Beat The Seasons Greenhouse Project

[BeatTheSeasons]

I've recently inherited my grandparents' greenhouse. It's a 12' x 8' model so is pretty big and a bit complicated.

I dismantled it a week or so ago and brought it all over to my garden. Every piece of glass is labelled up (expect the 4 panes I broke!) but the frame is not labelled at all unfortunately.

Here is a picture of what the greenhouse looked like when I started taking it apart.

Wish me luck!

[Bigmallly]

Good luck BTS, there are quite a few useful threads re greenhouse building.

[BeatTheSeasons]

Any chance somebody could point me in the direction of a useful thread or two? There are no stickies in this section and a search for 'greenhouse' throws up a lot of options without telling you which ones are useful!

[Bigmallly]

Try these. Ignore the titles in the link.

Grow Your Own - Growing, How To Grow Tomatoes Growing Fruit & Veg - Recipe Advice, Organic food Gardening, Chickens, Seeds for Sale

[BeatTheSeasons]

Thanks, but the links don't work - I just get a page saying "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms".

What are the threads called? What search term did you use to find them?

[Bigmallly]

How strange, it worked when I first posted but now it doesn't.........I went into search, selected advanced. Then in keywords typed in "Building Greenhouse" & search in titles only. It came up with about 5 threads. Hope it works for you.

[BeatTheSeasons]

OK, here is the spot where my greenhouse is going to go. Yes I will cut the apple tree back as I don't want fruit falling down and breaking the panes in the roof!

At the back of the picture you can probably see that the ground goes up into a long mound across the bottom of my garden. I don't really want to lose the bottom 1.5m of my plot so I am trying to decide what to do with all that earth.

The trouble is I don't know if it is 50 years of rubbish (I am always finding old bits of metal and plastic in the ground everywhere) or just grass cuttings piled up that have turned into compost.

If I spread it over the whole area then I might be covering the garden with something unhelpful for growing or maybe even toxic.

Or I could take the whole lot to the dump, which will be a lot of hard work, will take ages and seems a waste.

What would other people suggest? Is there a way I can test the mound of soil reliably?

[skegblade]

Are the two ends and sides still made up?

If they are you could try doing what I did when faced with rebuilding a collapsed g/house. I laid each side piece on the ground, gutter side down and then the two ends where they would be in relation to sides, outside part face down. With help I joined the two ends to one side piece and then added the other one, followed by the roof bar, (all a two person job). Then I fitted the roof's glazing bars. Whatever you do, make sure it's square before glazing it by measuring diagonally corner to corner. I hope this helps.

As for the grass covered pile, I reckon the easiest way is to dig a piece out of it, say a couple of spades wide and say three or four feet in. You'll soon find out whether it's workable soil or just a pile of rubbish.

Phil

[BeatTheSeasons]

As for the grass covered pile, I reckon the easiest way is to dig a piece out of it, say a couple of spades wide and say three or four feet in. You'll soon find out whether it's workable soil or just a pile of rubbish.

I remembered that one year I tried to grow some peas down near there. When they grew all the leaves turned red and then the plants died. I don't know if that's a deficiency of something in the soil or some kind of dodgy chemical..... which could be present even if there's no actual pieces of rubbish.

[BeatTheSeasons]

Rubber seals

Soooooooooooooooo............ not much progress yet. Except starting to clear the weeds out of the area.

Some of the pieces of the greenhouse have got rubber seals, but a few are coming out, damaged, or missing entirely - see picture below.

How important are these seals? Are they to stop the drafts and keep everything warm inside?

Does anyone know where you can buy replacements? I googled it but didn't find the right thing.

[Cobalt]

Most of the seals went on the greenhouse we dismantled as well - plan to fill in the gaps with some silicon sealant to keep it as weather proof as possible. I'd imagine they are there to keep the water out and will probably stop the frame from creaking so much should it get a bit breeze - nothing like the sound of metal scraping metal

[Sanjo]

Try Halls Greenhouses. They sell universal greenhouse rubber glazing gasket which might be what you are after.