ROTARY HYDROPONICS

 

THE FUTURE OF ROTARY HYDROPONICS IS HERE!

 

Benefits achieved by saving at least 2/3 of your required space to produce the same yields, saving electricity (with a 12′ table to equal the same light to plant ratio, you would need 6 HID Lamps, whereas with the 420 Model Rotary Hydroponic System you only need 4 HID Lamps). The garden is a complete plugin and grows system that includes sensors and feed system.

 

Each Gro-Tower is designed for electricity with adjustable diesel and solar facility operations. A Gro-Tower uses about 2.9 kW per day in total. This includes pumps, fans, sensors, feeder system, and motor (240v- 20amp 50/60 HZ). No need to build tables, wire ballasts, or acquire outside professional electrical help. Our garden towers are on wheels and can quickly move into any room or location, at any time.

 

It will take a little time for the traditional “Master Grower” to wrap his mind around this new age and innovative way to grow fresh produce, natural foods, and medicinal medicines. Most “Master Growers” have typically grown in their own and often successful but very “traditional” manners over the years, primarily using their own established grow methods without stepping out into our “new age rotary hydroponic grow box.”

 

Our state of the art, innovative, new age, Rotary Gro-Tower built proudly by a Canadian Manufacturing Company that has quietly become the global fresh foods indoor agricultural industry leader in rotary hydroponics, growing natural, fresh produce and other natural foods year round, in the cold and or hot climate conditions. We have an allocated dedicated Corporate Support Division working alongside First Nation Growers to advance Indigenous indoor Agriculture expertise, training, education and experience to First Nation and Inuit communities throughout North America.

 

The FNG Community Garden Farm is a “Rotary” flood and drain system. Growing plants in a rotary hydroponic garden result in uniform growth patterns thus helping make harvesting projections and scheduling more manageable for the grower.  The compression caused by rotation results in plants with more internodes (flowering sites) and better flavour profiles.

 

Our system significantly reduces the costs associated with conventional hydroponics including facility construction, size and maintenance costs; utility costs; atmospheric, water and nutrient costs; and pest/disease control costs. Optional software modules enable monitoring of all facets of production while maintaining the highest standards of both quality and security.

 

Our automated control system monitors all aspects of the Garden Farming Grow System and automatically alerts when parameters are outside of configurable parameters.  Active monitoring of Room Temperature, Humidity and CO2 levels and garden parameters for Water Temperature, Water Level, PH and TDS level. Available on our Model 420 line only, providing a single view of your entire operation with auto-correct features to ensure optimal settings at all times. Plants inserted into Rock-wool type cubes become secured in the “Quick Drain Trays.”  Placing the trays inside a motorized circular wheel allows the garden will revolve 24 hours a day around two center-fixed HID lamps. It takes approximately one hour for the trays to complete one revolution. There are two reservoirs supplied, one top and bottom. A pump placed in the bottom reservoir and is switched on, filling the top reservoir to the desired depth.  “Quick drain Trays” is then revolved through the nutrient/water mixture, feeding the plants.

 

Our rotary Gro-Towers system can be stacked 2 and 3 high for optimum space use, ensuring maximum space usage as well as quality quantity yields to satisfy facilities partners and investors as well as future community customers. Concerning trimming and general plant care, both are at a minimum using our Rotary Gro-Tower system, as you know, Medicinal Operations are highly regulated, where waste is both managed and controlled, where our system exudes minimal trimming and or plant care. Again, the compression resulting from the rotation occurs in plants with more internodes (flowering sites) and better flavour profiles, with less trimming giving result patterns of routinely higher yields. Our indoor rotary hydroponic system triples your returns, in the same growth period, of the same said strains, in comparison to traditional growing methods, using the same space, in the same said growth cycle time frame..

 

HVAC ANALYSIS

 

HVAC is more than a few pieces of mechanical equipment. It is an essential and integral component of every successful cold or hot climate 4seasons Garden Farming Facility!

 

  • An HVAC system works best when it takes local climate and initial pre-planned building designs into account. In a “pre-planned” green-built facility, heating and cooling equipment in each room can be smaller, less costly, and less complicated.
  • Energy conservation, indoor air quality, and growth environment are among the core green building issues encompassed by heating, air-conditioning and ventilation design. These interrelated systems can be complicated, expensive to install and costly to operate but green buildings also offer many opportunities to simplify and save. Central to the premise of thinking one grow room at a time, are the many passive solar features built into a garden farming green facility. HVAC design follows other fundamental building steps that can collectively reduce the size of the heating and cooling system by 30-50%. Solar orientation, insulation, window placement and design, even vegetation on the building site all directly affect heating and cooling loads. Designing a system based on real demand, not conventional practice is essential.
  • FNG makes sure our HVAC designs heating, and cooling equipment, are matched to and according to established industry procedures.
  • We design the HVAC system in conjunction with other building components, including insulation, windows, solar mass, and orientation.
  • We reduce the size, expense, and complexity of mechanical systems as much as possible where possible.
  • We install adequately sized fans in all grow rooms, meeting & training rooms, bathrooms, common rooms, deli, market, and kitchens.
  • In facility ventilation system, augmented heat recovery ventilator captures and stores latent heat.
  • Specify high-efficiency heating equipment and air conditioners with a high SEER.
  • In forced-air systems, run ducts through conditioned space where possible and seal all duct connections with mastic.
  • Avoid electrical resistance heating unless it’s used only on an intermittent spot basis.

 

Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) is the technology of indoor and vehicular environmental control and comfort. Its goal is to provide thermal ecological controls of acceptable indoor air quality. HVAC system design is a sub-discipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer. HVAC is an integral part of both commercial and residential structures such as indoor greenhouses, single family homes, apartment buildings, and senior living facilities. HVAC also includes medium to large industrial and office buildings, skyscrapers and hospitals, onboard vessels, and in marine environments, where safe and healthy building conditions are regulated for temperature and humidity, using fresh air from outdoors.

