The Buiding of My Pit Greenhouse

I had a conversation with an old friend from Salida the other day. It prompted me to get into my pictures. I came across these, the construction of my green house back in 1985. The backyard, was already paved with bricks, stones, etc. I dug a 3 foot deep trench where the flower bed was next to the house, and lined it with steel rib panel. The concrete stem wall is 2 feet high, and sits 4 feet from the edge of the pit.




When I re-built this in 2007, I added a solar heat collector at the base of the stem wall.
After I got it skinned , I cut the door into the back porch.



About the same time, I added a thermal solar collector to the roof of the porch. The box is full of beer cans , that act as baffles and surface area. Cool air was circulated with a fan in the bottom, and warm air was blown into a thermal water battery buried in the floor. I used 300 1 gallon plastic milk jugs to store the water.