Adventures in making a green house

For awhile now, we have had this idea of either purchasing or making a green house.  Purchasing would be easy, but come with some expense. Making one, could be challenging, and if not thought out, still pose an expense.

After months of consideration, this idea followed by that.  Reasons for this versus reasons for that.  We finally came to the conclusion that we had enough equipment and supplies that we could make one on our own. 

The materials:

Several years ago my husband and I helped a relative repair their green house.  It was a beautiful extension of their home.  It arched from the south eve of their house right down to the ground.  The structure was framed in a wood skeleton, capped on both ends by solid wood walls.  The east wall held a screen door that had a sliding glass window.  This allowed for venting with out access to the bugs.  The wood skeleton held onto a double layer of plastic.  Each double sheet was connected together in such a manner that air could be blown in between each of the panels, between the layers providing and insulating core.  The air in the panels would stay warm helping to maintain the temperatures in the interior of the green house.

Besides being able to extend the growing season, they were able to heat their home.  The green house encompassed a couple different windows to the house allowing easy passage of the warm air. 
The extra plastic that wasn't needed for their green house was graciously given to us, along with the plastic strapping that was used to protect the plastic when stapled.  The plastic strapping helps to reinforce the plastic sheeting.  It also helps to make the sheeting air and water tight. 

So we have plastic sheeting and plastic strapping.

Next, we're going to need staples, and preferably an air compressor.  Some lengths of wood would be nice, zip ties and clips, or clamps.  Oh and lets not forget the over all frame.  Ha ha!  We have a gazebo frame that currently needs new fabric for it to be a working gazebo this year.  Who would have known? 

We also had 2 large silk screen drying rack shelves and 4 small ones, that were currently being used for the border of last years garden.  We have dogs.  Fencing in the garden for us, is a must.  However the drying rack shelves are now going to be repurposed.

I'm pretty sure that we had a clear idea on what we expected to see, but were still pleasently surprised by the time we were done.

This is the gazebo and several of the materials needed to make this green house work.  The gazebo is a 10'ft x 10'ft structure that has a pyramid style roof.  We found that the most difficult part of wrapping the frame in plastic was the roof.  We decided to treat it like we were wrapping a present.  This gave us the needed venting system that we will need when the weather finally warms.

Day 1:

A little bit of clean up.....  Move the BBQ, move the rocks that are going into the garden.  Don't forget the lawn chairs.  All of which found refuge for the winter inside the frame of the gazebo.  We pull apart the garden border and retrieve the drying rack shelves.  The 2 large ones are big enough to span the distance or doorway between the "legs" of the gazebo.  (We'll use the large ones on 2 sides).  2 of the smaller ones will span part of the distance between the third doorway.  This side is going to be used to create the green house door.  We zip tie all 4 of the racks to the gazebo frame.  The fourth side is right against the studio wall.  It will only need to be covered in plastic.

This is one of the drying rack shelves.  This used to be a part of a large drying shelf system.  But once pulled a part they make a great pre-made fencing system.  We originally used them to keep the dogs out of the garden.  We also used them for the runner beans and peas we grew last year.  This year they are being used to create a more solid wall for the green house.

Now lets pull out the plastic.  The plastic comes in a roll, and originally was 100'ft long.  It also comes folded in half.  This particular sheeting is 16'ft wide by approximately 35'ft long.  This was enough to wrap three sides of the gazebo frame.  Before we pulled the sheeting out of the box, we had hoped that we would be able to do a double layer, but we didn't have quite enough for that.  However, at 16' ft wide we were able to cover three sides completely along with all four sides of the roof.  16'ft was enough to leave approximately a 1'ft border of plastic on the ground, and still have nearly 3'ft over lapping the peak of the gazebo. 

Once we had an idea of how much plastic sheeting we had, we could start to formulate how we were going to drape it around and over the gazebo frame.

