Gian Luca Brunetti - Design and Construction of Bioclimatic Wooden Greenhouses, Volume 2: Design of Construction: Structure and Systems

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4

Series Editor
Gilles Pijaudier-Cabot

Gian Luca Brunetti

First published 2022 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd 2022

The rights of Gian Luca Brunetti to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s), contributor(s) or editor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of ISTE Group.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941486

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-852-8

The first volume of this work laid out the basis for bioclimatic greenhouse design; and the present one the second in the series deals with the construction design of greenhouse timber structures, covering a range of issues spanning from frame configurations, connections, the consequences of precision (or the lack of it), to auxiliary mechanical heating and cooling systems. The contents of this volume will add concreteness to the knowledge basis laid out in the first volume, and also widen operational opportunities. This is because usually design ideas can be addressed in more than one way, each of which can reverberate consequences back to primary design decisions. From this perspective, preliminary design ideas and detailed constructional ideas can be seen as the two sides of the same coin. These two sides will be examined separately in this work for the sake of the analysis, but their distinction tends to be very blurred in action.

Another characteristic of this volume is that it devotes special attention to self-buildable solutions. This is done with two aims. The first is to address not only the professional reader, but also the non-professional reader; and the second aim is to demystify construction techniques. This has been done considering that, due to the pragmatic nature of constructional knowledge, constructional knowledge tends most often to be passed on to others through narrations that only very loosely relate causes and effects (constructional prescriptions). By emphasizing the aspects of self-buildability of greenhouse frames, this volume looks for the causal relations of things and attempts to demystify the stiffness and unavoidability of construction rules and rules-of-thumb modern as well as traditional.

The most important thing to consider about the constructability of greenhouse structures is that the connections between wooden elements constituting the frames (beams, columns, studs, rafters, purlins) at least, the connections which are not arranged in trusses are not resistant to bending: that is, they can only or mainly transmit shear. To transmit bending forces, timber components should usually be made rigid by arranging diagonal elements in triangular shapes. This may seem to be a strong limitation, but it is not; indeed, this does not prevent the possibility of deriving many constructional solutions from the primary considerations, and potentially evolving them beyond recognition.

One final note: as with all the other volumes composing this work, this volume will also deliver, together with a basis for sedimented knowledge, some experimental, innovative contents. The reader will be made aware in due places of the experimentality of the contents, so as to make them aware of the necessity of taking extra care in handling them. In this second volume, key examples of such experimentality are constituted by the trussed configurations presented in Chapter 2, and by the timber log and gravel trench foundation presented in section 3.2.8.1.

On references

The book by Alward and Shapiro (1980), despite being more than 40 years old and mostly featuring single-sheet enclosures, due to the level of interest and variety of the solutions it proposes and the constructional taste involved, is still a great reference as regards the constructional design of timber solar greenhouses of the lean-to type. The book by Shapiro (1984) is closely related to that by Alward and Shapiro (1980), but is wider in scope, because it not only covers the domain of construction, but also involves a multidisciplinary approach to design. The book by Neal (1975) is an antecedent of these works.

Other essential references for the present work are the book by Marshall (2006), which is a thorough guide to platform-frame style greenhouses; the book by Fischer and Yanda (1977), which focuses on low-cost solutions for platform-frame attached wooden greenhouses, experimented diffusely at the beginning of the 1970s; the book by Herzog and Natterer (1984 in French and German), which develops a highly cultured architectural analysis on the integration of attached wooden greenhouses and buildings. The volume of proceedings edited by Hayes and Gillet (1977) conveys the breadth and depth of the debate about solar greenhouses in the second part of the 1970s.

Other references that influenced the writing of this book are as follows.

The structural and functional characteristics of European climate greenhouses were investigated in review articles by von Elsner et al. (2000a, 2000b). Lagier and Dastot (2008) is a lean reference of techno-scientific advice.

The book by Haupt and Wiktorin (1996 in German) analyzes the constructional side of greenhouse design, making reference primarily to steel structures, and also touching upon wooden structures. Haupt (2001 in German) keeps a similar line of analysis, but with a briefer theoretical treatment and extended range of examples based on built case studies. Zappone (2009 in Italian) focuses especially on the thermal design of lean-to greenhouses, also including construction considerations.

The book by Schwolsky and Williams (1982) explores the construction side of passive building design, mostly featuring timber and wooden frames, while the book by Temple and Adams (1981) focuses more specifically on solar collection systems.

The books by Lorenz-Ladener (2013) and Schiller and Plincke (2016) are comprehensive guides to the design of solar greenhouses, also taking into account constructional aspects. The books by Drexel (1999 in German), Fisch (2001), Stempel (2008 in German) and Price and Greer (2009) are references delivering pure constructional advice.