I thought I responded a couple days ago -I guess it's gone to cyber space. Hurricane CHarley knocked down 5 huge trees on my property, there was no damage to our house or the houses next door so I considered that a warning and now have no tall trees at all. We are 11 ft above sea level and a block from a tidal canal so I am somewhat concerned about flooding although we've never had any flooding the 29 years we've been in this house. If we have a hurricane warning I can drop the shade and put the orchids on the pea gravel that's there and maybe just cover them with the shade fabric. If we have flooding,I'll have bigger concerns than my orchids. I'm going to contact the sprinkler guy and find out how realistic it would be to run a pipe to the area and put in a sprinkler head. We are allowed to use sprinkler water twice a week for four hours so it would be a nice back up water plan.

Actually, I'm looking at the 40 series, however: 1. Aesthetics (I'm not going to try to kid anybody; this GH would be a sunny, peaceful retreat for me at least as much as for the plants!) 2. Door or HFGH looks too low 3. Rion 40 series has double doors 4. I prefer the swinging door(s) on Rion to the sliders on HFGH 5. HFGH just looks cramped 6. Can't find specs on pc glazing for HFGH 7. Rion looks and sounds much easier to assemble 8. Can't find specs on roof vent - is it auto or not? 9. Can't shake that old Yankee fellow in the Pepp'ridge Fa'm commercials reminding us "Ya get what ya pay fa." There's another one: "If it seems too good to be true ... it probably is". Less than $400 for a decent greenhouse just seems too good to be true. Tangential, I know, but an alternative I'm considering is converting the front half (or three-quarters) of our 10x12 barn-style storage shed into a greenhouse area ... framing, floor and walls are sound, roof needs replacing; why not just replace with pc panels. Just a thought ... for now :-) ... depends on what I can get husband and oldest son to commit to.

Well, I have the home-attached curved eave. right now I have eye bolts at the top beam of the greenhouse. I threaded the rope through the eye-holes on the shade cloth and then secure it to the top of the greenhouse by passing the rope through the eye bolts on the top beam. Then I simply secure the shade cloth bottom w/ bricks attached to the rope. So, right now the shade cloth is resting on the greenhouse. I think that next spring I will buy pvc tubing (or some long, thin wood) and will put that the entire length of the greenhouse, where the bend is, where the shade cloth seems to rub most on the poly. The metal ribs of the greenhouse will hold the pvc above the poly. and this in turn will hold the shade cloth out above the polycarbonate. I think I will hold the shade cloth on the pvc tubing by drilling a hole in the pvc and then zip-tying the cloth on the pipe through the hole. Or maybe if I find some long, thin, wood molding I will use that. I assume the pvc pipe would be better, as it is wider and would hold the shade cloth up higher. I may decide to put pvc pipes on the top, middle and end of the shade to hold it above the entire greenhouse, although the top portion of the shade, doesn't really touch the greenhouse now. I would still have rope holding the shade cloth down but it would at least be suspended above the polycarbonate and I think this would work. My shade cloth is a little thinner than my greenhouse because my greenhouse is actually 8ft6in and the finished aluminet shades only seem to come in exact feet, so my shade is only 8 feet wide.

Update on January 1 (Happy New Year folks!) in response to a question by Baileybear in another thread... I wanted to add a photo of how we added a drape of Aluminet shade cloth to the interior roof. I think the Aluminet is probably more effective on the outside of the greenhouse, but I knew the wind would be a constant battle here, so we're trying it inside first. First we attached a 10' steel tube to the inside of the roof peak. (We had a piece of stainless tubing sitting around, but EMT would work fine.) My husband formed three hook shapes by doubling a length of plumbers strap (that flat metal strapping with holes) and bending it into a hook shape. Then he removed the nut from one of the bolts at the peak, slipped the hook in place, and replaced the nut. You can see the hook in the center of this photo, holding the bare rod. I laid the Aluminet cloth out flat in the yard, then folded it in half, and slid the rod into the fold. I secured the Aluminet to the central rod with wire twisty ties about every foot. (Classy, huh.) Then we carried the whole thing into the GH and hung it on the three roof hooks. (You have to make little holes in the Aluminet to poke the hooks through.) After securing the sides, it looks like this: On each side, we wrapped the Aluminet around another 10' piece of EMT tubing. If I decide to keep this set up, I'll put a hem in the shadecloth to slip the tubes in. Since this was a "temporary" experiment, we just rolled the edge of the Aluminet around the rod until it was taut, and secured it with more twisty ties and baling wire. The rod was then anchored to the top of the greenhouse wall with baling wire, looped around the bolts on our three central EMT ceiling braces, because they were handy. (The EMT ceiling braces are the three horizontals you see in the lower part of the above photo.) I just cut a small slit in the Aluminet so I could stick my hand through to operate the roof vents. The Aluminet does not unravel when you do this (it's cool stuff.) So far I like it. If I want less shade, I can unfasten the rod on the south side and slide it all the way across the greenhouse to the north side, riding along the tops of our three central EMT braces. That way the south side of the roof is fully exposed to sun, and the north side of the roof has two thicknesses of shadecloth in place. Although, I haven't done it very often...I'm learning that sunny days even in December can heat up the GH so fast that I just leave the roof shadecloth in place...but that may be a quirk of our desert climate, and I'm still experimenting. One more update...because of the cold nights, I have all of my poly panels back in place on the south side. But, I figured out I can put the screens back in place OVER the poly panels by holding them in with clips installed backwards. Looks silly, but it provides just enough snugness to keep my screens in place. I've also made a triangular piece of Aluminet to go over the inside west gable, over my doors. I just cut it to size, hemmed it by hand, and it's attached with velcro to the aluminum frame. Our west sun is brutal even in late afternoon, especially in summer. I can take a photo if it would help anyone. If any of this is unclear, let me know. That's where I am so far in my learning curve! Sheri