9 Greenhouse Cooling Systems in Use, Private and Commercial

we all know that greenhouses trap heat and can get very hot in the sun now while everyone is debating the political and economic effects of the greenhouse effect on the planet these days in this video we're going to focus on real greenhouses that grow plants in your backyard and how to cool those down simple tech that's the name of this channel and we have piles of other videos on greenhouse stuff in the channel if you hit subscribe anyway simpletech is going to focus on exploring nine ways you can cool down your greenhouse not sure how this will help the planet but cooling your greenhouse is sure to help your bottom line and help you grow bigger healthier plants in the sweltering summertime sun wait if this helps you to grow better more nutritious food in your greenhouse and maybe that'll make you smarter you can figure out how to save the planet there see watch this video and everyone wins the first and most obvious way to cool down a greenhouse is passive ventilation by passive ventilation i mean just opening a window or a vent portal of some sort this sounds simple but there's a lot of ways one can ventilate a greenhouse and the type of greenhouse you have also affects what kind of passive ventilation system you can choose for a hoop house most will ventilate the end walls with a door or window and roll up the covering on the sides to allow for massive airflow to come through some heat can still get trapped at the top but the vents on the end walls up high usually disperse this other styles of greenhouses usually employ a system of taking advantage on the principle of heat rising using exhaust fence on or near the roof and intake vents near the ground regardless the amount of cooling you can get with a passive system is limited to the outside air temperature you can't get any cooler than what the air temperature is outside with a passive ventilation system now there's always an exception and the one exception on a passive ventilation system of cooling the air below the outside temperature is with earth tubes if you bury the intake vents and have the air run through the ground four to ten feet down for 20 to 50 feet or more the air will be cooled by the earth and drawn into your greenhouse via suction from the hot air leaving the roof vents there is a limit though the suction will only pull so much and most people that use earth tubes as a cooling system on their greenhouse add a fan to the earth tubes to increase airflow the more airflow the more you can cool down your greenhouse the other passive method for cooling down a greenhouse is shading material this is a trade-off the more you shade your greenhouse the cooler it gets but the more you shade your greenhouse the less light your plants get to grow many shade cloths for greenhouses have been developed to reduce the amount of light but not completely cut it off 25 50 75 and anything in between are shade reduction amounts on shade cloths you can buy for your greenhouse from a number of places these work but understand that with less light you get less growth mind you high temperatures inside your greenhouse will also plant growth so you'll have to balance the percentage of shading you use for the best results shading is usually done with and needs ventilation passive or active with fans to properly cool down a greenhouse shading won't get the inside of your greenhouse any cooler than the outside air temperature though this naturally leads us into the next step in ventilation which is fans you can blow the air around a greenhouse with fans but it's when the fans are placed over a ventilation hole to the outside that you really start to get some temperature changing effects how much this will cool your greenhouse depends on a lot of factors the amount of air moved outside air temperature size of your greenhouse cloud cover how intense the sun is that day all affect the system fans work and after passive ventilation fans are probably the most popular method of cooling down a greenhouse private or commercial in use today around the world fans in conjunction with shading material is how most greenhouses approach cooling their interior taking advantage of the energy used for a phase change in water is an option often used to cool a greenhouse when water evaporates it takes an enormous amount of heat to phase change from a liquid to a gas think of it like this when you boil water the temperature in the water slowly rises until it hits 99 degrees celsius at which point you see boiling bubbles and a lot more steam on top of the pot but the water doesn't all instantly boil it stays at 99 degrees celsius in the pot the water very slowly changes phase from a liquid to a gas in the pot yet the same amount of energy is steadily being put into the pot from the stove the water keeps taking this energy from the stove to boil the water massive amounts of energy over a long period of time until all the water is evaporated this is the principle behind an evaporative cooler water is run over a radiator surface it evaporates and air is vented over that radiator taking heat which is energy from the air as it evaporates leaving less heat behind this less heat is in fact a cooling effect which can actually cool a greenhouse or any building for that matter lower than the outside air temperature we call this an evaporative cooler and they're common especially in areas with low humidity unfortunately they don't work as well in high humidity areas youtube has several videos on different types of these cooling systems and how they work another spin-off of an evaporative cooler is misters or foggers if you spray a fine mr fog on the plants in effect dampening the plant leaves that water in