Roll-up door makes hoop houses more efficient

Problem: Standard wooden-frame doors at the ends of hoop houses make product movement inefficient.

Solution: A roll-up door, like the ones found in self-storage bays, provides more clearance.

Details: For the same cost as a wooden door, the “garage” door is sturdier and can be partially opened for natural ventilation.

The total quality management team at Home Nursery in Edwardsville, Ill., was charged with finding a better door for its poly houses. The nursery’s poly houses looked like most others -- hoop construction, wooden doors and layers of poly.

“We needed a door that would stay up year round, after the poly came off the house,” said Dennis Molitor, vice president of finance at Home Nursery. “We needed to get in and out of the door easily, and we wanted to be able to partially open the doors.”

The team found just the right door at a local self-storage company. The single-bay doors are metal, they roll up and they can be partially opened.

The nursery researched having poly houses made with roll-up doors already in place, but that was cost-prohibitive -- $1,300 per end. And Home Nursery’s houses are 720 feet long with doors on each end. But installing it onsite, the price dropped to about $300 per end. The doors are attached to the poly houses with 2-inch-square steel-box tubing.

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“It’s just as cheap to put these doors on the poly houses as it is to put the wooden doors on,” Molitor said. “And you don’t have to take these doors down and they last longer.”

For more: Home Nursery, (800) 628-1966; www.homenursery.com.