HVAC for flower nursery area

[MedicineEng]

Hi All:
We are now considering installing a HVAC system for a flower nursery that we have in our property.
This currently a non conditioned space, but the reasoning behind conditioning the space is to acclimatize the flowers before these are installed inside our property. According with our flower specialists, this will improve flower life expectancy.

When I was looking to the HVAC initial design by contractor, I didn't see any considerations on the fresh air intake and the issue of flowers releasing water vapour due to breathing, but the reality is I also don't know how to take that into consideration in terms of HVAC design.

I was trying to find some guidelines or hints on how can we consider these 2 factors since the last thing we want is to go through this exercise (and investment) and then flowers die faster than now.

Thanks for any help on this.

 

[itsmoked]

Wow. Refrigeration for flower growing.. I guess I can say "I've heard everything" now.

Please tell me they're artificially lighted and that you won't be battling greenhouse solar gain.

There are usually tables in refrigeration handbooks showing gain factors for various commercial situations. I suspect plant growing may be included. Alternatively, rooms full of humans could be more onerous then some plants as humans are all 100W heaters spewing copious amounts of water vapor. Your contractor may know that plants are less of a problem than people and he's just using a people design.

There could be some serious savings by thinking out of the box here.
Can you instead refrigerate just the plants instead of the room the plants are in?

Could the cooling be thru chiller pipes or hoses in the soil?

If the plants need frequent watering could they be watered with very cold water instead?

Are you sure you can't get away with swamp coolers instead of the large energy hit mechanical refrigeration will exact?

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[MedicineEng]

itsmoked:

Thanks for your feedback.
Well, apparently these flowers deserve it. Or at least someone thinks that.
Did I mentioned that we will also have electric reheating during the 2 months of Winter (average temp 7C)?
Maybe these are black tulips, I don't know.
Regarding swamp coolers, I don't think that this will do it, we are located in a sub-tropical area, with very hot and humid summer season, so we wouldn't get much from evaporative cooling.

Thanks for the hint on the cold water for watering the flowers. I'll see if that idea flies with the flower experts... but I'm not sure if it would help much as I don't think these flowers have a big water consumption during the day.
Either way that would definitively make a much cheaper operational run on all this flower nursery project.

 

[willard3]

ASHRAE Applications and other volumes may help you with this.