Hey, Nichols! Your hoophouse looks veeeeery familiar. ;) Except mine's naked this time of year. LOL! DH, RanchHand and I built this about two years ago after seeing another forum member using cattle panels to make a more conventional (square) greenhouse. That gave me an idea and we ran with it. (Please pardon the mess in the pics ~ my horses decided to have a field day with my pots and stuff I had nicely stacked out there. :( ) I had a website up for a while showing how to build it with cost estimates ($250! Cheap, huh?! LOL!), but my server decided to delete it *Grrrrr...* and my backup files are on my crashed computer. *DOUBLEGrrrrrrr...* Anyway, I LOVE that window in yours!!! That's a really great idea! Lets lots more light in and is low enough to make a great bottom vent! I'll have to get DH to put one in the end of mine now. And you orient the door to face the south and have good luck with that? I was wondering if that'd work better for me, too, since it'd catch the breeze better. Good to know that works. We'll have to spin mine around this year before we use it again. Thanks for the ideas! :) How did you attach the plastic at the bottom sides of yours? We put the plastic on last, wrapping the whole thing like a sausage wrap, tucking the plastic in under the sides. Therefore, the plastic was on the outsides of the wooden "base box". I notice that yours isn't like that ~ how did you do it? I'd LOVE to figure out how to do rollup sides, but will need to figure out a different way of holding the plastic on for that. The only way I've been able to get it to stay is tuck it around and under the entire thing and set plants on the part on the inside to weight it down so it didn't pull out. If I can find another way, I might get my roll up sides. I've tried stapling it to a long board, but it rips. Also tried running a length of duct tape along the board, then stapling through that and it still ripped. Third try ~ stapling it to the board, then nailing another board over that so it was a sandwich ~ board-plastic-board. Still ripped out. Fourth try ~ wrapped the plastic around the board a few times and stapled ~ still ripped. Any ideas? I might have to just bite the bullet and buy real greenhouse plastic, then use their attachment methods... BTW, after using this for two or three winters, I've come up with some other ideas for this, so here's another couple hints for living with/using a hoophouse like this ~ If you attach wire across the middle of it on the ground level, from one sideboard of the box to the other, it holds it together great! We used 2x4s for the box and looped the wire around them, then "tied" it to itself and nailed for good measure. Works great! They make 20' long cattle panels now, and we've bought some to try making a wider hoophouse from this year. I'll try to remember to post pics of it with dimensions on this forum if you'd be interested in how that turns out. Something we tried last year that worked really well for a while ~ we doubled the plastic, holding the second layer off the first with lengths of more pvc pipe insulation running the length of the house and duct taped on the first layer to create an insulating dead air space. It worked great 'til the duct tape gave way in spots and even then was better than one layer ~ only had to turn the heater on half as much as the year before. Do you have any ideas on how else to attach the pvc insulation, somehow that it'd stay, without having to put holes in the first layer of plastic? We thought about using zip ties to attach the pvc insul. to the cattle panels, but that'd entail poking lots of holes in the first layer of plastic. We might still do that if we can't figure out any other way. We did the ends differently than you did, too. How are yours attached? We put the plywood on the inside of the hoophouse, then put the plastic on, running it from the top of the house, around the pvc pipe insulation (running it all the way around the insulation and back in so it ran back inside the house), then over the plywood end panels and behind them. Then we pulled it tight, pushed the plywood ends up against the pvc pipe insulation to "clamp" the plastic in place and held the plywood end panels there with pipe hanger/clamp things, like this: It's hard to see how we did it since the entire thing is loose right now (we loosened it when we pulled the plastic off it this spring). But I'd be interested to know how you held the ends on and the plastic on as well. This little hoophouse works great, but there's always room for improvement. I've got an idea in my head for a pit greenhouse to take advantage of the ground heat in my area (constant 68 degrees! Yeah!). So I'm thinking of digging a pit about 6" narrower and shorter than the hoophouse, then dragging the house over on top of it to cover. Besides the ambient heat, that should give me some more headroom for growing taller things. OR I could make the hole wider and build another hoophouse over it to fit, same as the ones we already have, but the hoophouse wouldn't have to be as tall, therefore could be wider ~ building it just like our houses, but kind of "smooshing" the cattle panels down some. There was also a man on the forum way back when (can't remember his username ~ I've been gone so long I forgot how to log in here, so just signed up again! LOL! I was plain old "Wingnut" back then). Anyway, the man lived in Alabama I think, and he used a real neat setup for heating ~ hot water pipes lining the tables and walkways to carry water pumped from a regular household water heater. It circulated around in the house and he said it kept it quite toasty in there ~ ten degree difference from outside I think and his greenhouse was MASSIVE. I LOVE that idea! And I'd bet it'd work a lot better in our smaller houses, even with the same size water heater he used (fifteen gallon I think? it may have been a regular old 40 ~ can't remember). To expound on that idea, I've been meaning to try making a seed starting table with that ~ building a low box filled with sand and with some pipes snaking through it, then set the flats of seeds right on top of the warm sand for bottom heat. I've GOT to try that this year. I'll bet one of those "beds" at each end of the greenhouse might even be enough heating for the whole house all winter in my zone ~ maybe a couple pipes extra for your zone. Thanks for posting your pics of your hoophouse! It's a nice surprise! :) Aren't those little things just awesome?! LOADS better than fighting with pvc pipe frames, huh? I was about bald after just trying to build one of those things. *sigh* But I just loooooove my hoophouse! Especially when I'm out there puttering comfortably when it's 40 outside, wind gusts to 60mph and hail!! They're sturdy, aren't they?! :)

