming), the market town 7 miles inland from me can be say 33C, and I am 27; and in the winter that town may get down to minus 5 or even 10 and I never see more than minus 2 or 3.
The drip feed and rain collection tanks will go at the back , north - the pics are taken looking north ( inland). I already have power supplies, from a a time when I had cold frames, with winter frost protection, here.
I'll add to this, after the next stages - perhaps with real live green plants - wow !