Quote:
Originally Posted by PureHarvest
Correct me if I'm wrong mark, but I think you want to exchange all the air one time per hour, even at night. This would be for early in your season when the sides are down and you are running your heater. This is why you need the end vents at a minimum. It would be overkill doing the auto sides for this and would be too much wear. They would be good for summer with the gable vents like cole mentioned.
I agree with the insect netting. I will be outfitting both of my tunnels with it this year. Look specifically for greenhouse insect mesh that excludes thrips to get the micron size small enough to keep them out along with whiteflies.
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Thanks for the thoughtful points.
In AK temps are below freezing much of the time up through May. Venting the cold air in, as you can probably imagine, is not good when its freezing outside, it can be -10 in April. Rare but it happens. What I will do is exchange it very briefly during the day before things warm up and everything goes auto. When its summer up here we have really long days, I will vent until about 10:00-11:00PM, but thought I needed to vent a couple of times at night too. I also now have tiny vent fans that always run, they keep some fresh air coming in, 5 inch.
I have heard that some up in Fairbanks actually have lung rooms to temper the cold vented air, I have not seen these though.
Our nights are rarely over 60, usually 55 average, which is cool air, I want 63-64 night time temps. What I did was compromise, and just have an over ride that auto vents regardless of temp that the shutter is set to go off at. I am starting at 4.00am, 5, and 6 for a minute, this leaves about 5 hours no venting besides the tiny vent and the poof fan. Many mornings my humidity was higher than I like to see, hopefully it is better this year, that's my guide.
I have been chasing the cure rather than doing 100 percent to stop the cause, when it comes to insects. We do really well with parasitic Wasps for aphids, but I am sick of buying bugs to kill bugs. Just another expense. I have cut all trees back as far as possible, aphids live in birch trees, and it's just not enough, so here comes the screens.
Aphids are so bad up here roll up sides are just out of the question for me. I have found though, if my pepper plants grown in the greenhouse gets aphids, I throw them outside and other insects wipe out the aphids. I can't quite figure that one out?