The decision to upgrade your greenhouse can be daunting, but there are ways to ease the stress and help the process run smoothly.
Plan ahead. Don’t wait for a crisis to have an upgrade plan in place. Planning now — even if you don’t plan to build for another two or three years — allows you to carefully make all the major decisions. Choose the right time for construction and start budgeting accordingly.
Start with the end goals. Do you want to expand capacity or grow a new crop that requires a different facility than what you have? Is your goal to increase employee safety and productivity by reducing manual labor and adding automation? Do you need improvements in energy efficiency and/or want to introduce more sustainable systems such as rainwater conservation or closed-loop irrigation? If crop quality is a concern, identify what improvements you need, such as lighting, bench heating, watering systems, greenhouse glazing or environmental controls.
Create a partnership. Find a team that will help throughout the entire upgrading process, such as construction, navigating building codes and permitting, irrigation, and heating and lighting systems. That partnership should continue after everything is built and installed.
Fully understand your processes and costs. You may not be able to fix everything by building a new facility, but if every problem area is upfront and on paper, your contractor may find ways to incorporate solutions you haven’t considered. Where are areas of congestion? Would a rolling bench system work better? Does your current greenhouse allow staging of light and ventilation?
A closer look at some upgrades
To lower costs and increase productivity, many growers consider upgrading irrigation systems as a first step. A fully automated irrigation system will provide more uniform watering and increase plant quality. Such a system allows growers to schedule all of their booms as well as control pH and EC levels. Most new systems have alerts that can be synced to devices, so you’re immediately aware if there is a problem with your watering. They’re also able to store data, sometimes multiple years worth of information, so you’re able to look back at various seasons to make improvements.
Heating is another large but controllable cost in a greenhouse, made only more costly by an inefficient heating system. Older greenhouse heating systems do not provide the same level of efficiency as newer heating systems, resulting in wasted energy that will negatively affect your bottom line.
You may consider purchasing new condensing boilers, which are significantly more efficient than older systems. You may also consider switching to a closed expansion system rather than having open expansion tanks.
Automation can be customized from simple production solutions to a fully integrated system. First, evaluate the time and money spent on everyday tasks in the greenhouse, especially repetitive tasks. Greenhouse automation can be increased as needs and budgets increase.
