Greenhouse Solutions: Cooling
Apr 21, 2008 12:49:46 GMT -10
Post by srduggins on Apr 21, 2008 12:49:46 GMT -10
Greenhouses are nice in cold climates as the sun helps to increase the heat during the day. However, temperatures can quickly get out of control and you can end up cooking your plants. This is one of the first issues you need to deal with when you consider adding a greenhouse to your life. Large greenhouses have vents in their roofs to allow the excessive heat build up to escape. Is this enough to prevent the greenhouse from overheating? Not in the greenhouses I've seen. They all have commercial evaporative coolers installed. Some even have a full wet wall and a large exhaust fan on the other wall to pull air through the wet barrier. A little too much for my hobby greenhouse.
For those lucky enough to live in drier climates, evaporative coolers provide a cheap solution with the added bonus of increasing the humidity. Although, in my small greenhouse the humidity would still drop to 30% during the day while it was in the teens outside.
I've had good results using the wispercool MMB10 portable cooler. Although I don't really need the portability, I found a good deal on one. It has 2000 cubic feet per minute air flow which will basically replace all the air in my small greenhouse in 15 seconds. It is good to over engineer these things, but this was a little extreme. Luckily, the cooler has a hi/low switch which blows a little softer. And I was confident this unit would work great on the new larger greenhouse which is just over 1000 cubic feet as it could replace all the air in half a minute.
Now that I moved the larger unit to my new greenhouse, what do I use to cool the old one. It has been difficult locating swamp coolers in southern california. I'm not sure why, but nobody seems to sell them and the ones I do find are either really small portable units that call for manual filling or large models that cost more than I want to spend. I managed to find a smaller unit shaped like a box fan that might do the trick for me. I drilled a hole in the side and installed a float valve so I can attach a water line to the cooler and not have to worry about it running dry. The inaugural weekend arrived with 97 degree heat. Would this new smaller solution work under thiese extreme conditions? Lets just say the smaller unit struggled a little keeping the greenhouse below 90 degrees, but it managed. A little tweak to the fan direction and some extra misting should take care of the problem.
I can provide more details if anyone is really interested.
So does anyone have an innovative solution to greenhouse cooling, or a good source for cheap swamp coolers? I found mine on ebay and craig's list.
For those lucky enough to live in drier climates, evaporative coolers provide a cheap solution with the added bonus of increasing the humidity. Although, in my small greenhouse the humidity would still drop to 30% during the day while it was in the teens outside.
I've had good results using the wispercool MMB10 portable cooler. Although I don't really need the portability, I found a good deal on one. It has 2000 cubic feet per minute air flow which will basically replace all the air in my small greenhouse in 15 seconds. It is good to over engineer these things, but this was a little extreme. Luckily, the cooler has a hi/low switch which blows a little softer. And I was confident this unit would work great on the new larger greenhouse which is just over 1000 cubic feet as it could replace all the air in half a minute.
Now that I moved the larger unit to my new greenhouse, what do I use to cool the old one. It has been difficult locating swamp coolers in southern california. I'm not sure why, but nobody seems to sell them and the ones I do find are either really small portable units that call for manual filling or large models that cost more than I want to spend. I managed to find a smaller unit shaped like a box fan that might do the trick for me. I drilled a hole in the side and installed a float valve so I can attach a water line to the cooler and not have to worry about it running dry. The inaugural weekend arrived with 97 degree heat. Would this new smaller solution work under thiese extreme conditions? Lets just say the smaller unit struggled a little keeping the greenhouse below 90 degrees, but it managed. A little tweak to the fan direction and some extra misting should take care of the problem.
I can provide more details if anyone is really interested.
So does anyone have an innovative solution to greenhouse cooling, or a good source for cheap swamp coolers? I found mine on ebay and craig's list.
