The unavoidable is upon us; heating season! As unpleasant as it may be for all growers, winter is a fact of life and it must be considered. Heating costs during the cold winter months are of prime concern - here is a quick checklist to maximize the efficiency of your greenhouse heating system:
Whether you are building a single hoop house or building a ten hectare greenhouse range, new greenhouse construction is part of building your growing business. For many growers the construction process is exciting full of anticipation as you watch your dreams becoming a reality. For other growers, greenhouse construction brings on a feeling of anxiety as personal and corporate resources must be directed to an area of the business they are less familiar with.
If you could go back and re-design your existing greenhouse, how many changes would you make? How many of those changes would be minor ones and how many would involve major structural, heating or other mechanical changes? Avoiding this in your future expansion is easy; have a checklist of things you should have in your greenhouse now and incorporate them into the next build.
There are many reasons to make improvements in a commercial greenhouse, modernizing your greenhouse can reduce maintenance costs, or make productivity improvements, or improve the greenhouse environment for better growing, or maybe you want to add some extra growing space. Whatever the reason it is important to understand what the goal is before you talk to your greenhouse manufacturer.
As summer begins to heat up and the possibility that temperatures can rise to an unbearable 111°F or more as we've seen recently in Arizona, we're lucky to have air conditioning in our offices. But using air conditioning in a large space like a commercial greenhouse is simply not practical. While we can step away from the greenhouse into air conditioned lunch rooms, cars or homes, your crop doesn’t have that luxury. Keeping your greenhouse cool is vital to your crop and therefore your bottom line. So if you’re planning a new build or trying to figure out how to get your greenhouse cooler, the question arises – do I go natural ventilation (roof and side vents, rollup sides) or fan/shutter system?
