Quote:
Originally Posted by jackdarook
I know nothing about bananas (yet) but one thing about wind is that it does not like to hit solid objects like walls and fences. When it hits the obstruction it creates a kind of vortex on the other side, how far out i think depends on the height of the fence/wall. This can damage plants that dont even have their head over the fence yet. Something that lets some wind through avoids this problem. Not sure if this is relevant but felt compelled to try and add some value when people are being so helpful in my attempts to go bananas!
R, aka jackdarook
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Surely you are going to learn from this great forum! Welcome R!
One of the strongly recommended man-made barriers are the ones which allow some wind to pass through, like the fences with small gaps in-between. Most empirical studies find the ideal to be 40% gaps. This will minimize the strength of vortices in the downwind side.
First of all, we have to define what our idea of wind protection is. To most people, it is stopping the wind, which is impossible unless you enclose your object totally. When you talk to engineers, mostly it is about wind speed reduction or diverting the flow of the wind. If in our context, we define wind protection as wind speed reduction in this discussion, then I would say that wind protection extends from 2 to 8 times the height of the barrier depending upon the roughness coefficient from where upwind has gone through, and the type of barrier you have.
Assuming you used a barrier with a porosity of 40% (60% solid, 40% gaps), where most plant barriers fall into this category, and let us say you have 10 ft tall barriers, 50% wind speed reduction or more is from the barrier extending to 80 ft. For a 10% wind speed reduction, the protection is up to 250 ft away.