Greenhouse: Does anyone have a Conservatory???, 1 by HollyAnnS

HollyAnnS wrote:
I haven't decided on a heating system yet either. Ric and I have been tossing around several different ideas. Since our GH will be attached to the house we will be putting in a door from the house directly to the GH and the existing kitchen window will also open into the GH. Also that bump out on the back of the house is my laundry room and will be part of the sidewall of the GH so we have several points where we could direct the heat from the house into the GH. We use a wood/coal stove for our main heat source and quite often have windows and doors cracked in the winter to let out the extra heat. Especially on sunny days as we also have a solar slab in the living area.
We have also talked about solar heat for the GH. Ric has been collecting old radiators and we thought we could paint them black and fill them with a water/anti-freeze solution and they would collect some heat. Also the brick floor area and the back wall will be replaced with brick so that would also collect some heat. We have also thought about portable electric heaters that could be used to supplement the heat we could get from solar gain and by opening the house into the GH.
There has been some discussion about a small coal stove for the GH. Ric's idea not mine, I have heard that coal gas isn't good for some plants and have issues with the dirt associated with coal stoves. Ric pointed out the many years ago almost all commercial GH's were heated with coal. One of the seminars run by my Hobby GH Assoc. this winter is going to be about heating your GH. I will be very interested in hearing what they say.
Here is a shot of my living area from last week when I finally got all the plants in from outside. There are about 40 pots in here right now. I will be getting rid of a few of them like the coleus pot that I will take cuttings from and then remove the pot from the house but I think when I'm done I will still have about 30 pots to over winter inside.