insulation of a second hand greenhouse

[mrsflibble]

I won a greenhouse on ebay. it's my 30th birthday pressie from the husband, but I'm getting it a couple of months before my birthday lol.
anyway., I know you "need" to heat and/or insulate a greenhouse, but how can I do this for as little as possible? and preferably for free?

thaaaanks!

[GeorgeSalt]

It depends what you're planning on using it for. Normal summer tomatoes and raising seedlings in spring and there's no need to insulate or heat. Heating or insulation os only a necessity if you plan on using it over the winter for tender plants.

[Green Aura]

You don't need to do either, Mrs F, unless your planning to keep/grow more tender plants. Things like winter lettuce will grow happily in an unheated greenhouse.

Bubble wrap taped over the windows or fleece laid over the plants might be enough otherwise.

We just use the house windowsills for germinating (and one small heated propagator for peppers and other temperaturesensitive seeds) and then move them out to the polytunnel when the frosts are gone - although it didn't get down below freezing in there even with the plastic skin so a glass greenhouse should be much warmer.

If you're looking at real heat it can get very expensive - to either/both buy and run, depending on what you're using.

[mrsflibble]

nope, I am just looking at normal seasonal veggies, but with a lower failure rate than I've experienced before, so knowing I don't need to insulate is awesome thankyou!

I'm planning tomatoes, cucumber and various chillis as we're all big chilli fans in this house.

I also want to grow some michelmas daisies, but again these get sown when the weather is beginning to warm up. I'll just fleece them over night.

[marshlander]

It's important that tomato seedlings don't get cold at night. If you have a large black water butt inside the greenhouse, where it gets the sun, the water will warm up during the day and give out it's heat at night helping prevent the overnight temperature falling so quickly.

I think I remember a thread on here suggesting filling 5 ltr containers with water, paint black and place them all round the inside perimeter of the greenhouse to do the same thing - make a heat sink.

[mrsflibble]

that's an awesome idea. I'll get next door to start keeping their milk cartons (ours are tetrapak so wouldn't work, needs to be plastic)

[Green Aura]

Or you can make a heat sink a la Dick Strawbridge.

We've got one in the polytunnel - I've described it on here somewhere before. It needs a few bits you'd have to buy (solar panel, fan, storage battery etc) but if you put the basic structure (box in ground filled with gravel and a length of small bore drainpipe) in when you build the greenhouse you could add the rest as you can afford.

[mrsflibble]

it's going onto a pre-fitted patio as we live in a rented house, so that's not an option lol. I've set the feelers out for plastic containers to paint black. jim's going to look at work for me lol.