 

The three central functions of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning are interrelated, especially with the need to provide thermal environmental controls for comfort and acceptable indoor air quality within reasonable installation, operation, and maintenance costs. Ventilation (the V in HVAC) is the process of exchanging or replacing air in any space to provide high indoor air quality which involves temperature control, oxygen replenishment, and removal of moisture, odours, smoke, heat, dust, airborne bacteria, carbon dioxide, and other gases. Ventilation removes unpleasant smells and excessive moisture, introduces outside air, keeps interior building air circulating, and prevents stagnation of the interior air. Ventilation includes both the exchange of air to the outside as well as circulation of air within the building. It is one of the most critical factors for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality in buildings and indoor garden farms. Methods for ventilating a structure combine mechanical/forced and natural types. FNG Garden Farm HVAC systems designed for the individual grow room.

 

GROWTH MONITORING & SECURITY

 

First Nation Growers LP. is exceptionally well positioned and ahead of other hydroponic growers due to a reliable and exclusive relationship with our Canadian Gro-Tower Manufacturer. Our agreement allows our customer clients and other First Nation and or Inuit community Fresh Food Garden Farm growers to access our 365/24/7 fully automated control monitoring system for cold or hot climate, natural, indoor 4seasons growing, exclusive to First Nation Growers.

 

All facets of growth environments and production are monitored and recorded throughout each growth cycle, 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, with built-in alerts when growth parameters are outside of preset configurable settings. We are never alone in monitoring growth or production with an electronic, detailed technical growth chart kept on hand and available for historical reference of each growth cycle for each product in every Gro-Tower at any given time.

 

This automated control system monitors every aspect of growth and method of providing immediate, automatic alerts when growth parameters are outside of pre-configured settings. There is monitoring of cold or hot climate, indoor room temperatures, humidity, Co2 levels, PH and TDS levels and other garden farm parameters set for water temperatures for each grow unit. This monitoring maintains the highest standard of quality crop cycles, high yields and security.

 

Growth Monitors are installed at each project site on every Gro-Tower as well as at FNG Head Office to ensure 365/24/7 project growth monitoring, security and assistance is a consistent success with each Community Garden Farm Project.

 

COMMUNITY POWER SUPPLY ANALYSIS

 

The race towards smaller, greener and cheaper power supply designs is more intense than ever!

 

Higher efficiencies, higher power densities, time to market, standard requirements and cost reductions are impacting models and designers alike. Designing a power supply is a complicated process. When and where FNG can, we try to augment a part of the Indigenous communities energy needs within our own FNG Community Garden Farm Facility. We continually engage emerging technology, with the goal of remaining technologically advanced in the best interest of the environment and our Indigenous partners. We include renewable energy resources for both ‘community-owned’ projects and our third-party-owned facilities, whose power-source can be shared by a community, in our comprehensive planning process. “Renewable energies” is an important concept worth serious consideration for each 4seasons Community Garden Farming project. We then make this technology available to each First Nation and Inuit community that we work with across Canada, creating a cohesive relationship between community, environment and each 4seasons garden farming facility.

 

The International Energy Agency has projected that, in the absence of new actions, there will be one billion people lacking access to electricity in 2030. Most of those people live in remote communities worldwide, far away from the utility grid. It is usually impractical or uneconomical to extend utility grid to those dispersed populated areas due to the prohibitive costs of constructing the network.  Therefore, standalone diesel generators provide communities with their primary source of electricity. However, problems from a diesel-based power supply, such as pollution and high fuel cost, have attracted extensive public consideration of locally available renewable energy (RE) resources to supply power. Advances in RE technologies and rise in the price of diesel make the RE systems becoming increasingly popular, notably in remote areas. At the same time, some inter-related initiatives are also carried out to promote the RE utilization not only by the government but also the power supply companies. Recent studies suggest that a stand-alone RE system can provide a cost-effective alternative to the expensive grid extension or diesel electrification.

 

Besides, renewable and non-renewable energy sources have remarkably different economic characteristics. The high initial capital cost possibly is still the most significant barrier to RE promotion, while conventional power such as diesel tends to have high operating cost. Therefore, consider a trade-off between renewable energy and traditional energy for the life-cycle cost, environmental conservation, and technical feasibility.

 

The results of hybrid solar–wind-diesel–battery evaluates an elaborate analysis regarding power supply quality, life-cycle cost, and greenhouse gas emission. The motivation of this study is trying to examine all possible power supply solutions for this island, including renewable and non-renewable power generation. Therefore eight possible power generation options in total are investigated, including hybrid RE and diesel system with storage and without storage.

 

Therefore, a diesel generator is included to make a hybrid RE and diesel system. The diesel generator provision can ramp up and down, to accommodate the intermittent output of RE. One advantage for including a diesel generator is the significant decrease in storage capacity of the battery bank, the PV capacity and wind turbine (WT) capacity, hence reducing system cost and improving power supply reliability, while an optimal combination of PV, WT and batteries can limit the fuel consumption of the generator.

 

The schematic diagram of a hybrid solar–wind-diesel–battery system, solar and wind resources typically provide bulk energy, whereas diesel generator performs as a backup. The PV and WT produce DC power, which is converted into AC power by the converter to serve the load, and the remaining energy will be used to charge the battery bank. When the RE output cannot meet the load demand, the dispatch-able components (battery and diesel generator) will launch. The converter is bidirectional, not only converting the DC power from RE and batteries to AC power for serving the load but also converting the diesel surplus AC power to charge the battery.