Greenhouse Build - Part 3

We began another productive weekend working on the greenhouse Friday evening.  It started with a trip to Home Depot to pick up lumber to frame in the greenhouse doors.  While there, I ran into my brother who generously offered to use his truck to move the greenhouse siding.  That saved an extra trip to Home Depot Saturday morning and meant that we had all the materials we needed to finish the greenhouse ends on site.

Scott saves the day by bringing the siding to the farm

Around 6:30, we were joined, thankfully, by Doug Dubois who was an enormous help for the whole weekend.  We would not have gotten the ends done this weekend without his help.  We managed to re-measure and mark the south wall, assemble and square up both door frames and measure and mark the North wall.  We would have gotten more done, but we discovered a few key things about electricity.  First, our small solar panel does not keep 3 batteries charged when we’re running a circular saw.  Second, you cannot run a compound miter saw on 3 partially charged batteries.  This discovery was very disheartening as it meant we could not do any of the cuts needed to finish the end walls.  Fortunately, there were enough other things to keep us busy until dusk.

So, you ask, does that mean that the end walls couldn’t get done?  Of course not!  Several years ago, we were given a generator that had never been opened.  We have stored it since then and decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to break it in.

Early Saturday morning, we made a trip to storage to pick up the generator and then we went to the farm.  When we took the generator out of the box, the instructions said it was produced in 1989.  Most things that are left to sit for 23 years show some signs of wear and don’t function terribly well, so we were pretty nervous as we went through the start up procedure outlined in the owner’s manual.  After all, our ability to continue making progress on the greenhouse depended on this piece of equipment working.  We shouldn’t have been worried – it started right up and ran like a champ all day.  Woo hoo for electricity!

Please let the generator work!!!!

With our newfound power, we managed to get all the pieces cut for both walls, get the walls assembled, erected, attached and apply sheathing to the outside over the course of Saturday.  That would never have happened without some help though.  Doug came back and helped all day on Saturday and another friend, Daniel Diliberto, contributed 4 hours to the cause.  All of that means that it took 38 labor hours to get the end walls constructed and installed on Saturday.  Did I mention that the high was 100?  Yeah, it was a long day.  We cannot say thank you enough to the folks who came to help – it wouldn’t have happened without them.

Work crew from the left: Daniel Diliberto, Jeremy, Doug Dubois

We ended Saturday needing to install the channels on the end wall that the plastic locks into before we could cover the hoop house.  Check out the next post to see how that went!