Greenhouse insulation

[Pickle]

My husband has just put up a greenhouse for me in our garden. It has polycarbonate windows and I was wondering what everyone recommends for insulating it? Will just plain old bubble wrap be OK?

[Sanjo]

Hello Pickle and welcome to the vine. I use bubble wrap in my glass one but it does cut out a little bit of light. I may be wrong but I was under the impression that polycarbonate does not allow as good a light transference as glass. Put the two together and it might cut out too much. Plain poly might work better but be patient, somebody is bound to appear shortly with the right experience!! Aren't our other halves great!!

[dammad49]

If buying bubblewrap look up a local (smallish) packaging company and check their price. I got a 50 meter roll of 1 meter wide a few years ago for £6, am still using it. At the time B&Q were charging 80p per meter for the same stuff!

[Pickle]

Sanjo, I didn't know that about the polycarbonate. It's not frosted or anything just looks like a plastic window instead of glass. Seems quite light in there. I'll have to look into that though as don't want to cut the light. Thanks for pointing that out for me. Oh and yes, OHs are brilliant! He took the day off work to do it and at the same time looked after our 2 children (2.5yrs and 7months) so I could go out and have a manicure as a special treat. Better suck up to him this week though as I've hopefully got raised beds appearing and 3cubic metres of soil too!!!

Dammad, thanks for the advice. I'll get my yellow pages out in the morning and have a look :-)

[Alison]

I wouldn't really bother now as it's a bit of a faff (sp?) to do. I usually do mine with polystrene insulation sheets at the bottom of the walls and then bubble wrap over the rest of it but that's done in the autumn and then removed fairly soon, usually about Easter so I can give it a good clean out before it's put back into full scale summer use.