Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?

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slow_worm

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Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« on: April 08, 2011, 11:33 »
Hi has anyone made a greenhouse from scrap or bits from DIY store?  Any pictures?
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature? the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. -   Rachel Carson

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JaK

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #1 on: April 13, 2011, 19:14 »
I have been wondering if I (and OH) could make our own greenhouse too. It would need to be quite small though. Could it be made of perspex instead of polycabonate I wonder?

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N.WalesIdealist

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2011, 21:00 »
It's my summer prject :).

I've priced the timber from W*ckes for the frame at around £150, it's the glazing that's expensive, polycarbonate is my first choice, but I'm looking at around £200 to glaze it!

It's a 10 x 8 by the way!

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Kleftiwallah

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2011, 16:42 »

I havn't made my own, but I've grafted two together and moved the door from the end to round the side.   Any help ? ? ?   Cheers,   Tony.
I may be growing OLD, but I refuse to grow UP !

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Windsong

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2011, 09:23 »
One of the plot holders near us has made their own. It looked like the frame was made out of wood and the glazing was made from corrugated sheets of clear PVC. If I remember (I have the memory of a goldfish sometimes) I will take a picture next time we go and post it here.

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Alastair-I

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2011, 13:10 »
I built this one for the patio last year, we had tom's, cuc's and chillis from it :D

It's currently bringing on seeds for the plot this year.  It's variously known as the ghetto or Ikea greenhouse.



Our neighbour is a builder and he'd dismantled a conservatory for a customer, carefully saving the polycarb sheets for us.  The timber was salvaged from an old shed we dismantled.  Total build cost was a couple of dozen screws and a pair of hinges.

The dimesions are.. as wide as the sheet of marine ply used for the back (salvaged from the shed roof), front-to-back to match the width of a polycarb sheet, height to suit the length of one polycarb sheet cut in half on a slope for the sides.  From memory, the roof was the other half of the sheet that forms the door.  The black strip down the front is some weed membrane to fill the gap.  It allows a bit of gentle ventillation, and I wasn't going to rip a length of polycarb for such a small gap.

Almost all the structural stiffness comes from the polycarb sheets.  The timber frame is just something to support a mid-height shelf and to allow the whole to be screwed together.

A left over sheet will be the roof of a coldframe this year, and if I get any more sheets I'll build another greenhouse for the plot.

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noshed

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2011, 17:30 »
Mine's home made - wooden fram with corrogated sheets - I made it an 8' cube because that's the length of the sheets but that's too high really.
It blew away at first and then I tied it to the fence....
Self-sufficient in rasberries and bindweed. Slug pellets can be handy.

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Robster

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2011, 18:30 »
My project too but not a greenhouse but a sort of "lean to" against a sunny wall to put aubergines in.  I may do a simple polycarbonate framed sheet and have some polythene sheet for the side bits

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japagow

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #8 on: April 21, 2011, 20:06 »
I made my own polytunnel. 10 foot by seven and six foot high. Water pipes from the garden centre (unwanted) for hoops got them 15 foot long and put them over and bolted on to metal pipes -which were the arms of an unwanted aerator drier  which were thumped into the ground.
Found some useful metal rods with thread and bolts in a skip and made them into horizontal supports here and there.
Made an 'H' frame either side from odd bits of wood for the door frames.

The sheet came from the web (First Tunnel) and cost £67 but it is very good quality and there was enough left over for trousers for the boy and p.j's for her.

My polytunnel shimmers. I am very proud of it.

I put the sheet up with some help this week and apart from one section with a small sag it looks alright. The whole thing should be taut to provide strength

Other plot holders bought the cheap versions which saved them alot of time as they just put the frame together and hoisted the sheet over the top while I was still fiddling about with nuts and bolts.

I think mine will stand another hard winter for a few years and I would suggest doing a polytunnel as it might be easier/safer and much more portable.

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BirminghamRyan

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2011, 18:22 »
Not a greenhouse as such, but I built a leanto polytunnel affair.
originally it was composed of 4 8ft canes and a beam which I'd bought to replace one from the shed which I thought to be rotten but which on closer inspection turned out to be solid with holes drilled to accept the thin ends of the canes. 4 pieces of old pipe were hammered into the ground for the thick ends, a sheet of PVC film purchased and some scrap wood scrounged on the site, used as batons to secure the sheet to the front of the shed.
It was not without problems, entering and leaving was a very undignified procedure due to the sheet being attached to the shed with just a small corner flap to crawl in through, there was much condensation that ended up destroying my tomatoes and which also made everything in the shed damp. There was too much sideways movement in the end canes, and the final straw was that the sheet was not UV resistant and disintegrated once the winds got up in winter.

So, pictured below is MKII, the same basic design but with an extra bracing cane added on the curved section, held in place with brackets made from scrap steel at the ends and some thick aluminium wire I dug up on the middle canes. Anti hotspot tape is provided in the form of foam draught excluder strips. In view of last years issues I bought some NEW WOOD and built a proper door and frame (Which is just too low for my head) and some triangular vents above the door and at the other end, I was planning to use some twinwall polycarb from a lidl coldframe which got blown apart as windows, but never quite got there...



I crammed 9 tomato plants in there last year, but that was too much for comfortable movement, so I'll limit it to 6 this year, and maybe train some physalis up the front of the shed.
At some point I will build a bigger proper greenhouse, I'm torn between the cheaper and easier normal rectangular design with a pitched roof, and how cool it would be to build a geodesic dome. For glazing I'm trying to source ETFE film (As used in the eden project, near indestructible and self cleaning), but I can only find 200m rolls.

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arugula

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Re: Has anyone made their own Greenhouse?
« Reply #10 on: May 15, 2011, 18:41 »
Welcome BirminghamRyan! :D Would you care to introduce yourself in the Welcome area? :)
"They say a snow year's a good year" -- Rutherford.



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