Planning a greenhouse envelope concerned in this blog is for greenhouses which are planned to be human habituated, a kind of garden or museum, those have particular feature of making the ambient temperature and humidity inside the greenhouse human friendly not only trees friendly, a kind of selection overlap where trees chosen can sustain and grow at the human comfort levels of temperatures and humidity. Fabrix360 played
a crucial role in the development and implementation
of the modern greenhouse technology in the UAE.
Envelope selection in greenhouses shall tic the following boxes:
A- Minimum shading coefficient as advised by horticultural expert. Best if provided for the entire roof and facades(i.e take into consideration the impact of steel structure and other obstructions of solar energy)
B- The kind of material used shall allow needed energy spectrum which is vital or enough to green cultivation (photosynthesis process). A spectrum transparency(wave lengths penetrated) analysis of material used shall be addressed.
C- The U value of system specially if the greenhouse located in cold geographic areas
D- Make sure that facades are also made of transparent material. Envelope means both roof and facades. At least the upper 5 to 7m of facades must be made of transparent materials to allow more sunlight to enter during the year.
E- Select a material which is easy to clean. The dirt badly impacts the sunlight transparency specially when the levels of energy are critical(This is the usual case when you use the greenhouse as human habituated garden since shading coefficient wont be that high to reduce AC load). The slope of roof is equally impacting cleanliness(the more slope in roof the less of dirt accumulation and frequency cycle of cleaning)
F- Seek performance and simplicity in selection, unusual materials must be avoided, heavy or complicated profiles too. The greenhouse purpose is to serve as conservatory for plants and pleasant to human, the art on the ground not in the envelope, envelope shall support the environment technically in the first place refer to A-E.
It is very trending now a days to use ETFE air inflated cushions for all habituated greenhouses, it does tic all boxes outstandingly, 50 to 100 times lighter than glass profiles, highly durable, flexible in fritting shading coefficient, easy and fast to build and most importantly allows majority (almost all) solar energy spectrum to pass. Nevertheless, any transparent material tics the requirements can do too.
To start designing ETFE visit our website free tools below(wait 60 seconds for the webpage to load):
Wish you all the best!