I thought now was a good time to share the progress on my greenhouse. The greenhouse is a lean-to against an existing storage building at the back of our property. I've wanted a greenhouse for many years and am finally getting around to building it.

The greenhouse will be 16' long by 14' wide. I plan on using it to try my hand at aquaponics, start plants for the spring, and misc. plants. I've have underground natural gas and electricity at the building.

I plan on covering the structure with 8mm acrylic even though it's more expensive than polycarbonate. I've lived in this house in Upstate SC for almost 30 years in the same neighborhood I grew up in. We never plan to move. There is a greenhouse manufacturer just an hour from here in Western NC who has been very helpful in planning the structure. I decided to go with acrylic since I don't want to deal with yellowing and potential replacement in 15 or 20 years.

I hope to have it all finished by the first freeze date which is usually around Nov 2nd. It's been a slow process, but I've enjoyed it so far. I'm sure I'll have a million questions as I move from the structural components to the greenhouse decisions I have to make.

While it looks like the greenhouse is in the middle of the woods, it is actually pretty well situated to get the maximum amount of light from fall into spring and generally shaded for the worst of the summer afternoon sun.

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Here's a closer view of the structure. The roof is made from doubled 2x6" beams. The walls will have insulated knee walls covered with Hardiboard siding. They'll be one 36" door at the front and a 60" double door at the back. You can see the threshold of the front door in the picture. The yard slopes down to the building and in our wet climate there's a lot of water that runs down toward the building The Hardiboard will be waterproofed and drainage pipe along the front wall.

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Here's a view looking up at the roof so you can see how I had to install support for each rafter because the building rafters were cut at an angle to protect them from water runoff. The ledger board and the new rafters are all lag bolted for strength.

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I had to install a drainage ditch through the building to handle the flow of water. When I dug the holes for the wall posts, you could see the water flowing through the clay. I finished putting in the drain pipe, cloth, and gravel this evening since it's supposed to start raining again tomorrow.

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The following pictures show the front and rear elevation of the floor. The front is about 5 inches and the rear is about 9 inches. I'm planning to use a fine pea gravel topped with brick as the floor. I should be able to run conduit for electrical and plumbing through the gravel. If I need to change something, I can pull up the brick and make whatever changes I need.

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I've learned a lot looking at everyone else's greenhouse pictures. I appreciate any comments or suggestions you have. I have a lot of questions about ventilation and what's worked well for people, but I'll save that for a later post.

This post was edited by jclanton on Wed, Jun 5, 13 at 0:31