This is true; but we do move our lilies, as they develop buds too early, to a standard quonset house with 50 degree nights. It has an unvented gas furnace, with no trouble at all. I suppose an other aspect to look at is the furnace had better be running properly, or incomplete combustion could occur, then you have a real mess. Our method of solving this problem......inspection! Good luck, Marty Reichenberger P.S. It is scary to measure the amount of heat which escapes out the exhaust through an inefficient furnace, especially on a cold winter night! We are big on using the newer high efficient models, saves alot of $$$$$$. I think Marty has a good point with the use of a non-vented heater in a retractable roof greenhouse. But, bud abscission in lilies is directly affected by the presence of ethylene gas, a by-product of combustible engines. I would not recommned to any grower that they use an unvented heater in a greenhouse containing a crop as sensitive to ethylene, i.e. bud drop, as lilies. Terril A. Nell University of Florida At 07:19 AM 2/26/98 -0600, you wrote: >Yes! You can run a propane furnace unvented. There was an article in >the Greenhouse Grower a couple of months ago which stated that quite a >few growers run unvented furnaces. We just finished up a Cravo >Retractable Roof house and the furnaces are unvented in there; they are >High Efficiency, which does cut down dangerous gases however. I >personally don't know of any houses which are tight enough to prevent >enough air exchange to allow waste gases to build up, UNLESS you are >talking about a 10,000,000 BTU boiler in front of a little greenhouse >or something to that nature. I think you will be fine. > >Marty Reichenberger >Green Thumb Greenhouse >Independence, KS > > >Request for advice, > >My Lily (Lilium longiflorium) crop is just reaching Visible Bud. > >Height is on the tall side so I am trying to control with a >negative DIF. > >The greenhouse is primarily heated by a hot water system with a >gas forced air heater for backup. Unfortunately, the boiler is >down for about 10-14 days awaiting a new heat exchanger :-( > >The unit heater is not keeping up. I would like 68-70F Nights, >but can only maintain about 62-64F and the soil temp is 54. > >So the question is: If I put an unvented propane space heater in >the house will I run a greater risk of damaging the crop with gas than >trying to catch up on timing later? > >Or shall I run up the day temps and have the tallest crop in the west? > >Thanks for any and all opinions, > >Michael Layman >layman@utahlinx.com
-- BEGIN included message
- To: Marty Reichenberger <mreich@terraworld.net>
- Subject: RE: My Lily crop needs HEAT
- From: "Terril A. Nell" <tan@GNV.IFAS.UFL.EDU>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 08:42:36 -0500
- Content-type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
- In-reply-to: <34F56BEA.F3F6E058@terraworld.net>
I think Marty has a good point with the use of a non-vented heater in a retractable roof greenhouse. But, bud abscission in lilies is directly affected by the presence of ethylene gas, a by-product of combustible engines. I would not recommned to any grower that they use an unvented heater in a greenhouse containing a crop as sensitive to ethylene, i.e. bud drop, as lilies. Terril A. Nell University of Florida At 07:19 AM 2/26/98 -0600, you wrote: >Yes! You can run a propane furnace unvented. There was an article in >the Greenhouse Grower a couple of months ago which stated that quite a >few growers run unvented furnaces. We just finished up a Cravo >Retractable Roof house and the furnaces are unvented in there; they are >High Efficiency, which does cut down dangerous gases however. I >personally don't know of any houses which are tight enough to prevent >enough air exchange to allow waste gases to build up, UNLESS you are >talking about a 10,000,000 BTU boiler in front of a little greenhouse >or something to that nature. I think you will be fine. > >Marty Reichenberger >Green Thumb Greenhouse >Independence, KS > > >Request for advice, > >My Lily (Lilium longiflorium) crop is just reaching Visible Bud. > >Height is on the tall side so I am trying to control with a >negative DIF. > >The greenhouse is primarily heated by a hot water system with a >gas forced air heater for backup. Unfortunately, the boiler is >down for about 10-14 days awaiting a new heat exchanger :-( > >The unit heater is not keeping up. I would like 68-70F Nights, >but can only maintain about 62-64F and the soil temp is 54. > >So the question is: If I put an unvented propane space heater in >the house will I run a greater risk of damaging the crop with gas than >trying to catch up on timing later? > >Or shall I run up the day temps and have the tallest crop in the west? > >Thanks for any and all opinions, > >Michael Layman >layman@utahlinx.com > > >Received: from [140.254.85.3] by corona.terraworld.net (NTMail 3.03.0014/12.aabg) with ESMTP id mreich for <mreich@TERRAWORLD.NET>; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 20:32:14 -0600 >X-ListName: Floriculture Faculty Discussion Group > <FLORINET@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu> >Warnings-To: <> >Errors-To: owner-florinet@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu >Sender: owner-florinet@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu >Received: from mail.utahlinx.com by agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (MX V4.1 VAX) with > SMTP; Wed, 25 Feb 1998 21:17:20 +500 >Received: from [208.14.238.155] by mail.utahlinx.com(Warp-9/NT) id 55702283.0; > Wed, 25 Feb 98 10:45:03 GMT >Message-ID: <34F401FA.4018@utahlinx.com> >Date: Wed, 25 Feb 1998 03:35:22 -0800 >From: Michael Layman <layman@utahlinx.com> >Reply-To: Michael Layman <layman@utahlinx.com> >X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01KIT (Win16; U) >MIME-Version: 1.0 >To: FLORINET@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu >Subject: My Lily crop needs HEAT >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit >Return-Path: <layman@utahlinx.com> > >Request for advice, > >My Lily (Lilium longiflorium) crop is just reaching Visible Bud. > >Height is on the tall side so I am trying to control with a >negative DIF. > >The greenhouse is primarily heated by a hot water system with a >gas forced air heater for backup. Unfortunately, the boiler is >down for about 10-14 days awaiting a new heat exchanger :-( > >The unit heater is not keeping up. I would like 68-70F Nights, >but can only maintain about 62-64F and the soil temp is 54. > >So the question is: If I put an unvented propane space heater in >the house will I run a greater risk of damaging the crop with gas than >trying to catch up on timing later? > >Or shall I run up the day temps and have the tallest crop in the west? > >Thanks for any and all opinions, > >Michael Layman >layman@utahlinx.com > >
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