View Our Greenhouses Finding the best angle for your greenhouse roof is not as clear cut as some passive solar greenhouse designers make it sound. Passive solar greenhouse designers often cite this rule of thumb: To find the “best” angle (or pitch) for a greenhouse roof take your latitude and add 20 degrees. While the…
The housing and construction markets are hitting new records every day. Houses are selling above asking price with multiple bidders, and construction material and labor prices are as high as they have ever been. This reality can be rather daunting, especially if you’re a home buyer leaning towards new construction. Going the house kit route…
By Kylie Gettleman Ceres Greenhouse Solutions is now offering an exciting new glazing option for our greenhouses in the form of ETFE film. Widely used in Japan for decades but with little use in the United States, Ethelyne Tetrafluoroethelyne (ETFE) is a translucent polymer sheeting with great benefits for greenhouse production. At Ceres, we installed…
Summer is almost here! As outdoor temperatures begin to rise, greenhouse temperatures rise as well. Luckily, there are a few methods for reducing the amount of heat that enters your greenhouse. Here at Ceres, we think that shade paint is a great way to reduce greenhouse temperatures. Shade paint can be applied once your greenhouse…
Owning your own backyard greenhouse is an investment that can elevate your gardening experience beyond just providing a year-round growing space. A backyard greenhouse creates a slice of Costa Rica in the middle of a blizzard, it provides a natural therapeutic escape to stretch your green thumb, and can even be an incredibly convenient produce…
In the spring of 2017, the Ceres residential design team collaborated with a passionate environmental science professor at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania to integrate Soliculture photovoltaic roof panels into our 12x16 DIY greenhouse design. The goal was to create an energy efficient campus greenhouse that produced its own electricity and enhanced the incoming light spectrum…
The following is an excerpt from The Year-Round Solar Greenhouse, with additional content provided by expert greenhouse grower Paul Alaback. Year-round greenhouse growers, and all gardeners, often wonder whether plants are getting sufficient light. As we’ll explain further below, whether your garden gets enough light is somewhat subjective -- it depends on your expectations. Fortunately,…
Below is an excerpt from The Year Round Solar Greenhouse. We live in a plastic-laden age, so when it comes to choosing a material for a year-round greenhouse, the choices can get overwhelming. Polycarbonate, polyethylene, Polygal, Lexan…? Knowing how to navigate the array of ‘polys’ – and other materials like glass – is a major…
We use the term glazing to describe any transparent structural material, whether glass, rigid plastics like polycarbonate, or plastic films. If designing your own solar greenhouse, these materials are critical to greenhouse efficiency and performance. Here are the main variables to pay attention to: light transmittance, insulation, placement, durability and cost. In our next blog we’ll…
So, you want a year-round greenhouse? Time to dig deep (literally). At Ceres Greenhouse, we design and build super energy-efficient, year-round greenhouses that are built to last. We talk a lot about growing bananas, citrus, figs, tomatoes and other fresh fruits and vegetables, but we rarely “dig deep” to discuss the first steps of building…
