Five Aces Breeding LLC

We at Five Aces believe in using our resources wisely.  To us, it is not a religion or political statement, but a creed practiced by our community of farmers.  We recognize that competition in our industry drives efficiency. Fortunately Five Aces has the resources to erect highly efficient buildings and has partnered with the University of Maryland Extension in Garrett County and the local 4-H robotic society “GEARS”, to study an ambient energy harvesting greenhouse that we have erected.  In the case of our laboratory, this 12 x 24 foot facility is primarily heated by the ballasts from two sets of fluorescent lights which illuminate our cultures.  Our Styrofoam and concrete frame home is primarily heated by wood when it gets very cold. In both structures, we use a 1500 watt electric baseboard heater to supplement this heat when we are not attending the furnaces.  The worse case scenario (below zero F weather) for heating our home would require only one cord of wood for 6 weeks. With the ventilation fans for 3 greenhouses/tunnels, 2400 Watts of High output fluorescent tubing (8’ T-12 tubes), four refrigerators and two propane heaters, we use about the same energy as a normal American suburban household per year. Taking into account that this is a farm located in one of the coldest areas in the eastern US, we are satisfied with our energy budget so far.

We accomplish some of our savings by running our raspberry house only after March 1, when the sun and shorter nights reduce our energy requirements. During the dead of the winter, we just keep the house from freezing. We do, however, need to run our strawberry breeding house throughout the winter. This house was designed to utilize insulation and environmental or ambient energy.  Since its construction, it has never come close to freezing, even considering it has just a 24000 BTU propane heater as is backup heat source.  The house is monitored using a system installed with the help of a NE-SARE farmer grant.  This information is found at www.welserver.com. We are: /WEL0004).

There are several thermographs on this page, but the daily BTU's collected are in a box on the top left. Theoretically calculated, the reservoir loses 1 F of heat to give up 9400 BTU's of cooling. Thus for the 24000 BTU output (30000 BTU burned-we are 80% efficient) propane heater, 1 F heat loss in the reservoir give 18.8 minutes of propane burn.

Our fall has had a couple periods of cloudy and abnormally cold weather.  Please note the graph with red, blue and green lines only.  The transition from sunny to prolonged cloudy weather shows solar harvesting by the solar-water panels, followed by  use of the radiator, finally followed by reliance on the propane heater.   In the first week of December, we sealed the vents in the greenhouse and this should help.  

Click here to learn more about the Greenhouse.