Casa Sardinal

Casa Sardinal sits on a hillside lot bordered by dry forest — the classic Guanacaste edge, golden guanacaste trees and scrub climbing behind the house. The owners wanted to start their own kitchen and ornamental plants from seed, but the sun, the dry-season wind and the iguanas were against open beds.

We built a compact aluminium greenhouse on the terrace beside the house — polycarbonate roof, insect-mesh walls, tiered benches for seed trays and nursery pots. The irrigation was the real engineering: a black poly main line with a pressure filter and a controller on the outside wall, feeding zoned micro-sprinklers on thin risers that throw a fine fan over each bench without soaking the young foliage.

Four circuits run on the controller's weather override — short misting cycles through the dry season, longer intervals once the green returns. Germination rates the owners had never managed before, and water use a fraction of what a hose and guesswork cost them.