In order to get a general idea of where we were going to need to attach the sheeting to the frame we began pinning the plastic to the frame with clothes pins.  With a little bit of effort we were able to pin and secure most of the plastic sheeting within a couple of hours.  I don't think it would have taken quite that long, but there was some fenangaling and debate on how the sheeting should be stretched, and over layed across the top.  However, with just two of us, I don't consider that to be a bad amount of time. 

For the back of the gazebo, which still needed a cover, we had a plan B.  I can't remember exactly how it came about, but I give credit to my father-in-law.  He had this old role of yellow plastic.  Not having any use for it himself he gave it to us.  Over the years we've used it for things like table cloths at the family picnics, drop clothes when we did a mural for a local school, and what ever else we might need a role of yellow plastic for.  Anyway.  That's was our plan B for the back part of the new green house.

Now being on a zero budget, using only the items we had already on hand, we had to come up with a way to secure the plastic to a metal frame with as little damage as possible to the frame.  To the rescue, zip ties and lengths of wood.  Four lengths approximately 6'ft.  Those go above the door ways, on the edge of the roof.  Then 3 shorter lengths.  2 approximately 3'ft and 1 about 2'ft.  These shorter pieces, we attached to the new middle section of the old doorways.  Zip tying the pieces allows a place to staple the plastic.  The shortest of the three, the 2'ft piece is for the side with the new door.  Lets not forget the back part of the gazebo.  Even though this part is right next to a wall, and we would probably be okay leaving it open, we chose to err on the side of caution.  The intention of having a green house, at least the main reason, is to extend our growing season.  Especially this year where we have not been able to really turn over the ground because everything is still so soggy.  (Neither, for that matter have the farmers here.)  With that in mind, we took the extra steps to close off the back of the green house as well.  This requires 2 more lengths of wood.  These last 2 are about 5'ft.  They are zip tied to the sides of the original doorway sides of the gazebo that is against the wall.

The Gazebo frame has cross supports that provide a natural block or stopping point for the zip ties.  Where ever we had a vertical length of wood that we didn't want to slide, we would drill a hole through the wood and then slip the zip tie through the hole and over one of the supports of the metal frame.  With that done, and all of the wood secured to the metal frame we now had securring points for the plastic.

The arrows are showing some of the options we had for tying the lengths of wood to the frame of the gazebo.  By allowing the zip tie to rest agains these, "stopping points", we were able to prevent the wood from sliding or shifting.

Making the door as simple as possible kept us from having to frame in a door.  We positioned the plastic so that we would have an overlap of plastic for the door. 

While one of us held up the plastic in place the other worked to secured the first staples and strapping to the edge of the roof line.  In order to get a good stretch and seal at the ends of the plastic, (at the edges) we rolles the wood into the edge of the plastic, and then stapled the strapping and plastic to the wood to hold it in place.  In the middle sections of the original doors we stapled through the strapping and plastic and into the wood.  Because this was in the middle of the plastic there was no need to wrap the wood.  (These middle sections were to help prevent the plastic from having to much "give" in the wind.  Which seems to have done the trick, at least according to the last storm we just had.)

Now that we have two sides done we can move on to the door.  By intentionally putting a fold in the plastic where the door is intended, we were able to provide a "flap" that we could pin closed.  The extra plastic provided in the "flap" allows us to roll the edges of the door together, making a tighter seal.  Also, by intentionally placing the smaller drying rack shelves in the new doorway, we have a strong point to secure the plastic to.  We utilize this stronger area during wind.

Alright, so now we have all three sides, and a door done.  The next and most daunting task was figuring out the roof.  We had a couple goals in mind before startng this process.  We knew that by draping the plastic, without cutting it, we would be able to cover all four sides of the roof.  We wanted to provide collecting points for rain water, and if possible, create a way to vent the top of the green house when the weather became to hot to sustain life in the green house.  With that in mind, we tried several different way of wrapping, pinning, and folding the plastic to see what would look best, and what would work best.  Finally after much debate and a final decision to stop work and continue on the next day with a fresh view of everything, it hit me.  Lets wrap the top like a gift.  This would allow us to make the folds necessary to prevent cutting the plastic, also it would give us the choice of venting the top of the green house in hotter weather. 

