Couple Builds a SUNKEN GREENHOUSE for $4,500 - Ep. 125 

Scott and Crystal have made their greenhouse plans available for purchase here: bit.ly/3SiNL2P

Really good video. One criticism is please let the person you are interviewing talk uninterrupted as there seems to be a lot of interjection by the interviewer and he ends up talking over the person he is soliciting information from.

We had a very similar structure (minus the underground feature) we called a solarium along the side of the house. All we had to do was open the sliding glass door from the house to the solarium in January to heat up the house. Cement floor. Grew lemons year round. Oregon.

The internet has made meeting and learning from amazing people possible on a level never seen before. This farmer/carpenter is amazingly talented. I love his passion.

Wow thanks for all the positive feedback on my project! I’ll try and answer some questions. What wasn’t shown was the excavation with a perimeter drain of gravel and drainage pipe. Buried air exchange pipes would have been impractical due to drainage, but I like the idea. This could have been built of dry laid stone and it would be beautiful but what I have is small irregular rocks. The building it is attached to is a repair shop not a house, and the siding has an air gap behind it, but please take care with moisture attaching to your house! The rafters are full 2x4 hemlock, selected to be close to perfect from my local mill. At least equal to “2x6”s from the orange or blue box. I’ll let you know if they weren’t enough! Cost breakdown: Store lumber 1100, lumber from sawmill 500, wire panels 400, polycarbonate 1900 delivered, extrusions 400, screws etc 200. I have a 40 year old 23 hp loader tractor and a 1969 jd 450 dozer, so I am just counting materials. I had the fan and vents. The thing I like about the electric vents is I can set the temp within a few degrees, but the solar ones work too. I recommend your local Mennonite farm supply for polycarbonate and vents, in ny and pa there are several that buy in bulk to get a very good deal.. I now have the stonework and grading done outside and gravel and stone paths inside, the power is done and ventilation working. Just frosting outside at night but about 60 in there in the mornings, and lots of gaps to seal still. I will post an update on our channel when I get more done! Scott Btw I have no credentials whatsoever, just farm know-how, which is 90% careful observation and 10% s blind confidence. Build at your own risk!

11:11 if you can utilize a black paint or make a charcoal paste to coat the rocks you'll get another 5 degrees of warmth over night from a couple hours of direct light. A small high intensity discharge lamp such as a 315w CMH would go a long way over night in a space like this as well. Great work.

I bought property next door. It was owned by an engineer who wrote building code all over North America. He built one of these in the late 70's. He also installed a compostable toilet, and the green house was south facing and brought heat back into the home in winter. Very cool and way ahead of its time!

I’ve seen a couple guys on RU-vid turn their empty in-ground pool into a greenhouse. Tired of maintaining an in-ground pool? Turn it into a greenhouse.

So interesting to see the sunken greenhouse done with stone walls rather than concrete…. Given me a real pause for thought as my trade is dry stone wall building, I would say that this would absolutely be possible without the gabion baskets. Maybe the stone walls are good for humidity too? Low tech and lots of natural materials so it’s not hanging round for more years than necessary, what a fantastic project! Great video guys👌

I'd love to see an update next year on this. The Gulf Stream makes every kind of difference.

This is literally my dream greenhouse!

Fabulous! These videos are so interesting and educational. I love seeing other peoples' ingenuity and creativity. Thank you!

Nice work, I just started digging this year for a greenhouse tucked into a south facing hill overlooking my garden and that 2 tier step down system with an stone internal shoring wall is a good idea. Was just going to make it 12 ft wide with one level, but do have room to go another 6 or 8 ft and split the difference into 2 levels........hmmmmm? Tough call, I would have to get rid of my external cold frames in the plan and have much more inside. So many ideas when looking at what people build and for me it has to be a passive heat sync greenhouse, no utilities running out to it except for maybe a couple solar panels and a battery or two for lights. Got time here anyways to figure it out, looks like a 3 year project for me. Hope everyone had a good growing season, it was good here in a zone 4b Ontario, Canada....the pantry, freezer and root cellar are all full, the garden is put to sleep already and there's 2 full bays of compost ready for startup in the spring. Got the snow blower all tuned up and settling in for a long winters nap.....happy gardening 2023 everyone.

Ive seen people get vents through the ground and have great success with growing citrus fruits far up north. "Nebraska retiree uses earths's heat to grow oranges in snow" is how they did it. Good looking greenhouse! Greetings, Jeff

My father had 6 green houses, and in the spring when it warming up. He make paint, and water in a hand pump bottle. Spray the white wash on top of the glass plains , to block the sunlight in the summer. The rain will wash by fall. The natural gas bill was high in winter, but he placed alot in one or two houses, and closed of the the one's that was used until spring planting. For venting, bring air though 12 inch tube under ground a 100 or 200 feet . That will cool it off in the summer.

