The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse: How to Design and Build a Net-Zero Energy Greenhouse

Mother Earth News Wiser Living

by Marc Plinke, Marc Plinke

The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse is a practical guide to creating a lush, abundant year-round garden in any climate

The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse focuses on the building of the greenhouse, not how to grow food
A solar greenhouse is a greenhouse that gets 100% of its heat, year-round, by collecting the sun's energy in stored water and other thermal mass and releasing it back into the greenhouse at night
The first section of the book reviews the basics of solar greenhouse design in a clear, engaging format
The remaining sections of the book show readers how to build a durable, long-lasting greenhouse for a variety of situations
Instead of relying on fruits and vegetables shipped from thousands of miles away, a year-round greenhouse makes it possible to grow fresh, nutrient dense food right in your own backyard
Topics include building the greenhouse underground, tailoring the greenhouse for aquaponics, and integrating solar panels to grow off-grid year-round
Schiller designed, toured or helped build hundreds of energy-efficient greenhouses from small residential structures to acre-sized commercial facilities
Schiller and Plinke are founders of Ceres Greenhouse Solutions
Plinke retrofitted his family's 1950's ranch home into a net-zero-energy home, ranking it as one of the most energy-efficient homes in the US

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Sustainability, Agriculture, Environment

332 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2016

Reviews

[cellomerl]

This is good technical guide that manages not to be too dry. It’s quite amazing that by boosting the efficiency of heat storage in your greenhouse, you can greatly expand its performance. This book is a comprehensive guide that I’m sure I’ll refer to later. The casse studies are interesting too. I only wish it had more colour illustrations.
It’s interesting that the source material and reference books cited by the authors are over forty years old. It’s as if all the published activity on solar greenhouses went to sleep in the seventies and it’s only just waking up again now.

[Two Readers in Love]

Solid, realistic information on what you can achieve with a solar greenhouse. As a bonus, the information on the effects of glazing, light angles, and heat storage in different climates and seasons is also useful for three season rooms. Does not include detailed plans but offers good resources for further, project-specific information.

[Katinka]

My husband and I are planning on turning an old gazebo into a greenhouse to extend our growing season this year. I read this book to see if it could help me with the planning stages of a greenhouse. (It's currently winter here, so nothing can be done for a few more months.)

Reading this book gave me a lot of information that I didn't know anything about previously. While much of what I learned won't work for what we want to do, I did gain a lot of ideas that should work and will get us a long way towards actually building our greenhouse and having it work without needing to use electricity to keep it warm enough as the temps begin dropping in the fall and allow us to start our plants earlier in the spring.

In other words, while this was not a step by step guide on how to get our DIY greenhouse built, it did provide a lot of help in understanding what we'll need to do and how to go about doing it. Will we still run into other unconsidered problems along the way? Most likely, yes. But after reading this book, we learned what won't work for us and why, as well as providing us with a lot of ideas about what will work.

So I would recommend this book for anyone who needs to learn about different types of greenhouses and is considering buying or building one for themselves. I found it to be very helpful overall.

[J.]

I really like how the authors don't provide a one-size fits all approach. Instead they explain the concepts and provide tables a of information so that the reader can design the most effective greenhouse based on your needs, your location and whether or not you want to use supplemental heat and light. A very useful and helpful book.

[Joan Cooke]

Very technical but good resource

it is somewhat technical reading which may be offputing initially but good resource for alternate methods and additional source material.

[Heather Culley]

Perfectly feasible and sensible planning. A great instruction manual.

[Joshua Sutton]

Good primer for the curious

I’ve been doing research online for several months and could’ve saved considerable time if I had read this book first. Highly recommended!

[Jody Schwarz]

Best greenhouse and book I have ever read!

[Maria Jansson]

So many great ideas! The photos and in-depth descriptions of different methods, pro’s and con’s are thoroughly described. Definitely going to be a part of my homesteading library.

[Joan L Huffman MD]

This book gave me some good background information to aid my research into the construction of a geothermal greenhouse.

[Joanne McKinnon]

Must read

So much great info for anyone wanting to build a greenhouse in an environment friendly way. Also a lot on different growing methods. Great reference.

[Kim]

Good information but not what I need really. Total overkill for the plans here.

[Heidi Burkett]

This book contains lots of sound scientific information to help in the initial decision making and planning process of a year-round greenhouse.

[Jamie Vogt]

I read this a few years ago, mostly jumping around to subjects I was interested in. I recently read it cover to cover. While this it is a little dense at times and at the same time a bit elementary on other subjects, it is a great overview of the various needs and considerations for a year round greenhouse. I live at 8000’ in the Colorado mountains and while I do think I need to do more reading and research before embarking on constructing a true 4 season greenhouse, this book gave me a great foundation to build my knowledge base from.