Gone in 60 Seconds
The Scottish weather almost caught us out for a second time. This time, rather than cold, it was the strong winds.
The new house has a big garden, so rather than buy in expensive established plants we can grow them our self. To help the seedlings and young plants along we bought a small plastic-framed greenhouse. Unfortunately the first morning after installation, we found it at the other end of the garden.
Strong winds in the night had swept it away despite large slabs of stone weighing it down. Luckily no damage was done and it didn’t get onto the road. So we packed it away into the workshop and planned an alternative.
The second greenhouse is a sturdier design. It is made from aluminium frames held together with bolts that slot into the frame and self-drilling screws. These screws are like self-tapping screws but add a small drill head to the end of the screw. They mostly worked well into the aluminium frame but some had a tendency to wobble which I suspect was a manufacturing issue with the screws.
And of course, the other key issue with self-drilling screws is they are unforgiving. If you align the parts incorrectly and put a screw in you’ve ended up with an extra hole in your frame. This happened to us a couple of times during the assembly and there was one particularly troublesome junction.
The “glazing” panels for the greenhouse were dual skinned polycarbonate panels. These are very lightweight and should provide better insulation than glass. As the weather is getting warmer we should be able to avoid heating the greenhouse. It’s going to be used in the spring to bring on new plants rather than for overwintering the less hardy plants.
The greenhouse is light enough to be lifted by one person so I concluded it was therefore also light enough to get blown away. So as well as screwing the greenhouse to the heavy steel base I also bolted that steel base down to the slabs making up the patio. I went for many small bolts rather than a few large ones.
The old greenhouse didn’t go to waste either, it was reused as shelving for the new one.
Posted in: Garden
Tags: greenhouse
Metal sculpture in brass, mounted on an 1800s French Coin
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