Research Greenhouse Expertise

Research greenhouses are a specialized field, with requirements beyond the typical educational greenhouse. The Greenhouse Design LLC engineering group has completed more than 15 research-specific greenhouse projects in the last 10 years with many decades of additional experience in all types of greenhouse and growth chamber facilities.

Research greenhouses at their core are about growing plants and research their pathogens. Containment and exclusion of those pathogens or genetically modified materials are critical to the research facility. We have expertise providing greenhouse designs capable of meeting BSL-2P, BSL-3P, and APHIS designations for containment facilities. The engineers at Greenhouse Design LLC have extensive experience discussing plant-based requirements with researchers in their language during detailed greenhouse programming sessions.

The knowledge and requirements recorded during the program are used to design the support systems used to create the controlled environment for growing plants These support systems involve the integration of the structure, environmental control equipment, plant growing system, plant handling system, and environmental data acquisition and control systems. If anyone of these components is missing or underperforms, the greenhouse will not be successful at growing and maintaining plants used in the research program.

The design of the greenhouse mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) systems is different than most buildings. Much of the equipment used in the greenhouse is industry-specific and specialized for the greenhouse trade. Many of the loads are different from typical buildings and “rules of thumb” that generally work for most MEP engineers, tend to produce wrong answers when used in a greenhouse environment.

Greenhouse Design LLC provides design services including BIM drawings and specifications of all the greenhouse components. Some of these systems include: