Winter heating for a tunnel

[skeggijon]

How can I heat my 10"x 10" tunnel in winter without out it costing an arm & a leg?

10 inches by 10 inches seems a very small polytunnel

[Small pumpkin]

Well thank you all for pointing out that I have been a compleat muppet
I mean 10ft x 10ft tunnel & 70F ( ish, its very difficult finding out what the temp needs to be)
I was having a silly idea of turning the tunnel into my own tropical butterfly( from U.K breeders) house with lots of tropical nectar flower & a little pond and a chair (so I could sit and enjoy there company).But I think I will stick to growing tomatoes in it. I can spend all the money I don't have on seed & compost instead of heating

Thanks for all the advice

[skeggijon]

I think you would need some pretty powerful grow lighting in there for that pumpkin. sounds like a brill idea, but a tad expensive

[Scarlet]

idea of turning the tunnel into my own tropical butterfly( from U.K breeders) house with lots of tropical nectar flower & a little pond and a chair

Love the sound of that!

[Kristen]

True, a friend of mine is trying to do that to her house at the moment, it's not easy to do as a retrofit but probably more feasible with new build if you have the foresight.

We looked at retrofit and built an extension to passive-house standard instead - somewhere to hibernate in the winter! Its only recently completely, but we have been enjoying how cool it keeps on hot days, and looking forward to being affordably warm in winter

[Kristen]

I was having a silly idea of turning the tunnel into my own tropical butterfly( from U.K breeders) house with lots of tropical nectar flower & a little pond and a chair (so I could sit and enjoy there company).

I know nothing about Butterflies, but would they actually hatch in Winter?

It sounds to me as though it would be a glorious thing to do in the Summer months, and perhaps do something different in the Winter?

Plenty of exotic plants will overwinter just frost-free - the Ensete type of Bananas for example (and there are Musa that are "hardy" such as M. Basjoo which will give you the tropical look and are hardy). They might be a challenge, heightwise, in a polytunnel, but plenty of dense foliage plants to choose from, to create the tropical looks, if you avoid plants that are tall.

[starloc]

a 600w or a couple of 400w metal halide growlights would probably do it , cost a fortune in electric though , I think I was paying about £50 a month could have been £100 on electric for my citrus in the UK for a couple of metal halide lamps for about 12 hours a day

If you didn't want the light on all the time you would need to insulate it and use water as a heat mass storage device to keep it warm for the nights.

Something over the lights to stop insects cooking themselves on the lights

The problem would be that even in quiet places , someone would smash it open to steal your c*****is crop or the police would smash it to arrest you for the same, butterflies would escape and die , not that you had it in there, just that idiots will think you have it