Little Greenhouse

Recently the school tore down and replaced two of the old buildings with a really nice looking campus.  But just a short 10 years ago, they had replaced all the old windows with nicely framed safety glass.  So when they were getting ready to tear it all down, I asked one of the old guys what they were going to do with all those nice windows.  Of course, they were just going to demolish all.  So I asked him to put some aside for me to build a greenhouse. He thought it was a pretty good idea and actually took some for himself as well.

Well, I finally got around to actually using some of them.  (Not even half – but since I ended up with a random assortment of sizes, I have never really gotten around to designing a full on hot house like I had imagined.  Not to mention the windows are heavier than hell.)  Thought I would post some pics up here just for posterity’s sake.

First I kind of mocked up what it would look like.  This gave me an idea of what kind of hardware I was going to need in order to hold such heavy windows together.

Then I picked the final location, dug out and leveled the foundation and put it all together.  I just happened to have been touching up the window caulking on the house, so I used the last of one tube for the corners.  The ceiling is hinged and the front right panel also opens up as a door.  I’ve used some foam weather stripping where there were gaps when the ceiling is closed.

Judging by the water condensation inside it seems like it has sealed quite nicely, especially now that I’ve filled in all the holes in the bricks with dirt.  The pineapples appear to be pretty happy, so we’ll have to see how they do over the winter.  The sun was a bit much for the little avocado tree I had and the leaves got pretty sunburned.