Energy Independence

By using flood irrigation for many years, Robrick has reduced its energy consumption for pumping water. Robrick has also reduced energy consumption in many other small ways. We have always used electric golf cars to move people and plants around the nursery. These used electric carts are relatively cheap to purchase and they are clean and quiet to operate. They require no oil changes and the batteries may be recycled.

Our Argus environmental control system is carefully programmed to reduce energy consumption by automatically turning off things like the air compressor at the end of the day. Argus also saves energy by automatically turning off the horizontal air flow fans whenever there is sufficient natural ventilation. Argus also prevents heaters from coming on too early in the evening and from staying on too long in the morning. Most of our greenhouses have inflated double poly roofs and even our houses with corrugated Lexan roofs now have a layer of Poly over them. The North walls of our Quonset are covered with R max foam panels with the foil facing toward the plants. The foil reflects so much light back at the plants that they actually grow better than when the north wall is clear poly.

At Robrick we have quite a number of gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks and it is hard to reduce their fuel consumption except by driving less. However we do our own service work and all the oil is saved and mixed with 20% diesel. This mix is used to fuel two of our older diesel trucks. These trucks are used primarily on the farms and between our two farms but they are doing their little part to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We have turned a waste product into an asset.

On a far larger scale we are reducing our dependence on foreign oil by heating a major portion of our greenhouses with wood. We have replaced a fuel source that has to be transported thousands of miles and that is non-renewable with a fuel source that is transported less than fifty miles and is essentially a waste product. Here in North Florida pine trees are grown like a row crop. Hardwood trees in a stand of pine are viewed as weeds and are often killed with herbicides but in some stands the hardwood is still there and when the pine is clear cut the hardwood is cut too. The hardwood has no value as lumber and very little value as pulp so the loggers are happy to bring us clean tree length logs as we will pay a little more than the pulp price. We have a log loader set up to take them off the log trucks and we have slasher saw next to the loader to cut them into 3 foot lengths. These 3 foot logs are stacked on old pallets (another waste item) and stored until winter. When needed these pallets of firewood are loaded into our 3 oversized Hicks Waterstoves. We load the waterstoves with a Bobcat loader and burn pallet and all. We also burn all the waste paper from our office and any corrugated packaging that comes in during the winter. During the winter our dumpsters do not fill up very fast and we don’t contribute much to the landfill.

In the near future we will be bringing a 7000 watt solar system into play on one of our buildings. If this first installation proves feasible you may expect more photovoltaic installations at Robrick in the future.