Disaster-proofing

It shouldn’t have happened. It could have been avoided. But an employee forgot one simple thing — to open a heat-retention curtain — so as the snow piled up, the heat couldn’t melt the snow, and the greenhouse collapsed.

Sadly, stories like this aren’t uncommon in the industry, and disasters like this happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s simple human error like this particular case, but sometimes it’s a result of failing to properly maintain your greenhouse.

“You have to maintain your car and your house — when you need a new roof, you shouldn’t wait because you’re going to have damage,” says Barry Goldsher, president of FarmTek, a greenhouse and hydroponics supplies company, and its Growers Supply division. “It’s all about the maintenance.”

When you avoid the maintenance, that’s when problems arise — and potentially disasters.

“We’re seeing greenhouse owners who have gotten to the point that they can’t afford not to do [maintenance] anymore,” says Shawn Brown, owner of L.L. Klink & Sons Inc., a greenhouse building, maintenance and repair company. “They’ve avoided maintenance for so long that they’re at risk of losing their insurability, and they have every risk associated with protecting their crop. The crop is usually worth a whole lot more than the structure. You have to make sure you have the right protection, otherwise there goes your investment.”

While you can’t control Mother Nature, you can make sure you’re doing as much as you can to ensure your greenhouse is able to withstand her fury when it unleashes.

“There are simple steps that people need to take to help prevent things,” Brown says.

The summer season and going into winter is the perfect time of the year to do those things because, in many cases, the greenhouse is empty.

So as your greenhouses start to empty out, here are some ways to create a maintenance plan and disaster-proof your greenhouse.

Create a plan
With the down economy of the past few years, it’s forced you as greenhouse owners to rethink your approach to operations. With the way things have shifted, it’s not enough to be just a good grower anymore.

“You can’t just be a good grower anymore,” Brown says. “You have to be a good business person. Part of being a good business person is being able to see where you can afford to stretch and where you can’t afford to.

“Being a good business person is finding that balance of when to take risk and when not to, when to move forward with repairs and expansion and when to pull back and say, ‘We’re not going to do that,’” Brown says. “Every individual business owner in each market place has to determine that.”

The way to find that balance is to create a plan for maintenance and long-term improvements. Ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish and evaluate every aspect of your greenhouse. Then use those thoughts to create your plan.

Start by creating a list of all the routine maintenance that needs to be done in regular intervals during the season. You may be busy and not have the time to make sure everything is in working order on your structure, but you can’t make excuses for not tending to maintenance.

“People need to take an interest in their structure and equipment, and if they don’t, they should have a maintenance person who does and is responsible for those things, whether it’s in-house or through an outside relationship,” Brown says.

If you don’t have the time to perform routine checks, or you don’t have the proper knowledge to do so, then it’s important to find somebody in your organization to handle these things. It doesn’t have to be a full-time person, but perhaps you have someone who has a knack for these things and you can add it to their title and job description.

If you don’t immediately recognize someone with these inclinations, you should train an employee to handle it or employ an outside company to assist you in keeping everything up to par.

“A lot of times your insurance companies have a list of contractors they’ve worked with and had successes,” Brown says. “Talk to your insurance provider and find out if they have somebody not just in case of emergency, but to do regular maintenance and repairs.”

The next step is make a list of the work that needs completed on an annual basis. You’ll also want to plan for how to handle disasters that may come up.

“We always tell people in case of a disaster, make sure they have extra material on hand, and have someone they know they can count on to get out there and help out in an emergency — who answers their phone at night,” Brown says. “Have someone that if there’s an emergency, no matter when it hits, that you can count on them to mobilize quickly and help to mitigate additional losses.”

As part of your plan, it’s also important to make sure you allocate money each year toward maintenance and repairs.

“Have a budget,” Brown says. “Many times somebody will give us a budget and say, ‘This is what I can spend on maintenance this year. What can you do?’ It’s our job to be as creative as possible and go back and say, ‘Here’s what we can do with those dollars,’ and provide some type of action plan.”

Once you’ve done those first two things, then identify the larger items that will need replaced or completed in the long-term, say three, five or 10 years out. Also, make a wish-list of projects or upgrades you’d like to do if you could. Having these parts of a plan identified helps you do long-term planning, budget better each year, and prioritize projects should extra money become available.

“It really takes a proactive commitment by the growers and the owners to sit down and say, ‘We’re going to evaluate this or we’re going to get somebody to evaluate it,’” Brown says. “The magic bullet is the commitment to make sure you discuss it and deal with it and have maintenance plans and a disaster plan in place in case something does hit. Have the right team of people, which is a good contractor or a good maintenance plan with your core group of people, and make sure you’re insured properly, and it’s good, quality, competitive insurance with a good company that’s going to provide value-add in your routine planning as well as when a crisis happens.”

Prepare for disasters
Two years ago, Connecticut experienced the 100-year snowfall, and Goldsher saw the effects when five feet of snow landed on his company building’s roof.

“My office doors were rubbing on the floor,” he says. “The roof deflected so much that the door wouldn’t close or open.”

