What to know before building a greenhouse!!

good morning folks I've been requested by on the comments to do a short video giving a little bit of more information on the actual greenhouses and high tunnels that I have set up some of the what - knows what - considers all those kind of things way if you're going to think about doing this there's a ton of options in in doing this and by no means you know it you know every scenario is going to be different every depending on what you're trying to do depending on what you're trying to grow depending on what time of year you're trying to do it in all kinds of factors are involved so I'm gonna give you some insights on what I did and just you know can go you know what to consider maybe in a few things and go from there also for you guys who are really interested in putting up a greenhouse or high tunnel the this fall sometime this fall if everything goes right I'm going to be adding two more houses at the end of this at the end of this line here are the four in there and I will definitely be getting some good video footage of that it takes about a two and a half day to three days to put one of these up and I'll get one of my kids on the camera watching that thing all the time getting some good footage on that as it happens might even get some Amish crew on there by chance if for you those who who are interested in them but so anyway what the difference here between some of these houses are length wise width wise arch being all of the main structure of these houses are identical there's no difference there that I had done so these are we technically 195 feet by 32 feet wide now there's all kinds of options you can go I mean you could pick your width I mean you can get these custom-made but the most common widths are you know your your smaller hoop houses might be 20 foot or 22 foot wide but this this from where I got these the most common and my growers 30 foot is sometimes with a 32 foot wide is a very common with guys would go a 34-foot wide the nice thing about having a 34-foot wide I mean I have eight rows of tomatoes in there right now my outside rows are about two feet from the wall so if I had that extra foot it would just make a little bit more of that walking on the outside handy now I'm figuring when it's time to pick my sides are going to be up and I'll probably be almost stepping in and out from the outside so I'm not too worried about that and also I can have you know picking wagon on that outside or it's not a big deal but for the cost difference of having that extra two feet I just went with a standard model on that but you can you know depending on what you're trying to do how many rows you're trying to put in you might want to consider that this is you know this is a typical shape of them you have you have all kinds of different options I don't really have much insight on own one versus the other necessarily one thing I did do though these are these hoops the hoops that are said are 5 foot apart from each other the thought behind that is for strength you want to if you want to be able to handle snow in the winter you got to be about at least 4 to 5 feet in width what I had done typically when you have a house that is not heated you're gonna be at a 7 foot 6 to 7 foot hoop length now that saves you money I mean that's ends up being I didn't do the math but six or seven less arches in a house and that saves you some money significantly probably you know a thousand fifteen hundred dollars a house cheaper to do that just for the hoops and then your den there's other factors that are cheaper but the reason I had put all of mine identically the same is because I want the ability here in three four years to turn all these houses into heated houses if in other words get heaters in them and be able to withstand snow over the winter time I wanted the ability to do that down the road knowing that's probably going to happen I just figured on it I put on that five foot so that I would not have because changing that house from a 5 foot to a 7 or a me sorry from seven and a side and later I want to make I want to turn this into a double plastic heated house I mean it's I got a major expense to that and I just figured it's gonna happen I might as well prepare for it and playing on it so that's why they went like that even though so I went overkill on the unheated houses as far as the necessity for strength and I went slightly you know they would want to go typically four foot on these guys and they were fine with going five feet so I kind of split the difference on that and these guys are built to withstand the winter the biggest issue I got to be concerned about is if it would snow a lot like say two feet and I'd have snow piling up on one side or I like falling off the roof and laying in between these houses to the point where it would actually have weight pushing sideways you could cave in on the side but that's the reason why we put these 12-foot pads in between you know a lot of guys wonder why why that space in between that's wasting ground it is it is wasting some ground but what that is for is so I can take a skid loader up through there in the winter time if I have a two-foot snow I can clear that stuff out of there so it's not going to push my house in because if if I was say they were say there was only a foot or two in between there and snow piled up on both sides that can become a tremendous weight and can actually cave my house and in some cases and cause problems so that was recommended to me by the greenhouse company there to do that to allow that option so I will be seeding some grass in between there here shortly as soon as I get chance in time so that'll look real nice here this summer but that's what I did there I think I already told you these first four hat or three houses have heat you can see the the gas vent pipes coming out there number four is set up I have the gas line run to number four but the heaters are not in yet that should happen this fall providing I have the ability and the money to do it so that's the plan what else do I want to cover here so we have a we have a vent here to come in in in the bottom and two fans at the top end sucking out soon as that temperature thermostat gets the 80 degrees those guys turn on and suck air through the house and out the other end and keep the heat stabilized if it gets too sunny out I got it crack doors if it gets the temperature outside gets up into the 70s I'm gonna have to raise the sides and you'll see this later I'll to show you briefly right here I have the ability with this crank here to crank my bottom purlins there along the whole length of that whole 95 foot long pipe there I can crank that thing up to that top of that string that's gonna wrap up there that string there is just to keep my sides from blowing out when if the wind would be blowing it keeps that sides tight that string there's got some taunting us to it actually that's not very tone at all but it's supposed to I might have to actually tighten him up some but that's that helps us keep things under wrap from getting around now I also have channel locks on the bottom so it's locked in right now but if for some reason I had this cranked up say I foot it to that string keeps if the wind blows in the middle of day keeps that thing from blowing out and getting something breaking something for me there and just keeps that side wrapped in I'll show you when I get inside here but these heated houses have double layer plastic so if I reach up here you know that's like a drum that's uh I don't know you can't hardly tell probably than any video but it's nice and smooth up there that's actually inflated that's being inflated and you can see this is the outside view that little fan it's a little it's a little one-third fan blowing in the inside I can show you that when we get inside and that inflates this entire roof it's unbelievable that it can do that but it's you know 195 foot in length and probably 45 feet you know up over top what's being inflated is basically from this they call wiggle wire wiggle wire here goes in this channel lock and that's the only thing that is keeping this tight up top that runs the whole length of the house and all around is standing on the other side and that allows me to inflate that top and that keeps helps keep my warm warm air in there in through the middle of night and if I got a twenty third degree night it really helps it also helps with that's inflated if I have a lot of storm or wind that plastic doesn't take near the abuse that it would if it was if it was not inflated so that just aircon just blows over then makes it makes it just kind of you can just kind of see a ripple a little bit but it's not flopping and if you had flopping plastic that's uh that's a recipe for having a having a hole after a while so oh let's hop inside quick I'm on to keep this video short and it's getting long on me here so I think I covered most of the main things here so I'll show you this fan from the inside here not a big guy it's just little little guy there six inch the hammer fan basically and that thing it takes a good hour to inflate that up takes a while but once it's taunt it just keeps that thing that thing goes 24/7 365 keep this thing inflated all the time unless I lose electric so so yeah the the unheated houses would only have a single layer there's no reason to have a double layer in those houses now I can add that double layer at any time if I end up putting heaters in there all I need to do because of how I have these built is literally dig my extend my gas line to the hook up to the heaters hang the heaters and put a second layer of plastic going and I got a duct and I got a ability to have to have a heated house that I could more or less grow all season if I wanted to or I can start as early in years I want I goes lady in yours I want as long as I want to spend the money on fuel on heat I think it's about mostly what I wanted to cover like I said here in the fall we're gonna be building two more and kind of give you some footage of from the ground up of how these things go up and I'll tell you what it doesn't take long to throw one up takes money but it doesn't take a lot of time so that's let me know if there's any other questions you have about these guys and we'll go from there

Channel: The Produce Farmer

Views: 64,097

Keywords: greenhouses, buildingagreenhouse, buildinghightunnels, theproducefarmer

Id: WHprXZ4-AHg

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020