With a hand pump being our only access to water, we’re taking extra precautions to ensure it will survive the tough winters we get. While technically not necessary for the pump we got, it can only help and should also improve the chore of gathering water. And we get a greenhouse out of it 🙂
I like the idea of combining under one roof, 2 functions where freezing is non-desirable, water and growing plants. Our dream is to build a bigger greenhouse down the road and maybe even heat it. Water for the plants would be right where it’s needed and benefit from the higher temperatures. Our only worry right now is whether it will survive the freak wind gusts we get.
My husband and I have been considering doing something similar over our well, and we were excited to see that you had already done this! Can you offer any updates on how has this held up in your environment? What kind of temperatures /
conditions has it survived since it was installed? How ‘well’ (pun intended) has it worked?
It’s worked really well. I’m impressed by the resilience of these cheap greenhouses given how flimsy they feel. It’s been 7 years now… holy cow… and it’s still fine. I’m fully prepared to replace the wood the greenhouse is build on, I didn’t want to used pressure treated right around our potable water so I used regular and that’ll rot faster. But I haven’t had to so far.
I did drive small posts in the ground and screwed them on the wood supporting the greenhouse. It gets really windy here and that would get picked up in not time without anchoring.
Last few things, I make sure to keep snow off and away in the Winter so it doesn’t push against the panels. That would be the end of it if I let the snow lean and push against it.
Also, I got a passive oil based thing to open the aeration so it never gets too hot in there. It’s very useful for when you actually use it as a greenhouse and have plants in there :).
It’s definitely small, especially with the well inside and some plants, but one advantage of it is that I can just pick it up when I need to.
I got the idea to put it over the well from someone else online, it made so much sense, and I have to say, it’s been a great decision. It’s perfect, we get very chilly temperatures here in Vermont, and a little Sun immediately thaws the well. Now the Bison pump we have there does fine when frozen, but it does even better when not.
I hope this helps, let me know if I want to know anything else.
The passive oil opener thingy I was talking about: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002IOJJF8