Here in Washington, zone 6a, we had always wanted to build a greenhouse, but never got around to it. After we put in our "Endless" pool, outdoors as part of a deck extension, our decision to make it usable year 'round got us our greenhouse, too.
First, here's the pool, in summer.
Here's the pool covered by our bubble --a simple but ingenious design that allows us to do our laps swimming against the current in the 16X10 pool every day, regardless of weather or temperature through the winter.
It's made of heavy plastic, custom-designed to fit a set of anchor points that thread down into certain points on the deck. A steel cable around the bottom "hem" holds the bubble down, and an interior plastic flap seals almost perfectly against the deck. We cover the wooden deck with heavy black construction sheeting to make the whole thing as airtight as possible. Entry is through a zippered slot --in and outs have to be quick, to keep interior air loss down.
The heated pool heats the interior of the bubble, mostly by evaporation, some radiation/convection. So, humidity is usually 100% and on most days a rainforest environment, with condensation dripping from the ceiling and running down the walls. temperature inside is easy to maintain at >45 degrees F (7 - 8 degrees C), even when it's in the teens F (say, -12.5C) , when the condensate freezes against the side walls (never the ceiling) --those are the days when we need a cup of boiling water to melt the zipper, just to get in for our 30-minute workouts.
Our use of the bubble as a greenhouse has been very successful, though it's clearly not ideal for all species or all purposes --the humidity keeps everything WET, leaves, stems and soil, EVERYTHING.
We spray all our plants before they enter the bubble with insecticide and antifungus, which prevents most problems for most plants.
Successes have included: hibiscus, oleander, alocasia, colocasia, asparagus fern, banana, areca palm, cycad palm, bower vine, jasmine, mandevilla, passiflora, and spider plant.
We've lost a few species rather dramatically --crotons HATE it for some reason, and drop 100% of their leaves almost immediately, and die shortly afterward. Amazonica faded fast.
Here are a couple shots ... first, entering through the bubble zipper...
This message was edited Jan 4, 2009 4:01 PM
A better shot of the main group of plants
(We keep rafts on the pool surface to keep evaporation/heat loss to a minumum, while maintaining adequate interior temperatures.)
This message was edited Jan 4, 2009 4:04 PM
...a closeup of one hibiscus plant, between two oleanders, showing they like it pretty well in there...
...a flash shot of an oleander, and an alocasia, looking pretty much right in their element, wouldn't you say? New growth is plentiful, if not rapid...
(Note also a less enthusiastic hibiscus, with evidence of fungus in the bloack spots, yellowing leaves --it still produces a new blossom every couple days. )
But back to the oleander --check out the next shot...
...here's a close-up of the same oleander, showing something I've never seen one of these plants do --dropping roots from branches! Hope I'm right that this is a sign of robust health...it's happening on all four oleanders in there.
I'm surprised the oleanders are happy, they thrive in our dry parched highway medians here so they definitely don't need humidity. But I guess since they grow in the South too they must not mind at least some humidity. That's interesting how the branches are putting out roots, you'll have to keep us posted on what happens there!
What a neat set up!
It is pretty neat, given that our first priority was to enable swimming workouts year 'round.
It's not an ideal greenhouse --no way at all to reduce the humidity, and thus a rather inefficient approach to heating the space. But that's offset for us by ending our pool membership of $225 monthly, which we used very little.
Nonetheless, it works for most of our tropicals, allowing us to keep them from year to year, and we may end up growing our plant collection with selectionsparticularly well suited to the rainforest "micro-climate".
Question to any and all experts: are there plants that would uniquely thrive in this 100% humidity, constant drizzle?
I would think plants that are native to tropical rainforests would love it there--things from temperate rainforests may do OK too depending on how high the temperatures get. But then my question would be whether those plants will be happy with conditions during the times of year when you don't have the pool bubble set up--things that are really happy in that very humid environment will probably not be happy if you take that away, and if you leave the pool bubble set up over the summer I expect it would get way too hot in there for the plants (and for you too!)
EC,
You are probably right --though there may be some species that love rain all winter, with mild Spring and Fall, separated by hot and humid DC Summers. We do irrigate everything once we take the bubble down by April each year, before re-bubbling in Oct/Nov.
THanks.
If you're in DC then you may be in better shape--in your initial post when you said Washington and zone 6a I was figuring you were in the eastern part of Washington state where there is not much humidity during the summer. Since the summer humidity is high in DC the rainforest type plants may get by fine even without the bubble, definitely worth trying! Also I think DC is zone 7 rather than 6--doesn't matter for this discussion but it may expand the range of things you can consider growing outside the bubble.
I've had some unusual issues with my pool chemistry --without going into all the technicalities, I think the pool produces high levels of carbon dioxide.
This could be an explanation for the superior growth my plants are experiencing, including the flowering of a Spike plant pictured here.
Any thoughts?
Very nice wish I had a pool/Greenhouse I love the idea.
Lavina
What a fabby idea!!!! Thanks for sharing this JP.
Really nifty. The pool is lovely by itself -- is it an in-ground vinyl pool? I had one when I lived in CA and loved it.
It's about half-way in-ground. We extended our patio with a deck, taking advantage of a downslope --uphill side, it's about 2 feet above ground, downhill about 5 feet out, but flush with the deck surface / patio all around. 6 inches of solid insulation surrounds the steel sides. Costs me a ton to heat all winter, but it's still cheaper than paying for a pool club membership I never use, and I'm in better shape for the workouts I actually do.
That doesn't even count all the plants we now keep from one year to the next, that we used to have to buy new every year.
I'm rationalizing, yes, but it helps me at bill time.
Really sounds lovely and well worth the cost.