I erect a simple hoop house in my garden for the winter. I made mine out of an old 10 by 20 foot canopy frame (metal) with extra cross pieces and braces made of pvc pipe. It is all very homemade and crude but it works like a charm. I don't go for all the fancy stuff because I am only storing large potted plants in it instead of trying to grow a crop. I don't even have doors on it, I just bundle up the extra plastic sheeting on the two ends and clamp it all shut with large plastic clamps at night and open them up during the day (unless it stays cold). I live outside Raleigh. Occassionaly I have a mild frost inside the hoophouse but most of what I am growing is dormant by late winter anyway so I have rarely lost a plant. I heat with a small electric space heater on most nights and if its going to get into the low 20's I drag in a kerosene heater and let it run all night (it usually makes it too hot!). If the temps are supposed to dip into the single digits I cover the whole thing with an extra large fabric tarp and run both heaters (I've only had to do this once in the 8 years I've lived here). Many plants are sensitive to the ethylene gas given off by the kerosene heater but I haven't had a problem - and I collect impatiens which are very sensitive to it. I imagine if you wanted to grow a food crop you would need to build it sturdier and have it heated better and probably install some lights. Most of the tomatoes or peppers I have tried didn't get growing strong enough to produce a crop in mine. I mostly store large citrus, tree ferns and other potted tropicals that can actually take a light frost. Most people that see it are impressed with the easy construction of my hoophouse - I use no power tools to set it up, everything is held together with duct tape and clamps. But my yard is sheltered from strong winds and I haven't had much snow so it hasn't gone through much winter weather. It all depends on what you want to grow.

I have been talking with Stan Abell at Farmtek about the ClearSpan Hoop Cold frame you mentioned. We also receive a fair amount of snow. I have a 14 x 18 glass aluminum frame greenhouse. The frame was severely bent following a heavy wet snow storm a few years ago (I think '99). The Clearspan frames are 4' on center. Farmtek and growers here have recommended buying one size longer than needed and setting the hoops 3' on center. I would highly recommend this, avoiding a bad snow experience will make it worth the extra investment. The large grower hoop houses that were either reinforced with additional purlins or more closely spaced hoops survived the storm I mentioned. Newer hoop houses with more widely spaced hoops were damaged. After I added up the latches for fabric attachment, base boards,plastic film, end construction, life span of the film and my time, I decided to wait a year and check out other options. Well, more than a year has passed so.... I just purchased the ProGreenhouse from FarmTek using the longer life and heavier polyethyene cover and will see how it works in our kitchen garden. I'm new to this forum. I have been "three" season gardening under coldframes for a few years. I've read Coleman's book and am ready to add another season.

Hey austin. rock on. nice job breaking it down to its simplest form. I do something very similar in my zone 6, but I use wood 2X4 framing but basically the same set up. I use decking screws so I can take it apart each spring and set it up each fall. I'm in zone 6, I need a little more protection on cold nights so I also use the floodlights and the small mini christmas light on the ground between the plants. On really cold nights (into the single digits) I throw an old wool blanket over the top for insulation. I will probably be setting up my mini greenhouse in the next 2-3 weeks. Keep up the good work.