A recent update from the person who received the yucca is that it is green and doing well. The transplanted cholla are doing well, of course, but it will be a while before I know if any sacaton survived. We have been making progress but not as quickly as we hoped. (No surprise there! ;-) ) We have the foundation blocks for the outside beds in place up to ground level and filled with dirt. Pavers have been placed, but not yet leveled, between the existing shed and the north edge of the foundation. We have the water and electrical stubbed in. We have the SHCS tubes in place for the outside beds of the east greenhouse and hope to start filling that section soon with the removed dirt. We have removed all planned use of poured concrete from our plans and have made this planned structure possible to remove easily while still unlikely to be blown away. (Mostly due to bolting the foundation via J-bolts to rebar under bond beam cement blocks.) DH will be checking to see what type of permits/inspections we will need for electrical, water, and structures. I suspect that it will be just water and electric. We won't fill in any more until we find out. It is getting hot already so we will be putting in the outside structure and shade cloth before the central shed and greenhouses. That way we can work in the shade. :-)

Heat is a major concern with the Rion kits. Their warranty certificate actually indicates in writing that Rion's warrantly does not cover damage due to excess heat. So if you go with a Rion, you will need to pay extra attention to temperature management. The Rion 8x16 I recently built, straight out of the box is a sauna. At noontime with no clouds, it was in the 70s F outside and it was breaking 120 degrees F inside. Shade cloth, fans and other supplemental cooling is a must. The HFGH has some drawbacks straight out of the box too, but there is a wealth of information on these forums on how to reinforce them to make them sturdier and more efficient. The price is also nice. For the price of one Rion, you can probably build 2 or 3 fully outfitted HFGH of similar size. You could set them up on brick or concrete knee-walls. But bear in mind that these are already tall units to begin with. The Rion stands over 8 feet at the peak, the HFGH is pretty close to that too I think. It is something to think about if you are in an area with high winds. I like my 8x16 Rion kit, but it is still too early to tell if it will age gracefully or crash & burn (or melt). I am willing to be the expensive guinea pig for everyone's sake :) Some metrics: (**Disclaimer this is NOT an expert opinion**) *Price: HFGH Wins - price difference is very significant. *History/Shared knowlege: HFGH Wins - I have seen a lot more informative posts about the HFGH than Rion. Come on Rion owners, you gotta share the knowledge :) *Sturdiness (Stock): Rion Wins - Straight out of the box, the HFGH needs some significant shoring up. The Rion has very substancial structure. This is assuming that both kits are properly anchored to the ground. *Structural Integrity (Heat): HFGH? This is just based on the assumption that aluminum will be better able to withstand high temperatures compared to plastic/resin combos. * Dead/Live Load: ????? - Rion claims that their GH can support a snow load of up to 1100lbs. I do not have data on the HFGH - can someone please fill us in? * Aesthetics: Rion Wins - It sure is purrty! :) * Expandability: ????? This is an iffy subject. You can purchase additional Rion "middle modules" to expand the length of the GH in 4 foot increments. But the price of the expansion kits will probably match that of a whole HFGH kit. So the decision becomes "Expand the Rion? or Build another HFGH?"

johnnyq, I'm not much help, since I've been shamelessly kicking the can down the road for years now. Made it through the last two winters with a layer of 6 mil greenhouse plastic sheeting over my own badly damaged polycarbonate roof. We've replaced the roof panels once already, and I only get about three years in the HFGH panels before small holes start showing up in the outside layer of the roof poly panels (even with shadecloth in place all year.) I'm lucky we didn't have a wet heavy snow this winter, or we would have been out there rigging up emergency interior bracing! All of my wall panels are still original, and are now about ten years old. They've finally yellowed and developed small holes too, so I'm looking at a sizeable investment to replace all the roof and wall panels. To be honest I'm doing some soul searching about keeping the greenhouse, but I probably will go ahead with the replacement, since all is fine except for the panels. And I'm not sure I want to give up the hobby quite yet. My plan is to buy 4mm twinwall poly elsewhere (not Harbor Freight, as I'm just getting too old to deal with the work of replacing the roof so often.) Last time I checked, FarmTek seemed to be my best source price wise. Did you mean that HF is offering 6mm panels with a warranty now? One (potential?) heads up is there might be a slight glitch with getting 6mm thick panels to slip into the aluminum framing at the roof peak - as you know the panels slide into a channel up there - and there has been past discussion that anything thicker than 4mm might not slide into the channel easily. I don't know if this is a problem with the kits that are newer than mine, though, and it might not be an insurmountable problem. Maybe others will chime in with panel replacement updates.

Try typing: " " without the outer quotes and with the full address of the location of your photo (hosted on a web server or a photo hosting service, i.e. "http://www.myphotohost.com/myfolder/thenameofmypicture.jpg") substituted for the contents of the square brackets and the brackets, themselves. Include the set of inner double quotes around the address. Also, take pitty on the owner of this site and the people who are going to download your pictures and keep them smaller than 800 x 600 pixels. Don't post your 5 Megabyte 2000 x 4000 pixel images. We can't see them anyway with our limited browsers and we don't have time to wait for them to download. Simple resizing programs are available for free on the net if you didn't get one with your digital camera.