The Ultimate Guide to Choosing ebb and flood bench

Choosing the right bench for your crop is vital to plant quality and further reducing labor costs. GGS has been designing, improving, manufacturing, and building quality benches for growers for over 35 years. Here are a few options:

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Flood Benches:

Flood benches are great for helping to control irrigation and fertilization costs. By re-circulating water, fertilizer not used by the plants is available for the next cycle. It&#;s environmentally friendly. Also, flood benches help lower disease by keeping leaves dry.

GGS produces ebb and flood benches with either aluminum trays or plastic liners depending on the crop and the grower&#;s preferences. Hot dipped galvanized adjustable stands enable you to install your flood benches with the perfect pitch for quickly draining irrigation water away from the plants. Your pots never need to sit in water longer than you want.

Expanded Metal Tops:

These tops offer the advantage of lower costs and greater flexibility for crop variety. Ideal for garden centers as well as growers, the mitered corners on GGS sides won&#;t snag your employees&#; or customers clothing.

Like all GGS benches, our steel stands are hot dipped galvanized after manufacturing to ensure optimum protection against corrosion.

Trough Benches:

Troughs, like flood benches are ideal for bottom watering your pots. Troughs are rolled out on site so each trough is a continuous piece the length of your bench. GGS adjustable stands enable growers to slope the trough from one end of the bench to the other so water flows continuously under your pots.

While troughs reduce your flexibility in adjusting pot sizes, the gap between each irrigation trough improves vertical air flow and helps dry the crop evenly. Irrigation troughs like flood benches allow a grower to reduce fertilizer consumption by re-circulating water.

Rolling versus Stationary Benches:

Rolling Benches

The main advantage of rolling benches is the ability to gain additional production space by eliminating walkways. In a typical production greenhouse bench layout, rolling benches will give you 24% &#; 33% more production space, in some greenhouses they may even allow as much as 50% more production space.

Rolling benches roll on 2 inch diameter roll tubes, the diameter ensures a smooth roll for long benches. GGS has provided customers with benches in excess of 200 feet long.

Stationary Benches

A lot of stationary benches we see tend to be wooden although initially they may be less expensive the long term cost maintaining them costs more. Wooden benches are also harder to disinfect. Even if your stationary benches are metal you loose the flexibility that rolling benches offer, loosing valuable crop space that could be more profit and increased labor costs.

Check out our rolling benches in the video below to see the benefit of switching from stationary wooden benches to metal rolling benches:

Display Benches:

Garden centers require something different from their benches. Benches should add to the style of a garden center as well as provide accessible storage and display of your plants.

Multi-tiered benches are perfect for displaying plants, and they can be designed to be freestanding, or we can build them to attach to the greenhouse walls.

Whatever your benching needs, GGS is here to help growers grow!

When deciding what style of grow benches or racks to implement at your greenhouse or indoor facility, there are several factors to consider. Each part of the cultivation is connected from lighting to irrigation to container handling, and you must consider process compatibility. This guide reviews each type of bench or racking to help you determine which system best fits your company&#;s needs.  

Full canopy is expressed as the approximate percentage of a greenhouse or indoor grow room occupied by plants. Vast areas allow for less aisle at the end of benches or racks and greater space utilization. Limiting factors such as roof support columns, equipment, and any desired functional space beyond the minimum fire code usually restricts this value further.  

Stationary Greenhouse or Nursery Benches

 

A stationary greenhouse bench is the classic nursery bench. These benches most commonly have a mesh bottom that drains to the ground, and these benches can also be equipped with an ebb and flow liner to control irrigation runoff.&#;&#; 

Rolling Benches

 

Rolling benches slide back and forth on long metal tubes to create working aisles as needed. The distance the bench will slide depends on the width of the table and manufacturer. These benches come standard with anti-tip safety features. Rolling benches can eliminate over 70% of static aisle ways in a well-designed greenhouse or indoor facility and may be equipped with a mesh bottom or an ebb and flow liner.&#; &#; 

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The company is the world’s best ebb and flow bench system supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.

Dutch-Style Rolling Benches (Container Table System)

 

These fully mobile container systems are a must for larger facilities seeking to automate production and lower operating costs. Benches glide effortlessly back and forth over guide bars and shift perpendicularly on transfer lines at the end of aisles. A gutter system is used to collect irrigation runoff and employed with recirculating flood or top-drip irrigation. These systems are usually only practical in multi-acre greenhouse facilities with long runs because of the additional space transfer lines require. Entire container tables are removed at harvest to a separate area with clean table replacements filled with plants taking their place for maximum turnover efficiency and ease. Mechanical automation can be used to move tables from position to position, and large industrial steam wash machines lower operational costs with a short ROI proposition. 

Stationary Vertical Racks

 

Immobile vertical racking has been losing relevancy quickly with the market moving to primarily mobile options but still holds relevance in some applications. Vertical rack systems are ideal for large amounts of squat plants with little to no vegetative growth time. LED lights are fastened to the tier above while the top level uses HID lighting. In energy abundant greenhouses, natural light is used primarily for the upper-tier with supplementary LEDs below. These systems typically require more complex irrigation and air movement systems to keep climate even across the different levels. Some manufacturers even advertise these systems up to 35&#; high.  

Mobile Vertical Racks

 

Most vertical rack systems are similar to library archival systems and are a popular niche within emerging indoor CET cultivation. Racks may slide back and forth to create working aisles either by an electric motor or a hand crank, and unique flexible electrical and irrigation connections are required. Still, power consumption and HVAC requirements for a typical two-tier system are roughly equivalent to a single-tier mobile bench HID buildout.&#;&#; 

Other Forms of Plant Holding Systems

 

Hydroponic Gutters 

Inexpensive and functional, these gutters offer a lower entry ROI but are not inherently well suited for cannabis. Gutter systems are impractical for high-density early growth, less space-efficient on average than stationary benching, and possess no natural structure for a plant support system. 

DWC/NFT Pipe Systems 

Plant roots grow in hydroponic pipes with no medium. These systems can be designed to efficiencies similar to static racking but are more prone to catastrophic crop loss when irrigation systems temporarily fail. Expert engineers and operators must experience repeatable success with these systems on a commercial scale. 

Vertical Dutch Style Mobile Benching 

Rare to find, these systems are the Aston Martin&#;s of automation in plant benching. They can be two or three levels tall with machine movement and hydraulic table lifts to &#;store&#; plants on upper levels. However, the extreme price tag scares most investors away, and equipment maintenance expenditures take a significant bite out of a smaller workforce&#;s operational budgets.

Stationary and Mobile Troughs 

These systems are almost identical to stationary and mobile benches, but a reinforced structure allows cultivators to simulate soil bed growing. Not common in commercial production, they can still be found primarily within the craft organic cannabis market. 

At RMJ, we provide a wide selection of Benching and Racking solutions that can be tailored to your project from leading horticultural brands.  Learn more here.