12.02.2023 Greenhouse spring cleaning & Sunday Dinner.

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 Sunday 12th 5C/42F. Dark overcast. 250m mist. Up at 7.15. My back is aching. The cycling? I don't remember lifting anything yesterday. Hopefully I can walk it off.

 09.30 Morning coffee over. Today's walk was the standard issue variety to the lanes. Cool, overcast, mist clearing with almost no wind. No gloves required. Lots of small birds moving about in the roadside trees. My back pain has gone. I had better do some laundry. Because I have been slacking! First load has gone in. 

 10.00 6C/43F. I moved the remaining, long, low, stack of logs along the greenhouse. To place them beside the house door in a taller stack. It took only a few minutes and will avoid mixing the older, drier logs with the next load. Which probably ought to be collected tomorrow. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday being busy this week. A reserve ought to be maintained in case of a sudden return of winter. It takes up no house room in the greenhouse. So can remain out there over the spring and summer. Without causing any problems.

 Temperatures are already rising. Making continuous feeding of the stove much less important. It is a comfortable 20C/68F upstairs this morning. Without having lit the stove. 17C/62F downstairs. As I am not sitting downstairs this is quite acceptable. The kitchen remains well above critical levels for the fridge to keep functioning reliably. 

 The scruffy 7m/22' x 2.4m/8' lean-to greenhouse. Before cleaning off years of algae growth on the outside of the glass.

 Any sunshine will raise indoor temperatures thanks to the greenhouse. Even overcast conditions will give a boost to the greenhouse. Providing a much warmer, protective shield to the front of the house compared with outdoor temperatures. It also shields the house against the wind. I had such hopes for the greenhouse when I built it. 

 My reading in my youth was taken up with promises of a new ice age. Alternative energy, etc. Instead we got the complete opposite. The greenhouse reflected the difference. From ice cold in winter to searing temperatures in summer. It became a storage area. Like much of the rest of the house. White tarpaulins and shower curtains hung from the framework for decades. Like the tattered sails of an abandoned sailing ship run aground in a storm.

Now I am going to clean off the algae. Even if it is only a slight cosmetic improvement.

 After initial external cleaning. The glass roof still has [untouched] clumps of moss clinging to the metal framework. I need a stiff, right angle brush to make any impact on this. A high pressure washer might work. I don't have one. The debris inside the greenhouse is steadily reducing.

 The cosmetic improvement was hard to achieve. I scrubbed the glass twice with a stiff washing up brush. Using a mixture of vinegar and washing up liquid. Rinsed it all off repeatedly with clean water. Then squeegeed it off. Like a badly trained window cleaner.

There is still a film of algae on the glass! From two decades of being in deep shade. I have lowered and thinned the tall beech hedge in front. Then removed the towering conifers and privet hedges. These may have been intended to block the summer sun but had little effect on fierce summer temperatures. 

 Only over the last two years have I used professional grower's shade net with great success. Two layers were needed. Stretched over the greenhouse roof via ridge ropes and pulled down over the curved shoulders. 

 The greenhouse roof with the crude but simple moss removal tool. I stiffened the plumbing pipe with an aluminium pole. The stiff scrubbing brush still struggled to dislodge the moss.  

 The curved, clear, plastic "shoulders" are attractive, but a weakness in the design of the greenhouse. Being very expensive to replace and with poor resistance to the glass roof sliding downwards. In hindsight, silicone sealer would have been better for holding the glass roof than the glass clips.

 It took two layers of net to finally cure the soaring summer temperatures. 43C/110F and above, were commonplace in previous years. Making the greenhouse intolerable as somewhere to grow plants. Or to spend more than few seconds out there. Not even with a full, white cloth lining and both end doors wide open. With two layers of shade net and the double, end doors open, the greenhouse remained within 10F of ambient temperatures. No internal shading at all.

 Any shading must take place outside the glass. Once the sunshine gets though the glass it is far too late. UV converts to infra red and glass is opaque to the latter. The heat cannot escape by radiation. The four, large, roof vents had zero effect on temperatures. Even in conjunction with both, double, end doors being wide open. 

 I made mesh door screens when I first built the greenhouse out of two complete units. The fine mesh ensures most insects, birds, rodents and animals cannot enter. While providing a modest level of security against two legged rodents. 

15.00 8.5C/47F outside. I haven't lit the stove today but indoor temperatures have remained acceptable. All thanks to the unusually mild, outdoor temperatures. 19.5C/67F upstairs. 16C/61F in the lounge and kitchen. The intervening, internal doors have been open all day. I shall light the stove this evening. Which will rapidly raise indoor temperatures.

 Sunday dinner was almost perfect. I did not have enough hot plates despite putting the Brussels sprouts in with the carrots. I had to warm the gravy somehow and took the vegetable pan off the heat. Once the gravy was ready the vegetables were not. I had to boil them furiously for ten minutes to soften them. Meanwhile I was rotating everything else. 

 I had opted out of roasting the chicken and had fried it instead. So the chicken was becoming crisp on the surface due to the delay. Not bad, but becoming slightly tough. Rather than tender. I had nowhere to boil the peas unless I put those in with the sprouts and carrots as well. I decided against it.

 In summary. My choice of Siemens ceramic hob was very poor. It has two medium, one large and one ridiculously large ring. Only the huge frying pan suits the large ring. The ridiculously large ring suits nothing at all. I am not using 5 gallon casseroles and few others do.The hob has effectively three rings. One of which is only suited to very large frying pans. The smaller rings are still too large or my 1.2L milk saucepan!    

 So having enough saucepans is not the problem. I have bought two more since my wife died. The ridiculously large ring has never been used. It just wastes space on the hob. The rings on all the ceramic hobs at the cooking class are all the same size. Which means the rings don't care how large the saucepans are. A much more flexible and sensible arrangement!

 

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