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heated, by the time the moisture settled on the plants it would have
warmed to the temperature of the air.
I suggest trying the evaporative method if you plan to heat the
house.
What Don Burns says is true but the simple act of
misting lowers the ambient air temperature itself. Two ways you can
preheat this water at no extra energy cost would be to incorporate a
tank, such as a non-leaking hot water heater stripped of all of it's
insulation, as an integral part of the plumbing system inside the
greenhouse. It can be horizontal or vertical and the tap water just
sits inside this tank gaining ambient heat until the tap is turned on at
which point mixing would occur but the temperature would be above the
incoming water temperature for a good while. The other way is by
heat exchange which I use. I plumbed into the greenhouse normally,
installed a back flow preventer as used in lawn sprinkler systems, then
ran the pipe through an old chest freezer box, again stripped of all
insulation and painted flat black for sun absorption. The pipe
enters over the top of the tank, goes to the bottom of the inside and
makes a bunch of coils before exiting over the top and to an
outlet. The tank holds about 300 gallons of water, and contains
tropical fish and some aquatic plants. I used 3/4" cpvc pipe
to the tank and converted at the input side to a 3/8 copper flexible
tubing. I think I used about 50' of the tubing. I converted
back to cpvc at the outlet end and on to the outlet. The back flow
preventer is critical in preventing contamination of the domestic system
water in case of a leak. There is more to this system, let me know
if you want to ;hear more.
Have fun, Gary Meltzer
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