Thank you Ms. Summer. That was very interesting. I wonder if that man sleeps at night or does his brain go 24/7 thinking of new ways to reinvent the wheel. He has some great ideas. 🍁🍂🍁💚🙃

I love this episode . And the couple that are featured ..can't wait to see the end

Really great video. I love seeing the ingenuity. It goes to show you what you can do when you're motivated, and it's contagious!

Started my wallapini about a half year ago. Still have a long way to go because of budget restraints but we're working towards getting it finished asap. Excited. Thanks for the insights and encouragement

I'm so happy to see sander on camera ..❤️❤️❤️good to see you guys love from Philippines 🇵🇭

Super. I love how creativity and current conditions changed the original plan. This is a true dream greenhouse. Very innovative.

Sander seem so excited!!! he need to have his own channel about his graphic design and film tutoring :)

So impressive and there's nothing as tasty as a fresh fig!!!! Thanks for the tour and wow that project was put up fast. Looking forward to seeing an update in a few months if that could be accomplished. 💚

Wow geothermal greenhouse . It’s like a tunnel marries a root cellar . Really cool !

Brilliant idea for a greenhouse underground. We recently created an underground greenhouse as a proof of concept in the Ozarks, to extend the growing season with more temperature control than a cold box, AND to reduce heat stress during the summer. Basically trying to effectively utilize the constant ground temperature of about 56 degrees. Not sure how fiddly it will be through the winter but with the crazy climate changes we had to do something to keep producing food consistently. Ours is much smaller, surrounded with concrete blocks, and covered with old windows that are easily removed as needed. And then there is the indoor vegetable growing room. Our goal is to avoid grocery stores and so far that's working.

Would love to see a follow up video of this set up fully operational in both summer and winter! Great video, thanks!

Reminds me of how they grew plants on pacific islands in which they had circles of stones around a hole to protect plants from cold sea winds.

It's always nice to watch a neighbors dreams come to fruition. Thank you for sharing! Consider sharing updates. This reminded me of Chad DeVoe's Earthship in Freeville, NY.

I've had visions of this for soo long.... yes! It works so well. Haha! Let's get more of these underground greenhouses going.

Thank you! This was very informative and exciting to watch. I would love to see another update a few years from now.

The buried greenhouse needs a cold air pit/ trench to get that cold air from the plants during the night, sinking into the pit, trench making space for warmer air to cover the plants.

Thoroughly enjoyed your video. Scott is a legend, and I really dig his experiment. Fun to hear him referencing Pete, whose videos I also appreciate. I'm currently building a timber frame greenhouse and raising my first pigs on my tiny farmette in progress in NE NY and am glad to hear about similar projects in similar climate. Sander: please forgive me but remember when you have such a wonderfully knowledgeable guest as Scott on your show: Let HIM Talk. I kept hearing a little Nederlander accent in your speech and was amused to see on your website I was right about that.

Love this conversation! Thank you so much for educating us all🙏👏👍

This has been one of the best season extension videos I've watched.

Excellent interview, thank you much for all this information. My daughter and I were just discussing different greenhouses.

Such a cool episode. I've been researching this type of greenhouse, there's a lot of awesome videos out there. We're building a greenhouse within a couple years (Zone 3) and I think this style is ideal for us.

This will be great to grow so much more,he is doing a super greenhouse👍 💚☘️🌵🌱

Totally inspired! Not gonna lie, I dont think I've ever had a fig. So now there is a project at hand!

I Appreciate Scott's thinking this project out. He has answered many questions

"Thermal mass” is the fundamental dynamic you’re trying to phrase. Great video!!

for overheat protection you can get pcm containing spring. its heat activated. when the pcm material melts, at 25, it will push the piston out open the window

We went to Bolivia and there at altitudes 15k feet the indigenous people utilize this sunken greenhouse style to grow food, it freezes there everynight. Using this style they grow perfectly well. Was amazing.

This video was so helpful thanks so much!! I’m excited to figure out how I can grow citrus in a trench and also learned so much about how to heat a greenhouse and design it

There's a video of a Nebraska man who built his own geothermal greenhouse and he uses 6-in drain pipe underground with a fan to cool during the summer and heat during the winter and grows orange trees. The above grade north wall is slightly leaning in to reflect solar heat and in summer is shaded. Thanks for sharing your video.

This is awesome! We built a geo thermal greenhouse we are in the second year. It’s been a game changer. I think you have more growing space in yours! Nice! Wendy🙏🏻🌎

Some years ago, I built a small greenhouse. I found some foundation vents that opened and c!osed automatically dependent on preset temps...no electric involved. I have searched in vain to find these since then. What I loved about them was they worked!

