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Founded in Buffalo, New York in December 1958, incorporated in New York in May 1959, and granted tax-exempt status in 1965, the Association was built to serve as a durable voice for greenhouse manufacturers and suppliers.
To represent and advance the interests of the greenhouse industry through education, networking and communication.
The live NGMA history page centers on the Association’s founding, mission, standards work, and the policy and code efforts that shaped the greenhouse sector. This page translates that material into the theme’s existing landing-page system.
To represent and advance the interests of the greenhouse industry through education, networking and communication.
The aims and purposes of the Association are to protect, foster and advance the interests of the industry; prepare and disseminate information regarding the proper construction and maintenance of glazed enclosures, greenhouses and sunspaces in varying climatic areas; promote and maintain friendly relationships between companies in the industry and between industry members and the customers; interchange ideas for the benefit of the industry; improve manufacturing procedures wherever possible; explore markets for additional products which could be marketed and/or manufactured during off-season periods; prepare informative data for the use of persons and companies interested in entering the growing field; and generally do such things as may be necessary to accomplish those aims.
The original Structural Standards were written by Bill Roberts of Lord and Burnham. To gain formal recognition, Wiss, Janney and Elster Associates was retained to shape the standards for ANSI submission in October 1974. The process was completed in October 1981 and the standards were printed for distribution. By that time, a heat-loss standard had been approved, the cooling and ventilating standard written by Norm Augsburger and Harold Gray had been published and copyrighted in 1962, and a retrofit policy statement had been adopted. These were compiled into the Structural Standard booklet.During the 1986 to 1990 period, NGMA also expanded through residential sunspace and greenhouse manufacturer participation, retained BTI as code consultants, and worked through major model-building-code proposals so greenhouses could be more clearly recognized within NBC, UBC, and SBC frameworks.NGMA worked closely with GICC on glazing changes, and the resulting collaboration helped produce greenhouse-related structural code changes in BOCA in 1988 and in UBC and SBC in 1989. Those same model codes also accepted annealed glass for greenhouses and tempered glass for certain solarium and sunspace applications under defined limitations.Following those achievements, residential-member priorities shifted. NGMA continued contributing to ICBO and GICC work around sloped-glazing criteria and later around ASHRAE Standard 90.2 so greenhouse and sunspace products were not boxed out by prescriptive energy formulations.
Following acceptance of the Wiss, Janney structural standard, the full standards booklet was submitted for copyright and the copyright was granted in 1985. In 1987, the glazing committee presented a glazing standard to the group, it was approved, and copyright was received in March 1987.Following acceptance of code changes by BOCA in 1985, revisions were made with BTI’s help so the structural standards aligned with BOCA. Heat-loss standards were revised in 1989 to include newer plastic double-skin sheet glazing materials. Those revisions continued to remain under copyright protection.
NGMA distributes a quarterly e-newsletter to its membership. The newsletter includes information on past and future NGMA meetings, trade-journal editorial content, trade events, and articles directed to manufacturers of greenhouses and greenhouse components.