We made a wood, square, collar that fit all four sides of the roof towards the top.  This was our next stapling or securing location.  Again we zip tied the wood to the frame of the gazebo.  We started with the south side of the roof.  The "pyramind" of the roof has supports that run up the middle of easch triangle, or side.  This made it necessary to have two collecting ponds per side of the roof.  We found two medium sized round rocks.  They created the pouch on either side of the support bar in each side of the roof.  The weight of these two rocks, gave us an idea of how deep we wanted to make the rain collection ponds.  Ponds makes them sound huge, in fact our largest one only collects about 4 gallons.  But we'll get to that later.  As I was saying the rocks helped by providing weight to strategic locations on the roof of the green house.  We pulled the plastic as tight as we thought we should and then secured it to the wood collar towards the top of the roof.  We did this by pinching a section of the plastic closest to the collar and then wrapping that "pinch" around the wood collar, finally securing it with the plastic strapping and staples.  Then we repeated this step on the East and West facing sides of the roof.  Between the three sides of the roof that we have already talked about, we had a lot of excess plastic sheeting.  (I may still change my mind this season, but for now I have no intention of cutting of the excess.)  With that, we took the extra and folded, more like rolled, them onto the South side of the roof.  Pinning them in place from underneath, seems to have created the pocket of warmth and rain collection we wanted. 

Now for the last side, the North side.  We had two dilemas with this side.  1) We needed to put together the slit created by the two ends coming together, and 2) we needed to secure the little bit of over hang we had from the roof onto the North wall.  So since we had enough fabric to overlap the peak of the roof, we had enough to over lap the edges across each other.  Now we could take the last edges and secure them around and under the edge of the roof. 

Next we zip tie the last two lengths of wood to the sides of the original gazebo frame. Between these two lengths of wood and the lengths at the sides of the gazebo we are able to secure the last two strips of plastic sheeting.  We have enough to wrap around the legs of the gazebo on both ends and then all that remains is the old, blocked doorway.  This we we'll close off with the yellow plastic.
 
Day 2:

Yesterday we got the main framing done for the green house.  We stapled and, when the compression ring gave out on the air compressor, screwed the plastic to secure it to all available securring points.  These points included the top, edges of the roof, and mid section of the walls.  We produced an overlapped doorway, which we clip closed with pinch clamps.

Today, we ventured into adapting our rain collection ponds, and tubing to run all of that extra water into a central barrel.  (eventually we will add more barrels to the green house for this and maintaining the temprature.)  And began to add tables and pots.  Not to mention the seed starts from the house.

This is just one corner of the green house.  The black tubing is felxible sprinkling system pipe, aka; funny pipe.  The green barrel is a collapsable water collection barrel, and in the top portion of the picture you can see the roof of the green house "weighted" into an upside down 2 liter bottle with the bottom cut off.  On the roof of the plastic is a rock that weighs between  1 and 2 lbs,  This is to help keep the shape of the collecting pond, and maintian a "dripping" point.  Between the lid of the 2 liter bottle and the "funny pipe", there is an air hose tube.  This moves the water from the soda bottle to the funny pipe with as little drip as possible.

To the right you can see the drying rack shelf, and to the left you can see the yellow plastic.  This is the Northeast corner.  Not visble is the Northwest and Southwest corners of the green house.  In these two corners, the "funny pipe" is coiled once, and then comes back on itself, and across the wall.  If you look back at the picture, you can see that we started here in the Northeast corner, directed the pipe to the left, coiled it, brought it back to the right, and so on.  Eventually the end of the "funny pipe" finds its way back to the green barrel where it empties.  We used zip ties to attach the pipe to the frame and itself.  The hope is that the black pipe will help bring heat into the green house.  What ever water may be in it will heat as well. 