Randomly ran across this video. Glad I did. I'm in a zone 3 area. I have a 16 foot dome tent I'm making into a green house. This gave me a lot of things to think about. I'm new to the idea of using the dome tent as a greenhouse. I'm getting more excited for the potential of starting the growing season a few weeks earlier. Not sure how the rest of the year will go. It will be a fun experiment. Park City

Awesome design. Good luck going forward. Here's some low tech. To inexpensively prevent freezing use strings of christmas lights (large bulb type). Enough for behind glazing, and will work overnight with patio planters (citrus) moved against the house, hung with the lights, and covered with plastic. A trouble-light has a hook for hanging and a protective enclosure that keeps the bulb from touching anything. Emergency greenhouse within a greenhouse for that super January snap. Light bulbs are great for winter heating inside paint cabinets, crawl-space water supplies with a metal water shutoff (inside insulated box) and preventing freeze-up in sink, tub and toilet traps.

Flock Finger Lakes Great video production!!! Under the Tree Farms Thanks for sharing your project and background on your research and the 2 month UPDATE!!! We will follow your ideas in the near future and share your video with others... Off to your website for more updates...

Thanks Summer! Enjoyed watching this project - hope you guys do another video update! Also, fun to have Sanders in the hotseat for a change haha

What a beautiful piece of property.

Great video and a great job explaining all of the concepts and ideas. I had intended to build something very similar. We have five 26 x 100ft high tunnels and your are spot on when you talked about the pros and cons of high tunnels with poly covering. Here is my sad story with an amazing happy ending. lol We had the mother of all wind storms last winter and all the plastic above the roll up sides was stripped from the frames. What held the lower plastic in place was that the snow/ice was approximately 5ft deep and locked the lower plastic in place. As depressing as that was, it was not the end of our business since we had actually retired from market gardening two years before. I recovered only one tunnel and we left the lower 6ft of plastic on the others and planted like usual. This was actually a blessing and huge learning experience with many "ah ha" moments. We live in a zone 3-4 area of Alaska and I would have never believed this, but we actually had a more productive season in the open top tunnels. So how is this possible you ask? lol I was sure the season was going to be a big bust, but we kept the end doors closed and each tunnel was now a 26x 100ft micro climate. Not to hot, not to cold. The snow melt and rain provided the needed moisture and I cut my time watering by 80% or so. The honey bees and other insects did an amazing job of pollinating now that they could actually find their way in an out of the open top tunnels, No high humidity, no powdery mildew, no emergency high heat incidents, no overly dry soil. And the biggest advantage is in my opinion is the health of the soil from deep watering's,. I had to be very careful with over watering in my tunnels in the past due to our high mineral content. It appears that the snow and rain is giving the soil the flushing they have not had in almost 8 years. I am seriously thinking about recovering the frames to the 8-9ft height on all four sides and would love to hear if anyone else out there has discovered this technique and how it is going?

An awesome project

I am watching this in January. It would be interesting to see how the greenhouse looks and functions during cold winter months. I love the roof vent. I have been trying figure out how to build/ buy the components for my next greenhouse.

I wanted to do a similar thing as the gabion on a friend's estate using limestone mill rejected blocks. They were 8x8x20 with large seashell fossils, crystals and geodes It woulda been epic!

Dude looks like the character, Matt Hooper, from Jaws. Love the idea of the underground greenhouse.

Scott should invest in some shade cloth for his green houses in the summer! Will go a long way to help him keep them cooler in the hotter months.

I must say that I really enjoyed watching your video today. So inspiring and encouraging to see the greenhouse from almost start to finish and the ridiculous price of it all. I was surprised and also very happy to see that the automatic computer that waters the plants in the greenhouse is from the 'Galcon' company and is manufactured in Israel. 🥰. I don't know about the other pipes, the drippers and the polycarbonate roof, but maybe they are also made in Israel.

I have been thinking about a small unground greenhouse where a 9x16 shed that is on some part buried concrete piers needs to be taken out. I've been wondering how exactly to go about it wanting to keep it as simple as possible ... this is so perfect I am saving it to watch again later. Thanks a bunch and good and thorough info!

Such a nice gabon greenhouse. Beautiful! In addition of the top vent, 1 or 2 - 6" pvc perforated tube across the top shed section which would be a suction of the tube fan. The heated peak air would then push warmed air into the ground tube made from weeping tile tube. This would heat the ground mass preparing the ground for winter heat.

Talk about goals! What an inspirational way to start my day, thanks to everyone involved!

Thank you so much for that inspiration and the insights to your thought process! Amazing work!!

Such a nice project! Beautiful land, too! Figured I'd subscribe to watch your progress. Good luck with everything! 👍

Thus guy is adorable and a great dreamer!

Quite innovative! Looking to permaculture an orchard plus a greenhouse on the back!

