11 June 2011

The polytunnel... It lives!

Finally it's up and covered! Still needs some tidying and a few bits tweaking, bit it's ready for plants!

Stepping back a bit, it's been hard work and not necessarily as simple the instructions would have you believe - are things ever?! - but the next one will be much easier to put up. Not that I'm volunteering to help anyone, I'm too knackered for that!

So after Pythagoras, I managed to get the frame up on my own:


Hoops in place, located on foundation tubes, which in turn are located on anchor plates buried under the ground.



Ridge bar now in place. At this point I made my one and only 'support' call to First Tunnels to check on the fact it didn't appear to be that straight. Not a major problem apparently and should sort itself out when the cover is put on, so I ploughed on.



Corner stabilisers now in place.

At this stage I called in some help from my Dad, him being far more practically minded than me. And also retired so readily available. This enabled us to get most of the timber in place for the doors (and get the cover round the wrong way on them!) and for the base rails, and put on most of the anti hot spot tape:






After which all I needed to do was put on the battens to create the rebate for the cover and put the cover on. Yes that's all...! More reinforcements were called in and to cut a long and tiring story short, it's up:


As I said, it needs some tweaking with the cover  - I've still got to fine tune the base rails to tighten the cover further - and the remains of the cover needs tidying up, but it should be open for business very shortly.

I have plenty of tomatoes and chillies to go in there, and fortunately I acquired almost 70 large plant pots the other day courtesy of the house near the kids school which had recently been raided for growing cannabis plants! And the thing is my haul was but a fraction of what was being cleared out of that house :>o The compost was destined for other places, but mustn't grumble.

And now to bed...

7 comments:

Emma Kitteridge said...

Hi Rob -
You have been doing exactly what I have been doing - in fact our poly tunnels look like twins! - I agree they are not as easy to put up as the instructions would lead you to believe. I had to google how to measure the diagonals!

Well done
Emma

Sue Garrett said...

Don't make the mistake of thinking if someone is retired they are readily available - it's hard work being retired! I bet getting the cover on was fun!

RobD said...

You and me both Emma! Looking at yours, it looks like you did a better job with the cover though ;>) Have to compare notes on how we get on.

Sue, they were lured up here with the promise of seeing the grandchildren. Works everytime ;>)

Gordon Mason said...

That looks really good. Think (I'm sure you have been!) how much space you'll have inside there. Brill; well done.

Tim said...

Forget the pots and the compost, who got the hydroponics equipment?

Unknown said...

excellent work Mr D ... hope it has a long life. What the heck are you going to do with 70 pots !!

RobD said...

There's a lot less space in there already - I have about 40 tomato plants, a dozen chillies and half a dozen cucumbers in there now. Which after I gave some pots to one of my helpers and promised some to my Dad took up the 70 pots!

No idea about the hydroponics Tim, no sign of them - think they probably realised that would have been worth something.