Alaska Solar Greenhouse Episode 1: Dirtwork Surprises!
Channel: Orion Lawlor
Date: 12/05/2020

This episode is dirtwork as I start building a solar-powered greenhouse at my house in Alaska.  This is episode 1 of what I'm hoping to make a regular weekly(?) series.  As construction progresses, I'll link to the playlist here as I make the videos!

Filmed in my Fairbanks, Alaska yard in May 2020 (initial dirtwork May 7, finishing touches and tusk on May 11).  The greenhouse is going in next to the 3.6kW solar array (12 300W panels) that I put in last year--and I want to put about the same number of solar panels above the new greenhouse.

My backhoe is a John Deere 410.  It's from the mid-1970's, like me, but it's had a somewhat rougher life, and more of its parts are starting to fail.  

Greenhouse CAD models done in Inkscape (2D) and then extruded to 3D in OpenSCAD.  These are not great tools for building design, but they are free, and I use them both for all sorts of fabrication so I know them well.  I edited the video in Kdenlive, which I'm less and less happy with--there's an audio/video mismatch that only appears on final export, and it locked up twice during editing, losing work.  

If you'd like to try Tap Water, it comes from the nearest water tap.  I really do drink it all the time, it just went down wrong on camera!  (Normal water charges apply.  Not safe or available in all areas.)

Youtubers that inspire me: Cody's Lab (his "one hand holding the camera" science explanations are first rate), This Old Tony (incredible machinist, good dad jokes), Off the Ranch (the "Abandoned Mansion" construction series is the style I'm shooting for), and Andrew Camarata (he has way better heavy equipment and operator skills than me).