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Old August 27, 2008   #5
Medbury Gardens
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Medbury, New Zealand
Posts: 1,881
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Dave,

We live here on alluval plains where the water table is normally 2 meters at this time of year when we get most of our years rainfall (average 500 ml-30 in),in summer it drops to 5 m, thanks to our local dairy farmers who use vast amounts for irrigation.Having had so much rain the water table up to 20cm,i did bucketed out a lot of water yesterday so i could pot up some plants, an hour later it was back to the same level.
This time next week it should be gone


Barry ?
On the bottom left are Sikkim cucummbers,lettuces in the baths both sides, the pots down the left wall are this coming seasons tomatos seedlings(PBW,Great white,Black krim and two NZ heirlooms,Waimana and Scotland yellow)Behind the bench are two of last seasons surviving tomato cuttings-Black Krim.Also in pots are potatos,Cape Gooseberries, Marrows, Peas and Lettuces for planting out later.

dcarch
1 I ve given a lot of thought about insulation,problem is in May,June and july the sun just high enough to supply sufficiant heat to make insulation worth while,it would need to have additional heating.
2 On the end wall you will see that i painted the stones on one side of the window as a experiment,mid winter they didn`t warm at all, they have only just started to warm in the last few weeks were the other side is still cool to touch.Summers are ok, its not over heating at all, the stones are keeping it cooler in the day time, warm at night
3 When we bought is place it was spring and the water table was about 2m down, i had a digger come in to dig a well but he couldn t get deeper than 3m cause very time the bucket hit in the water the gravel sides would cave in so i threw a 200mm pipe in and made do,it nearly got me through the first summer before going dry.It has been redug twice since ,today its at 6 m and is sufficiant in the dry period for garden irrigation,wouldn t be able to garden here with out it.I dont know a lot about how to use this underground resource as a geothermal heating syetem.
4 The hoops been manufactured out of aluminium and had long proven to be inadequate to handle snow,hence the A frames, great for tying up tomatos, cucummbers etc.
I think it would be to differcult to add foam panels at each end, the cold air would fall between the stones and foam panels,unless i bolt timber to the walls.That and dugging in a power cable over to it for heating could work Food for thought
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