Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm going into my first spring/summer with my hoop house aquaponics system and I'm having some heat issues and we aren't even close to out summer temperatures yet.

I had a chop and flip media bed system for a few years and it worked great with greens, armaranth and such. After being fed up with pests I decided to build a hoop house to minimize pests and because I can't afford a commercial greenhouse with HVAC lol.

Currently, outside temps are about 73F while my hoop house with 30% shade cloth, 2 fans on high, and all sides open is running around 98F. My lettuce is showing signs of heat stress by wilting during the day but perking up at night and the early mornings. My problem is that with the lettuce wilting and falling over, it's starting to rot where it sits against stuff.

I am considering building an evarporative cooling wall but from what I've seen, due to my high humidity, it won't be of much use. I grew this same lettuce outside and it didn't wilt as bad last year but it was not in full sun like this hoop house is getting.

Last summer I had a few tomatoes going in the hoop house and they did fine in 115F but I know that's not good for any form of life.

Any ideas to help cool these temps or to help stabilize the lettuce so when the heat of the day comes it doesn't fall over and rot.

I'll add a few pictures later so you can get a better understanding of what I have and the issues I'm having.

Still haven't posted any pics.
Lettuce can live in fairly high temperatures,as long as the root zone is cool.I had that problem a couple of years ago but I wasn't dealing with the temeratures you've got (mine was much cooler).

There's a few post on here where they were "misting" the plants during the heat of the day & cooling the water with some sort of a chiller.I can't remember who they are but maybe someone knows/remembers & can help out.

It might be an idea to stick to seasonal plants.

I don't think there is an easy way to cool this hoop house in your climate. The swamp cooler type setup you mentioned might work. Other ideas that could help basically involve opening the sides up to ambient conditions during the day and closing them at night if temps drop too low. Roll up sidewall or roof vents are one way of doing this, another is the Polyvent system which inflates or deflates a large side wall (I believe you specify the length when you order) using a small blower.

If most of the Aquaponics system is in the hoop house this also helps stabilize the temperature of the hoop house environment.

I built a small hoop house10 ft wide by 10 ft high and I found putting a window down low and one up very high naturally vents the hot air out. My windows are about 2ftsquare each so there’s plenty of area to move air. I screened them from insects too.

When I built my greenhouse, I placed a door at each end to get flow thru ventilation, plus louvre type slats on each side for cross-flow ventilation, auto opening roof vents which open at 25C and a mister/spray system along the roofline. Temps here can often exceed 40's C ambient, but greenhouse temps rarely go over 34C. Hottest water temp has been 28C.
The spray system has worked really well (we generally have quite low humidity) and uses about 2Litres per hour per nozzle (if I remember correctly).