The trickiest part of this was making the "funny pipe" run "down hill".  We eventually need the water to go to the green barrel.  If there are pockets of water, or places that the water runs the wrong direction, we will have water leaking onto the floor rather than being useful to water the plants.  The pressure will force the water out of the connections holes in the "funny pipe". 

The plan is 8 collection ponds on the roof.  We have a couple that are fairly shallow, and with out a tube or hole to move it to the barrel, would only collect a few pints before the excess would run off and onto the ground.  However, we also have a couple that would collect a few gallons before we put in a hole or tube.  (Even though we tried to make all of the ponds fairly equal, the movement in some areas, and non-movement in others created some inequality.  We will work with what we have accomplished at this point.)

Wherever we had drips that didn't want to follow the rules and drip into the soda bottles, we added tubing.  That produced a line for the water to follow, either inside or outside of the tube. 

A little bit of tying, and angling, and vuala' we had water collecting in the barrel.  Now the amount of water in the barrel, isn't extraordinary, but it is working.  We have a water barrel that collects rain water from the roof of the house.  It filled to capacity, and overflowed into a second barrel capturing 104 gallons in one storm.  The excess had no where to go but to the ground.  collecting from the roof of a rainguttered building is more effecient.  Much more water is directed to one or two locations, with the aid of rain gutters that span a good portion of the down ward side of the roof line.  This is then aided by drain spouts that direct the flow of water for a second time from the roof to specified locations, usually at the corners, of the building.  I am quite pleased with the progress our green house barrel is making. 

Now for the plants.  We had started several seeds in the house several weeks ago, including potatoes in a bucket, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-s1U-W510k .  When the weather has been good, I've taken them outside to get a bit of sun.  This helps to toughen up the stems and leaves, also called hardening off.  When the weather is a bit to tough, like you know 6 inches of snow mid April, they have stayed in.  Barring any major catastrophe from the wind, or some other unforseen event, we can now leave them outside.  They have only been in the green house for a few days now.  They have not "hardened off" quite enough yet to be left to their own devices, so when the sun is too extreme, for the next few days, they will be moved under the tables for shade.  However, on the other side of that, even though the green house is not insulated, and has no process for holding heat yet, the cover also prevents frost and extreme cold temperatures that could damage or kill the new plants. 

Now:

We had a huge storm surge move through yesterday.  The gusts calculated were, in some spots 70 mph.  We were blessed, the green house is still standing, in one piece.  I can just imagine the damage that storm did after it made it past the Rockies. 

We have several pots that will be moved to the garden as soon as the weather allows, probably after Memorial Day, and several plants that will maintain their spots in the greenhouse all summer. 

We are also working on an experiment with hydroponics.  That is an adventure yet to be written about.

Now, one way we are planning to heat and hold heat in the green house, especially to fight over night temperatures, is to store water bottles inside the green house along the walls.  In order to speed up the heating process, we will then drape black plastic over those same bottles.  The black will absorb the heat, in turn heating the water in the bottles.  Water, has a slow heat loss value.  In other words, once water achieves a certain desired temperature, it dissipates that heat slowly. 

A second idea is to purchase a new roll of plastic sheeting and add a second layer to the existing green house.  2 problems with this, 1) this will add expense to the project, and part of the idea was to accomplish it with materials on hand, and 2) this would eliminate the possiblity of collecting rain.  in order to create an insulation layer, we would have to seal any and all holes in the plastic sheeting, and then add a fan that would force air in between the layers.  Forcing air in between the layers is extremely effective for creating a warmth barrier.  But.... no rain collection.

And here we are.  Now to see about the hydroponics, heating that we have decided on, and how soon I can get some strong, ready to transplant, seed starts.  :)