Saturday night a big storm blew in with hurricane force wind gusts. It was our first big storm in a while. In fact, it was our first big windstorm since early last spring.
We have a 10 foot by 12 foot, Harbor Freight greenhouse we bought last year and spent a few weeks after Christmas assembling. I say "assembling" rather than "building" because the Harbor Freight greenhouse kit uses a very precise and complicated construction process. The frame uses extruded aluminum pieces for all of the skeleton. Bolt heads slide into tracks in the aluminum uprights and rafters, panels have to slide into grooves in door parts before assembling--take my word for it, it's a complicated process and requires careful attention to the twenty-some-odd page step-by-step instructions. The clear wall and roof panels are polycarbonate held in place with little wire clips that fit into little tracks on the support pieces and have a lip that sits tightly on the edge of the panel. The sliding double doors are set into complicated tracks at the top and bottom of the doorway. Sliding doors are absolutely the worst possible opening and closing system for an owner-assembled structure. They are nearly impossible to properly align and balance so that they do, in fact, slide.
The building process requires digging a level rectangular hole four inches deep and building a frame base that is absolutely square. At every step in construction the pieces must be perfectly level and square or the next step won't fit. The inside of the base is supposed to be filled with roughly four cubic yards of gravel to form a floor and create a solid anchor for the finished structure. Without the filler the entire greenhouse could blow away like a trampoline in a tornado. The cost of a dump truck load of gravel was prohibitive, so we back filled with the native sand we dug out. I say we, but Kathy did all of the shovel work. She moved four yards of heavy dirt twice; she dug a square, level hole and she carefully leveled and releveled the base a dozen times to keep it just right.
Also, after I spent half a day trying to hang the doors and make them work, I was ready to break things. Kathy stepped in and helped me hang the doors so that they would actually slide open and closed. She's the engineer around here.
The structure of the greenhouse is not flimsy, but it isn't heavy duty either. A warning on the outside of the box it came in warns not to use it in windy areas. I live in Central Oklahoma, so wind is always a problem. There is an entire online community with multiple websites, forums and YouTube videos devoted to solving problems with Harbor Freight greenhouses.
The attraction to these greenhouses is that they cost less than a third of what a similar size greenhouse would cost from other sources and it is very close in quality.
Shortly after we got plant shelves built and a temporary potting table set up, we got a big storm with winds of up to 60 mph. One gust blew the doors off the greenhouse and bent the door frame all to hell. The next gust blew a roof panel off and another blew a wall panel out. Before long, half the panels were gone and cold rain was blowing in. I know this because I was inside the whole time.
Fortunately, the trees out in the woods caught the flying panels, so we didn't have to go much over a hundred yards to retrieve them. Once the storm subsided and the sun came out, we straightened the frame and put the greenhouse back together. Kathy managed to rehang the doors, and although they didn't slide as well as before, they still opened and closed with a little effort.
I added a few extra clips and got back to planting. A few weeks later another storm came up and blew out wall and roof panels and twisted one of the roof vents. We put it all back together, added a lot more clips and straightened the vent frame. Kathy came up with the idea of wedging little fence pickets into the tracks on the edges of the uprights, thereby holding in the edges of the panels and providing ribs to reduce the amount of flex in the middle.
Saturday night we were out on the front porch when the storm blew in. I flinched at every big gust. These were heavier winds than the ones last year. I went to bed feeling sad but resolved. I got up Sunday morning and had my first cup of coffee before I faced what had become of the greenhouse.
No damage. Nothing. Everything intact. The plants looked great and relief washed over me. If the storm had been any worse, it would have broken trees and torn shingles from the roof, but the greenhouse had stood up to a hurricane.
We have a 10 foot by 12 foot, Harbor Freight greenhouse we bought last year and spent a few weeks after Christmas assembling. I say "assembling" rather than "building" because the Harbor Freight greenhouse kit uses a very precise and complicated construction process. The frame uses extruded aluminum pieces for all of the skeleton. Bolt heads slide into tracks in the aluminum uprights and rafters, panels have to slide into grooves in door parts before assembling--take my word for it, it's a complicated process and requires careful attention to the twenty-some-odd page step-by-step instructions. The clear wall and roof panels are polycarbonate held in place with little wire clips that fit into little tracks on the support pieces and have a lip that sits tightly on the edge of the panel. The sliding double doors are set into complicated tracks at the top and bottom of the doorway. Sliding doors are absolutely the worst possible opening and closing system for an owner-assembled structure. They are nearly impossible to properly align and balance so that they do, in fact, slide.
The building process requires digging a level rectangular hole four inches deep and building a frame base that is absolutely square. At every step in construction the pieces must be perfectly level and square or the next step won't fit. The inside of the base is supposed to be filled with roughly four cubic yards of gravel to form a floor and create a solid anchor for the finished structure. Without the filler the entire greenhouse could blow away like a trampoline in a tornado. The cost of a dump truck load of gravel was prohibitive, so we back filled with the native sand we dug out. I say we, but Kathy did all of the shovel work. She moved four yards of heavy dirt twice; she dug a square, level hole and she carefully leveled and releveled the base a dozen times to keep it just right.
Also, after I spent half a day trying to hang the doors and make them work, I was ready to break things. Kathy stepped in and helped me hang the doors so that they would actually slide open and closed. She's the engineer around here.
The structure of the greenhouse is not flimsy, but it isn't heavy duty either. A warning on the outside of the box it came in warns not to use it in windy areas. I live in Central Oklahoma, so wind is always a problem. There is an entire online community with multiple websites, forums and YouTube videos devoted to solving problems with Harbor Freight greenhouses.
The attraction to these greenhouses is that they cost less than a third of what a similar size greenhouse would cost from other sources and it is very close in quality.
Shortly after we got plant shelves built and a temporary potting table set up, we got a big storm with winds of up to 60 mph. One gust blew the doors off the greenhouse and bent the door frame all to hell. The next gust blew a roof panel off and another blew a wall panel out. Before long, half the panels were gone and cold rain was blowing in. I know this because I was inside the whole time.
Fortunately, the trees out in the woods caught the flying panels, so we didn't have to go much over a hundred yards to retrieve them. Once the storm subsided and the sun came out, we straightened the frame and put the greenhouse back together. Kathy managed to rehang the doors, and although they didn't slide as well as before, they still opened and closed with a little effort.
I added a few extra clips and got back to planting. A few weeks later another storm came up and blew out wall and roof panels and twisted one of the roof vents. We put it all back together, added a lot more clips and straightened the vent frame. Kathy came up with the idea of wedging little fence pickets into the tracks on the edges of the uprights, thereby holding in the edges of the panels and providing ribs to reduce the amount of flex in the middle.
Saturday night we were out on the front porch when the storm blew in. I flinched at every big gust. These were heavier winds than the ones last year. I went to bed feeling sad but resolved. I got up Sunday morning and had my first cup of coffee before I faced what had become of the greenhouse.
No damage. Nothing. Everything intact. The plants looked great and relief washed over me. If the storm had been any worse, it would have broken trees and torn shingles from the roof, but the greenhouse had stood up to a hurricane.
Here is the greenhouse the morning after the storm, looking just like it's supposed to. I consider myself blessed. Oh, and several more tomatoes were ripe.
Stephen
Comments
Post a Comment