the sunlight will evaporate off the plants and thus pull heat from the plants as it evaporates and cool down the plants often referred to as dampening down this is a viable trick that can reduce the temperatures inside a greenhouse by over 10 degrees celsius if you have a readily available relatively clean water source on cap cheap once again though this works best in low humidity environments and doesn't really work in high humidity climates [Music] of course if you have unlimited money or a way to get free electricity you can use a conventional air conditioner large commercial air conditioning systems work and will cool the air but it's a trade-off on cost to install a system like this and the electrical cost to operate it some public government greenhouses use air conditioners as cost isn't really an issue for them to cool the air yes you can run an air conditioning system off solar panels but an air conditioner large enough to actually cool a big greenhouse needs so much electricity that you would need a huge solar panel array and that isn't cheap either the massive overhead cost to this approach is why electrical air conditioners just aren't really used as a cooling method in private or commercial greenhouses today there's other free energy methods like geothermal where you use a radiant heat floor or radiators and running pex tubing with runs underground five to ten feet down a hundred feet or more long that pick up the coolness of the ground and use that to cool the greenhouse this is a lot like earth tubes but using a liquid in pex tubes to transfer the coolness instead of weeping tiles using air pumps are necessary but these don't use a lot of electricity and after initial installation costs this system is actually quite effective and very cheap to run also the same system can be connected in the fall and winter to a heating source to heat the greenhouse in a similar fashion you can have a dual system for heating and cooling or just cooling what's nice about a geothermal cooling system is it's not dependent on having low humidity a geothermal system works in high or low humidity climates equally well window film or tinting is usually thought of for cars but if you have a glass greenhouse window tinting is another option you can consider to cool your greenhouse and it works very much like shade cloths but with different materials like shading cloths it's an issue in the winter but unlike shade cloths it's more difficult to remove between seasons winter greenhouses need heat and the solar radiation heat is a huge boost for the plants in the cold seasons like shading cloths there seems to be a trade-off with window film the more heat reduction you get the less light for plant growth it seems the films reduce the type of light the plants need to grow i see this as a growth market though in the near future as science is getting better at filtering out specific light rays so we will be able to reduce heat but still give plants all the solar nutrients they need to grow comment below if you know more about window films that can be applied to glass or plastic for greenhouses that allow plant growth bottom line is a greenhouse can generate so much heat in the summer that if it's not controlled it'll cook your plants and you won't be able to grow anything cooling your greenhouse to reasonable temperatures allows your plants to thrive and the method of cooling you choose will depend mostly upon where you live heat and humidity levels and how much money you're willing to invest even when everything is done right greenhouses rarely ever cool below the outside air temperatures ventilation with some shading sheets seems to be the most economical choice for most operations private and commercial if additional cooling is necessary evaporative coolers are the most common choice in dry areas and earth tubes or some sort of liquid geothermal system is the only real viable option in humid climates i hope you enjoyed this video on how to cool a greenhouse where i live we don't usually get sweltering heat never much over 30 degrees celsius so ventilation is my personal choice choosing larger fans over a shea cloth but your location will determine just how much cooling you're going to need to operate your greenhouse without cooking your plants youtube is an awesome place to find an incredible amount of information on this subject and you can manipulate youtube's ai by talking to it so that youtube's ai will actually suggest more videos on this topic for you how you do that is by communicating with youtube's ai hit the like button share the video comment below when youtube's ai sees you doing something it thinks you want more on that topic so it suggests more videos like this for you to watch if you don't do something youtube's ai will suggest other things for you to watch so if this video is something you want more of do something i'd really like to hear about what you're doing or your plans to cool the greenhouse in the comments below thanks for watching when it's over the fat guy starts singing and i'm about to start singing so you need to go watch another video try one of these

Channel: Simple Tek

Views: 181,616

Keywords: greenhouse cooling, greenhouse air conditioning, greenhouse earth tubes, greenhouse shade cloths, dampening down, greenhouse misters, greenhouse fogger, greenhouse cooling in hot countries, fog cooling system, greenhouse cooling wall, too hot greenhouse, cool a greenhouse, greenhouse cooling system, solar greenhouse fan, year-round greenhouse, evaporative cooler, evaporative cooler vs air conditioner, evaporative cooler review, evaporative cooling, cooling pad system

Id: iOem-VRTQws

Length: 12min 3sec (723 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 01 2020