6 Greenhouse Design Moves That Reduce Labor from Day One
When Sylvia Courtney walks into a greenhouse design project, she’s thinking about something many operators overlook until it’s too late: how many steps it takes to move through the space, day after day, year after year.
As Vice President of Design at LLK Greenhouse Solutions and a horticulturist by training, Courtney has spent decades watching growers struggle with layouts that looked good on paper but cost them thousands in wasted labor. Her philosophy is that “It’s always more costly to try to change layout after the fact than to have thought about it from the beginning.”
Therefore, here are six critical design decisions that should be made during the initial planning of your greenhouse structure (before it becomes expensive to fix them).
1. Create Uniform Growing Blocks
The math matters more than you might think. When production planning and inventory time rolls around, irregular growing areas create unnecessary complexity.
“When we create uniform growing blocks, it takes less time to do the production planning,” says Courtney. “When you’ve got 15 different-sized growing blocks or areas, you have to do a whole lot more math to manage it.”
In addition to a more streamlined appearance, this will reduce cognitive load and calculation time for your team.
2. Design for Maintenance Access, Not Just Production Space
Courtney has seen it countless times: benches placed directly in front of fans, pad systems, or other equipment that requires regular service.
“If a bench is right in front of the fan, it’s not ever going to get maintenance done because the maintenance team is not going to move the bench,” Courtney says.
This results in deferred maintenance that eventually costs far more than the production space was worth.
She recalls one example early in her career: “There was a bench with cactus on it right in front of the fan, and the motor had to be changed, so we had to climb up on the bench [and] move all those cactus off of the bench.”
3. Get Aisle Width Right From Day One
This is where Courtney sees the most resistance. Operators hate spending money on space that doesn’t grow plants. But inadequate aisles create a hidden tax on every task.
“If the aisle is not wide enough and people have to turn sideways to walk down the aisle, it slows them down,” she says, recalling a facility where workers were constantly knocking plants off benches.
The width requirements depend on your operation. You need to consider the turning radius for carts, safety requirements, and whether multiple people need to pass each other. One institutional client required aisles wide enough for lift access, raising the aisle-to-bench ratio but ensuring safe maintenance practices.
Commercial operations often push for tighter spaces, but there’s a trade-off: “That just means it may cost them a little more labor because they’re going to have to move things for us to get in there to do maintenance.”
4. Plan Drain Placement Strategically
Drains rarely make it into early design conversations, but they should. Poor placement creates daily inefficiencies and potential biosecurity risks.
“A lot of debris collects in that drain, and at some point, they’re going to [get clogged]. The drain should have some sort of a basket that would be removable so you can clean it out. And if it’s under a bench, somebody’s probably not ever going to get under there to do it,” Courtney explains.
Beyond accessibility, drains need to be positioned for evaporative pad system bleed-off and require a proper floor slope. Getting this right requires coordination between multiple systems, which is why it needs to happen during initial planning.
For the last two early greenhouse design decisions to ensure labor savings, please read the original article found on the LLK Greenhouse Solutions website.
Subscribe to eNewsletter
