Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Solar greenhouse


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   merge to greenhouse. (non-admin closure) Tim Song (talk) 03:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Solar_greenhouse
AfDs for this article: 
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The article seemed to be a spin off about the difference between greenhouse warming and how greenhouses work. It does not seem to deal with the actual subject of solar greenhouses as seen on web pages. The actual subject of solar greenhouses sould be a section in the article about greenhouses. Some of the references at the end might be usefully copied to the greenhouse article. I think the bit in the article about the greenhouse effect says quite enough about the difference between how a greenhouse works and the greenhouse effect Dmcq (talk) 00:48, 18 November 2009 (UTC) —Apis (talk ) 07:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, rename to Thermodynamics of greenhouses to more accurately reflect the subject matter of the article (which, per the references provided, is notable in its own right). Andrea105 (talk) 01:33, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Weak Keep, Some references must be inserted.Rirunmot 01:38, 18 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rirunmot (talk • contribs)
 * Merge to greenhouse, where a good explanation of how greenhouses work is conspicuously lacking. Turn two weak articles into one strong article. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:53, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to greenhouse. Plausible search term. No need for AfD. -Atmoz (talk) 02:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to greenhouse. Seems it was started (by me) as an attempt to defuse an edit war way back when (3-05). It didn't work for that purpose and should've been merged a long time ago. Shouldn't be a controversial merge - agree w/ Atmos, no need for an afd. Vsmith (talk) 03:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge. Agree with nom. No compelling reason why this should be a separate article. As Boris says, it will make the greenhouse article better as well.
 * delete and merge anything of value into Greenhouse per nom. This article is a sad fragment from an antique war and serves no useful purpose. But notice that the greenhouse article has, as is traditional, the wrong explanation for how greenhouses work William M. Connolley (talk) 11:19, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy with various outcomes--merge, rename, or refocus and rewrite. If it's renamed, I think  heat transfer would be better than thermodynamics (a scan of the leads of those two articles shows that the former matches the subject matter better).  The article right now suffers from a lack of definition of the topic--it seems some editors think it's about heat transfer in greenhouses, while others think it about greenhouses more generally.  It could also be about the various considerations involved in weaning a greenhouse off of other energy inputs.


 * I agree with the nomination that the paragraph in greenhouse effect is a sufficient discussion to outline the distinction between at atmospheric phenomenon and the heating effects in greenhouses. What is needed, but seems hard to effect, is a reasonable discussion of heat transfer in greenhouses.  For some reason this subject seems to attract edit warring and uncivilized talk page discussions full of name calling.  The topic of heat transfer through glazing is also addressed other places, such as insulated glazing.  Insulated glazing is not a particular good article, but at least it doesn't seem to attract the kind of warring that greenhouse stuff does.  So perhaps we should aim to have a short section in greenhouse effect that largely refers to insulated glazing for more on how heat transfer through glazing works.  I guess a problem with that is that insulated glazing is about double-pane and up, whereas it would be useful to discuss single-pane as well.  Ccrrccrr (talk) 13:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Greenhouse technology since the 1980's has come so far that the infrared question is now pretty much merely the academic question of whether the greenhouse effect is appropriately named (I'm currently on the fence on that one). To the extent that the question is of any interest at all, it is surely more appropriately addressed at the greenhouse effect article.  In any event the whole infrared thing is something Fourier came up with in 1824, which real greenhouse designers seem to pay little or no attention to, and which has not been demonstrated to have significant influence on greenhouse temperature (but neither has the opposite).  --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 08:10, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

—Apis (talk ) 12:16, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to Greenhouse per nom & others. Ivanvector (talk) 17:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment - are any greenhouses not solar? Ivanvector (talk) 17:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the use of "solar" in "solar greenhouse" can be for at least two purposes: 1) To indicate a greenhouse (generally of the conventional sort discussed in greenhouse) that is heated exclusively by solar radiation, without the use of combustion or electric heaters, or that at least tries to minimize their use; or 2) To indicate a room of a building, the main function of which is to act as a solar heat collector to supplement the heating of the rest of the building when the conditions are favorable for that, and which may or may not also be used to grow plants. For an example of this usage, see []. Ccrrccrr (talk) 18:26, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * "Greenhouse" in my experience is the name given to a specific type of plant nursery which is exclusively solar-heated, referring to the environmental benefit of collecting solar energy, the fact that plants grow in them, and the fact that they are often constructed of green-coloured materials. It is quite possible that this usage is local or cultural. I see your point about the second usage, but I personally wouldn't refer to that sort of solar heater or solar collector as a "greenhouse" per se. But I'm getting off-topic. What I meant with my question is that any usage of "greenhouse" mentioned so far (and any that I am aware of) includes the sun as a primary source of heat. Therefore, the inclusion of separate greenhouse and solar greenhouse articles is redundant, unless there is such a thing as a non-solar greenhouse (besides the obvious, houses painted green). I say comment because this wouldn't affect my !vote, given the current state of the article, just a) curious, and b) something to think about. Ivanvector (talk) 19:01, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I don't think that "green" in the sense of "environmentally friendly" has anything to do with the origin of the term. It dates from at least the 1600s, and that usage probably only from the 1960s or 1970s.  Secondly, I don't think you'll find the constraints of being exclusively solar heated, or only as nursuries in very wide usage.  Googling greenhouse heating overwhelmingly results in hits about combustion or electric heaters rather than hits about solar radiation. I agree that this doesn't affect that outcome, but I want to note that it does not seem that your experience with the usage of the term is representative.  Ccrrccrr (talk) 22:36, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right, my personal experience certainly does not represent a global perspective, and I apologize if I gave the impression that I thought it would. I ran your search, and now I see more clearly what you mean. Since this article doesn't seem to cover the plant nursery type of greenhouse in detail, perhaps it should be merged with solar heating, and the links between all of these articles should be re-evaluated. Ivanvector (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I had a look on the web for 'solar greenhouse' and as far as I could see from the first couple of pages the main use was to describe greenhouse with better means to store heat for use during the night. So it can include things like a mass of water to store the heat and better insulating cover yet good at allowing solar radiation in during the day. Nothing that is particularly more a good subject for comparison with the greenhouse effect that a normal greenhouse. Not a very large subject in of itself yet but worth writing something about.
 * I've also had a look for 'thermodynamics of greenhouses' and it seems to be mainly some debate about the greenhouse effect with a bit stuck in to confuse the whole matter about how greenhouses work. There isn't very much in that debate that would be of real interest to a person with an interest in the design and construction of greenhouses, and I doubt if many of the people in that debate are interested in actual greenhouses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmcq (talk • contribs) 09:38, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, my understanding is that greenhouse typically refers to a building for plant cultivation, since virtually all plants need light you let the sunshine in, and any sunshine will cause warming which can be both beneficial and problematic. It is true that solar sometimes refer to solar heating, unfortunately, as nom says, the article doesn't deal with that either, but rather reflects an archaic edit war. There doesn't appear to be a reason why subjects such as insulation, 'thermal buffers', benefits and problems with solar heat gain, and so on, can't be mentioned in the greenhouse article itself.


 * Merge to greenhouse. As Apis just said, "plants need light," specifically red and blue (they can do without green, in fact they even reject it, whence the color of foliage; conceivably this is a strategy for keeping cool given that the green part of the solar spectrum contains more energy than the red and blue parts).   Also bring the greenhouse article up to date, see e.g., whose range of greenhouse technologies dwarfs Wikipedia's basic account.  There are also some comprehensive articles on greenhouses published by the International Society for Horticultural Science, unfortunately they're not free.  Regarding whether infrared plays a significant role, this is an excellent question which Wood's 1909 experiment unfortunately doesn't answer (a) because he didn't take it seriously enough to make it a believable experiment and (b) because he offered no explanation for how the very high intensity of blocked infrared escapes from the greenhouse.  Regarding the synonyms "hothouse" (as in "hothouse tomatoes") and "glasshouse", the Concise OED lists the dates of introduction as 1664 for "greenhouse," 1749 for "hothouse," and 1838 for "glasshouse."  (In 1385 "glasshouse" meant a place where glass was blown, while in 1511 "hothouse" meant what we now call a spa, and by association---think "massage parlour"---a brothel, also in 1511.) --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 07:11, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Merge to greenhouse; this is the standard meaning of the term, so making it more specific ("solar greenhouse") and a separate article is not very useful. Awickert (talk) 19:14, 22 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.