Kirsten Dirksen
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2019–2026
18:17 · 3.4M views · May 27, 2018
Kirsten Dirksen visits retired mailman Russ Finch in Alliance, Nebraska, who grows oranges, figs and pomegranates in a backyard greenhouse without paying for heat. The greenhouse uses the stable temperature of the earth, with underground earth tubes, to heat and cool itself.
HN commenters bring it up in geothermal, greenhouse and vertical farming threads as a low-tech example of growing citrus in a cold climate.
11 comments from Hacker News
Almost all the videos on this channel are fascinating btw. Greenhouses enveloping entire houses/villages[0][1] in northern Europe to earthships[2] to someone growing citrus in Nebraska using trenches[3] to entire villages underground in Australia[4] [0] [LINK] [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] this video [4] [LINK] I'd also recommend the channels FLORB and Happen Films though they're admittedly a little corny. [LINK] [LINK] Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't recently did a tour of an interesting alt home as well. [LINK]
If this interests you, I recommend checking out this video by Russ Finch, who grows citruses (orange, lemons, etc), figs, pomegranates in his sunken greenhouse in the middle of Nebraska in the snow/20F, and uses geothermal heating (long tubes buried underground) to heat it during the winter months, and cool in the summer months. Really interesting story/concept and I'm hoping to replicate on a small scale when I renovate my back yard in the coming years. this video
Yes I think that would work. Check out this guy, he grows oranges in Nebraska in thermal heated greenhouses. As I recall he talks about cooling as well. He has tubes around 8 feet under the ground running around the yard. this video
Completely agree. One of my favorite Kirsten Dirksen videos is about Russ Finch using geothermal energy to grow citrus in a greenhouse located near Alliance, NE. this video
Very competitively efficient, but you don't need 932F for greenhouses? /? oranges in Nebraska; [LINK] - "Nebraska retiree uses earths's heat to grow oranges in snow" in Alliance, NE, USA at -40F sometimes this video : Passive , Net Zero, Carbon Sink solar geothermal half-buried greenhouse that produces citrus in the winter at a colder northern latitude Geothermal air with 6" tubes, 8ft down , out 230ft (75 3) into the yard, blower, reflective sheeting on the south sloped back wall; est $25k build cost. 30F interval with no fans on in the winter. ; Net zero greenhouses probably win UN SDG Indicator 13.2.2 Total greenhouse gas emissions per year ; UN SDG Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts* A New Zealand word for an [excavated] [semi-] underground greenhouse is "Walipini". FWIU from YouTube, there's a new style of Northern Chinese greenhouse now in Canada: they build a big wall of clay/soil on one long side and lower a blanket over the entire greenhouse with a TODO HP motor in the evening to keep heat in the greenhouse at night. The wing shape makes it's easy to capture rainwater in a trough on just the one side. Geodesic domes are very resilient, easy to assemble, and can also be semi-underground with vents at the top to actuate. An aquarium heater can heat a tank of water to heat an arctic greenhouse. Geodesic domes get so hot in the summer that it's necessary to hang cloth to shade and cool. Also learned from YT South Korea: (JADAM JWA (Castille