Sunroom vs. Greenhouse

extinctearth · Post by **extinctearth** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:05 pm

Anyone had a good experience growing cactus in a sunroom? I'm buying a house soon and still am debating which route to go. A sunroom would be more expensive to build, but should be easier to heat and would be more durable. This years crazy winter storms would have surely destroyed any greenhouse...

iann · Post by **iann** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 10:09 pm

I was contacted recently by someone who has just had their greenhouse stand up through 100mph winds without even a broken pane of glass. It can be done!

Still, I doubt you could heat a free-standing greenhouse through your winter so the sunroom might work better. For preference I'd always go with the maximum light, but maybe you grow a lot of plants that need shading in the summer anyway so that would be a wasted effort.

Peterthecactusguy · Post by **Peterthecactusguy** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 11:32 pm

When I lived in PA our house when we first moved there had what we called a Florida room. It had those short panes of glass that were louvered so they could be opened or closed. The idea was in the summer time it would be cool and the winter time it could be warm. The biggest draw-back of course is that even with several heating ducts leading straight from the furnace it was hard to keep it about 40 degrees due to the construction of the glass. However in early spring I grew many veggies from seed and flowers too. Usually my mom would let us each pick a type of flower to grow. I did sweet peas a few times and they grew into monster plants. Mostly what you would need to do I think is have it have tightly closed glass and it would probably be more efficient to heat it.

Post by **daiv** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:50 pm

I think Hob has a pretty slick setup. Actually he has greenhouses too, but take a look through his topics to see his "conservatory".

http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16337

http://www.cactiguide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10772

vlani · Post by **vlani** » Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:17 pm

You could build a greenhouse using dual wall polycarbonate, it is sturdy and much easier to work with then glass. With glass in that climate you would also need to go with dual pan - heavy and likely takes off more light than polycarb and needs much sturdier frame as it breaks.

Adding in a gas heater is not too hard, I just finished that project about a month ago. Heating with NG is not too bad money-vise.

The whole project without labor could be done for under $2000, depending on the size and details of your design of cause.

Loph · Post by **Loph** » Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:24 pm

Our GH has done up to 250KMH winds, and does 150+ many times every summer. i think GH can stand up to a lot, but snow fall that is not removed could be a big issue...

if your nto going big, i would perosnally prefer sunroom, if fo rno othe rreason than i can walk into it right from my house...no chilly weather...that means underwear cactus growing in winter...

but think about cost. a gh will cost a bunch to heat in the winter, and a sunroom will perhaps suck the heat out of our house. but the one si have been in seem pretty well designed to keep in heat.