UVM Bubble Insulated Greenhouse

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Revision as of 18:49, 15 December 2014 by Marcin (talk | contribs)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_di4eTtxbHY&feature=em-share_video_user

An excellent report on the results of Bubble Insulation System for greenhouses from U. Vermont, USA.

Commentary on results: It appears that there is some tech development to be done - appears to be a finicky system. It would be good to take their learnings and opensource them fully so others can build upon them. I'd like to hear in detail - what were the issues and what is their proposed plan for addressing them.

Also, a 40% reduction in heating requirement is not particularly impressive for the effort used - using about half the heat over a regular greenhouse. That is comparable to a thermal curtain - their 30% improvement over a thermal curtain seems not particularly impressive, either. The video indicates a bubble layer thickness of about 4" (minute 0:47 in video) - I would go for 12" to show impressive insulation properties - perhaps get energy savings more like 95% than 40% - meaning that you hardly have to heat at all - or could heat with as little as a small electric heater if needed. We should be looking for at least 10x improvement over a raw greenhouse.

The 12" cavity would work with our sandwich of 2 6" wide modular roof panels like we used in MicroHouse 4.

See roof panels - https://docs.google.com/a/opensourceecology.org/presentation/d/178h3umpGReoIpy-w0B-En3vlTMTmPc5Y-KCJOsHSPI8/edit#slide=id.g3b73a8ca6_0145