Characteristics, Problems and Solutions Around the Right Greenhouse Thermostat for Your Backyard Greenhouse

The first thing a backyard greenhouse grower has to understand about a greenhouse thermostat is that regular house thermostats are almost useless in the greenhouse environment.

Problems

To begin with, the high humidity corrodes electronic components very quickly and unless the thermostat is engineered to handle these conditions, it may only last 9-12 months before it deteriorates.

The second characteristic is one of accuracy. Normal household thermostats work with a margin of error of 3 degrees (the better ones are more accurate) but in a greenhouse where heating costs are large, a 3 degree difference can be a very expensive one. Mind you, if you have a lot of money, then this isn't going to be an issue for you. :-)

Solutions to Look For

I always bought a commercial grade greenhouse thermostat designed for either greenhouse or industrial applications. .

These lasted for years and were trouble free in the moist, humid and fluctuating temperatures of the greenhouse.

And yes, they are way more expensive than the household varieties but you only need a cheap one to quit on a cold night to discover why you want to spend a lot of money on a good one.

There's nothing quite like going out to the greenhouse to discover your plants have turned into what we call"plantsicles" to justify the extra expense of good equipment.

As an aside, I often used specialty barn thermostats available from farm supply dealers as the electronics of these are comparable to specialty greenhouse thermostats in both longevity and accuracy.

They were also easier to find (and somewhat less expensive) in our local area. I note the Internet has made finding greenhouse equipment far easier now than just a few short years ago.

Please understand the volume of air these units move means that variable speed thermostats are not a great idea - you want an all or nothing kind of thermostat for a high-volume greenhouse fan (or they'll burn out faster with a cheaper multi-stage electronic unit)

Caution

One thing you should understand is that thermostats used for heating typically work on 12 volts while cooling thermostats usually work on 120 volts.

Do not mix these up as you'll burn out your heating thermostat very quickly if you use it to directly control a cooling fan.

Follow the installation instructions carefully

Shopping Resources for Products Mentioned on This Page

Greenhouse thermostats

Different styles and prices for a wide variety of greenhouses and vendors

All of Doug's Ebooks

comments powered by Disqus

New Articles

May 18, 2013

A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming

Friends - in the next week, I'll be adding upwards of 25 new posts about review plants in the garden. So you'll get a lot of email updates about them - my apologies. What I do is post how-to-grow information about each plant - and then as the season and trials get underway, I make ongoing notes about them.

This system also allows you to comment on these plants if you've grown them or are growing them. It becomes a review partnership between us all to get the best sense of these new plants.

And as they bloom and grow, I'll be adding pics to each post.

This is the best way I can devise for getting good info about each plant to you as I see it happening. But it does mean a ton of email over the next week or so as I add them to the garden.

Thanks for your patience - let the planting begin. :-)

Continue reading "A LOT of Plant Reviews Coming"