Sorry guys and gals, I've been busy. It is growing season and we've had lots of inquiries etc. Spring is our busiest time of the year.

We are in the process of building a grow house (room) by converting 30 feet of our 50 foot back porch into a grow room 7.5 X 30 feet.

This will be about the same size as our greenhouse 8 X 28 feet. It is well insulated and will require much less heating and cooling here in our harsh environment of the high desert. It is partially an experiment to see how much we can reduce the energy requirements. We will be testing color corrected LED grow lights (not the of-the-shelf LEDs that most sell) to see if they will grow food year-round economically.

The last part of the series (Greenhouse or Grow-House) will have to wait until we have considerably more data to share. This will take several months and perhaps even a year. There will be at least one web cam up showing the results of this experiment.

I'll keep you posted as we move along on the project. We are currently finishing up the electrical work this weekend and will be installing the water heater this next week along with designing a heat exchanger to heat the fish tank water. I need to find some stainless steel tubing somewhere and start experimenting with building the exchanger. It won't be needed until next winter but I need to develop and test it now while there are no fish in the tank.

I am not sure how much heat the water pump will produce this summer so that also has to be tested before we fish up.

Oliver