Description

Make a Passive Solar Greenhouse Your Gateway to a Better Life!

So you’re thinking of building a greenhouse to extend your growing season – good for you!

Why limit yourself to a single-purpose greenhouse that requires high maintenance and high energy expenditures to be functional – when you can extend your growing season and add luxury to your life with a greenhouse that pays for itself!

A passive solar greenhouse is designed to heat and cool itself without additional gadgets or energy. Meanwhile, you increase its efficiency with every luxury feature you add…

  • Save heating bills by making the greenhouse an addition to your home…
  • Cut water bills by harvesting rainwater from the roof to irrigate your plants…
  • Add a wood-fired hot tub to your greenhouse: bathe in rainwater, then use it to irrigate your plants…
  • Save on winter grocery bills by putting up your harvest in a canning kitchen and root cellar….
  • And that’s just the beginning of the efficiency-enhancing luxury elements you can add…!

We believe that the best person to design your greenhouse is not a pricey consultant, but you, based on your needs, your goals, and your property specs.

And our Comprehensive Passive Solar Greenhouse Design course teaches you to design the high-efficiency, multi-function greenhouse of your dreams…

 …all the while making sure your design is perfect from the start, so that you don’t waste time and money fixing design mistakes later!

In this 10-module self-study course, professional engineer Rob Avis walks you through the step by step process he uses to design world-class passive solar greenhouses for his clients.  At the end of the course you will have created a beautiful, functional design to turn over to a contractor or to use in building the greenhouse yourself.

You don’t need to be an architect or professional designer to do this!  Each module teaches you the tips and tricks of adding a different group of elements of your greenhouse.

And rather than make you perform lengthy, complex calculations, we have invested thousands of dollars to develop our Passive Solar Greenhouse Design Tool to make your design process drastically easier.

(Imagine that this tool is like a mini version of Rob, calculating all of the values for you instantly!)

Each week’s lessons guide you in gathering data and filling out a section of the tool. At the end of the course the tool will give you a report of all of the building details you need to design your greenhouse.

 

Profit from Rob Avis’ Engineering Experience…

Rob Avis, P.Eng., co-founder of Verge Permaculture, offers more than a decade of international experience in engineering, project management, ecological design and sustainable technologies. Since building his own passive solar greenhouse in 2012, he has helped numerous clients design and build the perfect passive solar greenhouses for their needs. 

 But, he realized, why stop there, when he could empower more people to achieve greater resilience and enhance their lives while saving money? So Rob created this course, giving you access to his experience with passive solar greenhouses for a fraction of his consulting fee.

What Will Rob Cover in The Course? 

I have learned a lot over the years from my experience designing and building my own passive solar greenhouse as well as designing greenhouses for my clients. In this course, I will share everything I have learned with you including the following:

  • The Importance of Goal Setting  

Goal setting is the start of any successful project. If you don’t have a set of realistic goals you will never get anywhere. In this session we break down what these goals might look like, how to set them and how to translate them into design directives that are actionable.

  • Site Selection, Orientation, Aspect Ratio and Shape

The physical shape of the greenhouse is one of the most important aspects to get right, right from the start. We talk about dome greenhouses, hoop houses, walipinis and passive solar greenhouses. Each of these greenhouses has inherent pros and cons which we will discuss at length. By the end of this lesson you will know how to choose a greenhouse shape and orientation.

  • Foundation, Kneewall and Ventilation

These three components are crucial to the long-term stability and usability of the greenhouse. The foundation design is crucial to supporting the greenhouse but also plays a crucial roll in keeping heat in the building. The knee wall will ensure that your greenhouse is ergonomic and that the ventilation continues to work. Getting the right amount of ventilation will ensure that you have healthy plants that grow almost effortlessly.

  • Glazing and Light

Plants are super efficient solar collectors, greenhouses should be spaces that enhance solar collection of plants. Glazing is the transparent material that keeps in the heat but lets through the light. Heat and light have an interesting relationship in that the more light the glass lets in the more heat it lets out. Choosing the right glazing is crucial to making sure your plants get enough light energy while staying cozy inside. We will also talk about artificial lights, the different types, how many you might need and how much it will cost you monthly and yearly to run them. We have built a special section in our design tool that makes sizing artificial light a breeze.

  • Insulation, Thermal Mass and Calculating Heat Loss

In this lesson we will teach you how to use the design tool to optimize the R-value of your greenhouse so that you are using the least amount of energy to keep it warm. We will show how you wall segments translate into the amount of energy and ultimately $’s that you need to spend on a monthly or yearly basis so that you can plan ahead.

  • Internal Design Integrated Design

Lastly we will talk about elements that you can integrate into the greenhouse that will enhance the space. We love to integrate things like saunas, hot tubs, canning kitchens, root cellars and “relaxation infrastructure” that can make hard winters a breeze!

Here’s What Our Past Students are Saying About the Course:

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The Design Tool

The Passive Solar Greenhouse Design Tool is an exclusive Excel spreadsheet that does all the complex calculations that factor into greenhouse design — climate data, energy consumption, heat loss, thermal mass, and more

Just look it over – and imagine trying to do these calculations yourself instead of having them instantly done for you when you enter the basic data for your property….

ARE YOU ASKING – is this course right for me?

Only you know the answer to that question. But we can help….

  • Do you want to dramatically increase the production of your farm and/or homestead?
  • Do you want to extend your season and grow crops you haven’t been able to before?
  • Do you want to save energy, water, and money while you enhance your lifestyle?
  • Do you want a way to add an essential piece of resilience infrastructure that will pay for itself over time?

If you are answering yes to these questions, you are exactly the person we have designed and built this course for!

IF YOU’RE STILL WONDERING,

feel free to send us an email at: customercare@vergepermaculture.ca and we will be more than happy to help you answer any questions.

Comprehensive Passive Solar Greenhouse Design Course | On Demand

$299.00 CAD

SKU: PSGH_ondemand Categories: ,

Design your greenhouse right the first time

In this 10 module self-study course, professional engineer, Rob Avis, will walk you through the step by step process he uses to design world class passive solar greenhouses for his clients. At the end of the course you will have created a beautiful, functional design, that will be the beginning of a passive solar greenhouse customized to your goals and your climate.