It took a crew of employees four days to shovel it all off to avoid catastrophe. The bowling alley down the street wasn’t so lucky — it collapsed.

If weather can wreak such havoc on traditional buildings, it’s clear to see what it can do to your greenhouse. While it’s impossible to plan for everything, and fires can happen to anyone, different regions get hit with different weather patterns, so it’s important to prepare your structure for weather that could affect it. Here are some of the common disasters to prepare for.

Fire
Fire is one of the disasters that is not completely preventable but has a lower likelihood of happening if you tend to your structure.

It’s important to make sure your motors are all running properly and not over-heating, so be sure to have all of your equipment serviced and inspected. If equipment isn’t working right or keeps shutting off, don’t force it. Instead, have someone out to look at it.

Another way to avoid fires is to make sure you haven’t taken short-cuts by using extension cords as a permanent wiring source or daisy-chaining electrical cords together.

“For fire protection in the greenhouse operation, it really starts with installing all the electrical equipment, the lighting, the electric motors, the fans and the heaters according to the national electric code,” Goldsher says. “The equipment should be installed by a licensed electrician in the state and should be inspected for a certificate of occupancy.”

It’s also important to have a good alarm system in place that has a high-temperature alarm that will ring to an operator to alert that the temperature is higher than normal so you can check on the cause and potentially keep a small fire from becoming huge.

“Oxygen is the No. 1 thing that fuels the fire to spread, and it becomes an inferno,” Goldsher says. “So immediately, if a small fire starts, the equipment needs to shut down immediately. You’re bringing all that oxygen in, and it just blows up and becomes an inferno.”

Lastly, tend to the area outside your greenhouse. You’ll also want to inspect any wiring outside of your structure on a regular basis.

“A lot of greenhouses have rodents, and they like to chew electrical wires and could expose live wires,” Goldsher says.

Beyond that, you need to have good housekeeping, so no papers, trash, cardboard or other unnecessary items should be stored in or around the greenhouse.

“The area around the greenhouse should be free of debris,” Goldsher says. “The grass should be cut low or have an apron of stone, gravel, concrete or asphalt.”

And lastly, you may want to invest in a chain-link fence around your greenhouse.

“You should be able to lock your greenhouse up at night in case of arson,” Goldsher says. “There are all kinds of crazy things going on — it could be a disgruntled employee or someone who gets off on lighting fires. It could be a kid’s prank. You never know. You need very high security.”

Wind
In areas where hurricanes and tornados can produce mighty winds, you want to make sure your structure is prepared for it. Tornados don’t usually give you much warning and can often be unavoidable, but hurricanes usually have a three- to five-day warning for you to prepare.

Sometimes doors can be a weak link, so it’s important to shut and secure the doors.

“When I say secure the doors, I don’t mean just close the latch,” Goldsher says. “I mean potentially apply plywood over the door area or another layer of polycarbonate or possibly even chain it closed from the inside. [You need] something very secure because a lot of greenhouse doors, the latching mechanism is not strong enough to prevent it from blowing it open. It’s not like the front door of your house where there’s a deadbolt and a lock.”

Also look at your vents. If it isn’t closing properly, it could catch on an edge and lead to further damage. Also make sure you don’t have loose panels because the wind can grab hold of the corners and pull coverings off.

If you have a film-covered greenhouse, you may have to take a different approach.

“If it’s a film-covered greenhouse, their only hope it to take the film off and let the wind blow through the frame,” Goldsher says. “None of the film-covered greenhouses can withstand winds sustained over 75 mph.”

Snow
With snow you first need to know how strong your greenhouse is, especially when huge snowstorms are approaching.

“If you have a greenhouse that’s built 20 years ago when the building codes were very lax, then the structure is probably not heavy-duty enough to handle a storm like that,” Goldsher says.

Even if it is strong, it’s important to keep snow off of the roof. Start a day ahead of a storm, maybe even two, depending on the conditions, because it may take that long to heat the structure. The greenhouse is designed to be heated, so if it’s not being heated, you lose its ability to withstand snow loads.

If it’s snowing so heavily that it’s not melting or not melting fast enough, then you have to be more drastic and go up there to shovel it off.

Goldsher says you can also add additional vertical framing members, such as 2 by 6’s or 4 by 4’s in the center of the greenhouse or left and right of the gable.

It’s also important that snow has ways of escaping the greenhouse. Make sure that the gutters are clean so snow doesn’t create an ice dam. Also be sure to shovel around your greenhouse.

“The snow needs to be kept free and clear of the surrounding area to allow new snow that falls off the greenhouse a place to land without collapsing the sidewalls,” Goldsher says.

Expand properly
If you’re thinking of adding an expansion on to your greenhouse or even building a new greenhouse, take the time and the money to do it right. Construction is definitely not a time to attempt a shortcut.

Goldsher says to make any new structure as strong as possible, especially in areas highly susceptible to wind and snow.

Make sure that if you’re doing an expansion, you look closely at what you’re attaching it to so you don’t create problems with your structure’s ability to handle wind, fire, snow and other potential issues.

Taking the time upfront can save you from a total or partial disaster later.

Photos courtesy of FarmTek.