Over the weekend, I was able to
complete the plumbing of the heating system in the new Hot House. Once I had the system assembled, I
connected the hot water from our wood stove and checked for leaks.
Only a couple, but quickly fixed. It was mid-afternoon and a heavy
rainstorm was moving in so I wanted to be sure that everything was
working to save being out in the rain doing final connections.
So the bed temperature was only a few
degrees above 0 C, and the water coming in was around 50 C. In about
16 hours, the soil mass had increased in temperature to about 14 C.
Stoking the fire, I got the water temperature up to about 70 C and
while the cold weather Sunday and Monday passed, the heat mass of the
planting bed seemed to be stable, but too cool for what I had
planned, to be able to control the temperature around 24 C. However,
I did add 80 litres of ice-cold water to the bed in that time and the
heat had to rise up through 45 cm of soil - this would make the heat up time a bit slower.
So Tuesday and Wednesday have been much
warmer and the furnace water has been coming in at a more regular
temperature range, 60 to 75 C, depending on the state of the boiler. Tonight, the bed temperature has
exceeded 24 C and is at about 32 C! So it is a very slow process to
heat the soil in the planting bed, but with a bit of ambient heat
gain, it has warmed the bed nicely and is holding well.
Observations will be kept and by
Saturday, I should be able to put the carrot seed in place both in
this heated bed and the control plot in an unheated bed. I will post
the results as the carrots start to sprout!
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