| Nursery upgrades greenhouse walls, installs roof vents |
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Marvin Fessler stands in front of an upgraded greenhouse.
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Last year, Fessler nursery successfully applied for a USDA Rural Development Energy Efficiency Grant to help cover some of the costs of greenhouse energy efficiency improvements.
Fessler’s uses natural gas to run forced-air heaters in their greenhouses, which house a variety of annual plants sold in retail and wholesale markets. Heating costs are 12% of the nursery’s expenses, so they were interested in reducing energy use. They began looking at options to replace their old fiberglass greenhouse walls and roof, which had become clouded with age and had a low heat retention capacity.
The nursery took advantage of a free audit program from Northwest Natural, their gas utility, to verify that upgrading the greenhouse walls was a good idea. “We compared the energy savings from converting to a new double-wall material with an R-value of .55, with leaving our existing walls, which have an R-value of .7,” explains Marvin Fessler. “The projected payback was 4.2 years.”
Fessler decided to apply for a USDA Rural Development Energy Efficiency Grant for the new walls and roof. “We were going to do the project anyway, but the grant would make it an even better deal for us,” he says. The program requires a professional energy audit for all efficiency applications, so the nursery submitted its NW Natural audit to document the projected savings.
The program allows applicants to begin their project after submitting their grant, but before they’re approved for funding. That way, if they’re not dependent on the funding to go forward with their project, they can go ahead an install it.
The application process was time-consuming, but Fessler is pretty positive about it. “It’s not hard,” he says. “It just takes time. The USDA staff were a big help, and they walked me through all the forms that I needed to fill out.”
After submitting their application, the nursery began ordering materials and proceeded with construction. The nursery put in clear material on the roof, and white material on the walls. “The old fiberglass was so yellowed, there wasn’t as much light getting through to the plants,” explains Marvin Fessler. “The new material allows more light in, which allows even more heating in the winter.”
The nursery also installed roof vents at the same time they replaced the greenhouse walls and roof. “On its own, the roof vent project didn’t make sense – the projected payback was something like 30 years,” says Marvin Fessler. “But when we combined it with replacing the walls and roof, it worked out.”
Now that the roof vents are in place, the Fesslers don’t need to run ventilation fans in the summer. “We used to run them 18 to 20 hours a day in the summer. Now, we just have the roof vent programmed to open on its own at specific temperatures. The vent system is much quieter than the fans. We left them in there just in case, but we haven’t needed them yet.”
After completing the project, the nursery learned they had been awarded the grant from USDA Rural Development. The project cost $183,000 altogether, and the USDA Rural Development grant covered 25% of project costs.
“I would definitely recommend the program to others,” Fessler says. “It’s well worth the time I put into it.”
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