I’d love to build something like this. This video is inspiring me. Nice workmanship!

I always wanted a walipini. This might be the approach that fits me.

Wow. I love fresh figs thanks CMACfarm

Such a awesome greenhouse! I'm getting jealous, and what a great property with the weive and all

put a gutter on it, then funnel that water back into the greenhouse. Use that water as thermal mass for fall and winter, have a black tank, shade it in summer. Put some shading according to the slope of the sun in summer versus fall and winter.

I am in zone 4 and 5. so happy to see someone in CLOSE to my zone for this.

A plant/moss wall in the area where moisture is a concern is an excellent dehumidifier, air purifier, and heat regulator

There is a postal worker in North Dakota that did this, with air circulation/passive thermal from buried air tubes that maintains his greenhouse at 50degrees F even in North Dakota winters...he is able to sell oranges commercially in town for a wonderful profit..plans available for 20$ - back wall is thermal mass via water storage...

love how honest he is

Scott is absolutely right about the medditarenean courtyard effect. Please do a progress video later on ! He is very knowledgeable on seaeon extension and passive systems. Drystone walls is absolutely an art/trade that we are working on reviving in Europe. Gabion is a good, faster compromize.

A little tip for attaching to a house with vinyl,: the trim piece under the soffit at the top can be lifted a bit and a wood anchor can be snuck in a bit above it's lowest point. It secured an angle bracket so I didn't need 8 inch screws, just 4. One in each joist in the parent building or for each joist in a king beam (king beam?). I ran double 2x4's and could get them both on the bracket. It wasn't a stud hanger, those need more screws. They were half inch or 5/8. The stuff you use for posts. At the corners an expansion anchor, it had a block foundation so it was just to keep things like the door from getting wonky, with another bracket. Then a 2x4 vertical connecting the two. It will lay flush with the siding and there will be a sawtooth gap all the way down. I just rolled bubble wrap up and filled it in then covered it with short trim boards. They were the width of the vinyl shingle so I didn't need to copy the sawtooth. The rest was block and 2x8's. No footer, wall is 36 inches below grade and 18 above.

This is an incredible documentary!

I dunno what it is like there, but here in the UK you can pretty much stop a frost in a tunnel with just tea lights. 1 tea light lit at about midnight for every couple of yards of floor. I mean in that size tunnel, thats a lot of tea lights, but it shows how little it takes to heat. I know someone who composts manure in their tunnel over winter. The heat that generates allows him to grow in the tunnel all year around.

So very ingenious. Nice work. Please keep up the updates.

Exciting times can lead to talking over ❤

Good show. Now 4" pipes buried 4' going 100' in each direction can provide heat during the nights. All you need is squirrel fans.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel on this. There is enough material online about passive solar greenhouses, a Chinese approach to greenhouses in the winter. That you can adapt it quite well to your own. Basically two greenhouses in one, with an airgap between the two, but where the inside greenhouse also gets an insulation that you can roll up and down. I am building one next year, I hope!

Great idea and beautifully implemented. thanks for that

Excellent project, Thankyou 🙏

Estubo genial las explicaciones gracias🇦🇷💪🥰

Very cool design guys.

Good idea ! Under ground is warm,cool.Good !

I REALLY want to see an "AFTER" video. I'm super interested in how that rock wall works for cold weather heat retention/radiation.

growing, raising and harvesting your own food will never go out of style

Wicked Smaht. Thanks Friends. Much food for thought. ( ...and thought for food...)

I love this video so much golden information it's awesome 😎

The orientation of the greenhouse should be from east to west and rafters should also be in the same direction. Done that with my trellis system in an open garden and it works excellent. My cell phone was used as a compass to get more precise with the trellis orientation.

I'd love to see an update on the back wall near the house to see if the weight of a concrete pad was enough of an addition to the surcharge load to cause a critical failure after the frost and thaw cycles we had. I would guess he's only slightly better off than a walipini supported by pallets and having a structure right next to it should make for an exciting repair.

Your ventilation system is similar to my elementary school. The roof is the same and the window are low and the windows are on the top. Open the windows and get a draft that was just amazing. It didn't matter how hot it got, the breeze through the day kept it comfortable with no air conditioning. Great presentation, and thanks

Thanks!

Very good interview covering so many interesting questions 👍

Super cool greenhouse

Wonderful, inspirational. Thank you so much, just what I was looking for right now!

Such a cool concept! Our house is built up on a hill and I've always thought it would be neat to incorporate some kind of sunroom/greenhouse into the front of our house (once our deck is ready to be replaced), both for year round growing and to extend our living space (our house is only 630 sq ft). This has given me some great ideas!

Sweet build. I'd love to make one of these. I do have a couple suggestions; can you trim those metal rails for the opening window? and I'm guessing if you paint that back wall white it would increase the overall light in there.