Daniel Treep

Cooling a greenhouse

How to cool a greenhouse on hot summer days

With the summer approaching, the temperature in the greenhouse were rising. On sunny days the temperature can skyrocket during this time of year. Imagine what the temperature in the greenhouse will be on a sunny summer afternoon. To prevent overheating of our plants (and the aquaponics team) we have been working with several methods to cool our greenhouse.

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Big fan in our greenhouse - The big fan in our greenhouse helps to strengthen our plants and to cool the greenhouse on a hot summer day. Ana Valls

Opening the doors and windows, and placing fans will create movement of air in the greenhouse, and therefore helps to cool it. Furthermore, it enhances the strength of our plants. It is just important to make sure you close the windows appropriately when it gets windy, to prevent them from damaging. You can do this, by completely closing the windows upwind, and having the windows downwind opened slightly.

However, opening the windows will not reduce the temperature enough on a hot summer day. So the aquaponics team had to think of another way to lower the temperature. Another well-known method of cooling a greenhouse is installing a shade cloth. To place this shade cloth we had to install nylon wires, also known as “Atlas wire”, under the roof of the greenhouse. The shade cloth we have installed does not block out all sunlight, so the plants still get enough of it for photosynthesis. However it blocks out enough light to lower the temperature in the greenhouse significantly.

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Shade cloth - The shade cloth in the greenhouse helps to lower the temperature on a hot summer day, without blocking out the necessary sunlight for plants Ana Valls


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Temperatures in the Greenhouse - The temperatures in the greenhouse in a week in June. These shade cloth was already in place when these temperatures were measured, imagine what it would have been without.