The Terp Mansion

The Challenge

Lucas has a 5000 square foot mixed-light greenhouse from NextG3N with accompanying rolling benches. He was looking for ways to efficiently heat his greenhouse without spending an arm and a leg. Luckily, his rolling benches were able to be fitted with BioTherm’s in-bench MegaTube hydronic heating system.

The Solution

NextG3N was able to incorporate BioTherm’s MegaTube hydronic root zone heating with their rolling benches.

“Any mixed-light cultivator that wants to cultivate year-round and is in a region where it gets humid, you’ll spend less money buying a BioTherm system than on 8 dehumidifiers and forced-air systems.

You’ll get root zone heating through the heated benches. The soil remains the same temperature throughout the greenhouse and temperatures can be kept consistent with the time of year you’re growing. With the soil being heated and the benches being heated because of the tubes running through the metal benches, the benches are warm, it’s passively heating the greenhouse. You’re using your propane heaters, that give a blast of hot air occasionally, a lot less in the wintertime. Thus, saving money. It’s a very large money-saving thing once you get it up and running.”

How It Works

If you are using a forced-air system to heat your greenhouse, you are likely wasting fuel in attempts to heat areas of your space that doesn’t really benefit from it at all. Not only are you wasting resources, but you are also wasting your money and time. This is where BioTherm Solutions under-bench, radiant heating systems come into play.

When installed under benches, radiant heating products, like the MegaTube In-Bench rolling bench, heat the air below the plants. It then rises naturally up to crops — specifically to the root zone. This method is quick and precise, so less heat is lost and plants get the heat right where they need it, faster.

Using the same extrusion and manifold technology as MicroClimate, we created a jumbo size to provide a product that will work for a wide range of heating applications. Because of its high tolerance to temperature and chemicals and its excellent heat transfer characteristics, MegaTube will provide years of optimum temperatures as part of a greenhouse heating system.

MegaTube is most commonly used as root zone heating technology. We have customers who have used MegaTube running up and down each crop run, looping around the end and down to the other side. In a more popular application, MegaTube is used in in-bench applications. The tubing runs under the wire top or expanded metal of the bench through prefabricated holes.