Hi That would be a possibility .Do they come in square shapes rather than round??. Squares make it much easier to attach other materials such as lattice to the frame. I suspect they would cost more than aluminum? They also will corrode though it takes a long time.. I have used lexan in two grades in the past. The cheaper stuff will craze and the more expensive grows algae lol They do make a "super " type stuff called Carbolite which is polarized and will automaticly darken at certain levels. Don't ask about the price lol Still could not be left in place the whole year due to heat gain.I'd bet it could be left in place for at least 3 months. The frustrating part is that cold fronts are so temporary in 10. Even on the coldest days the heat gain inside is more damaging than the cold .They usually last 3 days and are dead calm so you must resort to fans or remove and replace the panels daily. Then during summer you have no covering or use other panels covered with screen whatever. This year is a great example low 30's followed by mid 80's You actually need two different coverings often in the same day.lol My best compromise is Vinyl lattice which supports vines over the top.Prune back during winter. During cold fronts I place frost cloth over the top use a small themostaticly controlled electric heater. The heat is allowed to escape this avoids overheating the next day and can be left in place for the next night. This works fair IF the front is normal ,dead calm with brilliant sunshine the next day. If windy or cloudy leaves a lot to be desired lol Of couse there are cold spots but it is frost proof. have been experimenting with using warm water. Since I'm a fish nut as well as a ponder I have 1100 gallons of water .Have found this can be easily kept warm and does effect the air temp but in the 30's 900 watts was not enough heat. I paniced and cut off the system when the water fell to the low 60's Save the fish or save the plants?? lol Moved the more delicate plants into the house,covered the pool with bubble wrap. So I didn't get to see the bottom temps of either setup. Last year the bottom was 40 and it worked beautifully . No work on my part at all. Might also add that during the summer I get a "cooling" effect from the water as well as a humidity boost ,probably too much ?? Since I'm thinking of expanding need a MUCH better way to control temps or at least take the edges off . Moving a hundred plants is tough imagine moving 2/300 ??lol Might also add that I keep tropical birds in there also. Normally I just move them into the house during fronts but this year the Honeycreepers are seriously building a nest!!. I opted for using an ifrared heater without moving. Seem to have done fine at least so far. One of the main reasons I want to expand is to give them enough space to produce some offpring. So the design and management will be more geared toward the birds rather than plants but gee !! I love my delicates also lol gary

Zack, I didn't post it because I hole heartedly agree with it. Again the "truth" might lie somewhere in the middle. I read "at" issues from many sides. The rancher manages 35,000 acres and I have found that controlling 17 acres is about making choices that have me riding a world where I do not control everything that comes my way. I can only imagine what the uncontrollable issues that he surfs. He has documented yellow star thistle patch and has found that it usually goes away after a decade if left alone. I found that surprising, even confusing. KR bluestem is a species that many people love to hate here in Texas. Yet I do see the butterflies going for their inflourescens during migration. I also see the native bluestem multiplying in the front field amongst them. It appears that on dry summers, it does not make much of an appearance or a very late one, giving the natives a chance to compete.. I know that I do not have the financial nor energy resources to dig them all out. Fire was said to control it but now they have back tracked on it. I am trying to keep it out of the valley where I have a delightful native community of Muhlenbergia s of different sorts. Nor do I want to poison everything out only to have the wind bring more to the empty soil. I was interested in the Monsanto angle of the board of directors mentioned in this Book review .It is more of the same thinking and written by David Theodoreopolis of J L Hudson Seedman fame, so he does have skin in the game and makes money selling possible invasive exotics AND natives. He is a controversial figure. I do find what he says about the fear of change valid and where do we stop the ecological clock since it is a forever changing thing. I just wish it would not change so fast. I have also and aesthetic concern about loosing some ground hugging spring ephemerals to the always land hungry bastard cabbage. Like I said, I do not agree with everything. that he says. I do find that much of the language used by some do or die native guys to be wishy washy as to what is a native and what is not. At the land conservationist meeting here in texas, there are 2 camps about the invasive grass KR Bluestem. 1 states it is a bad bad monoculture forming invasive that is good for nothing and and the other camp says it is a good land stabilizer and good at getting water to penetrate down to the water table. Another is that burr clover that was used as green manure and escaped. It grows in patches and I am tired of digging it up and it will improve my soil. My soil needs soil improvement desperately since invasively farmed cows have been overgrazing it for decades before I got here. Maybe it will disappear as it incorporates nitrogen into the soil.The soil washed away. I won't plant uncontrollable non natives because of the guilt if they escape issue. I prefer natives but I am a practical minded human when it comes to picking battles of whom I eradicate, where and how. The info keeps changing. I do not want to cause harm. But I do not know what is harm sometimes. My thinking is changeable about this subject. There is a lot on his site that is interesting. He uses Holistic land management ideas. He brings up that the removal of all herd animals off the grasslands and high deserts is harmful. .Balancing them is essential but these lands always had herd animals of sorts and many of the natural ones are gone and the niche is filled by cows. There is a connection between the desert tortoise populations and the herding of cows now. Desert tortoise populations have gone down where the removal of all cows have happened. Go figure. The politics of Rancher removal by the BLM is very troubling. Then they seem to give the rights of the land off to Uranium miners. Yes there is uranium under the Hammond's land. OOPS I didn't mean to open that can of worms.

Darn. Thought I had a solution. Ok, so the only way to improve above surface drainage is through grading. Below surface drainage cannot be helped without mass amendments. But mass amendments raise the possibility of actually harming proper drainage if the entire site isn't amended, and even then, we're messing with the subsoil, and you just don't know what that might do. The AirTech treatment has the advantage of not dramatically changing the subsoil in different sections, which I read, Brandon7, as one of your main arguments against amending. So far, so good. The person at the company said that fissuring the soil at multiple levels and multiple areas in rings around the root zones, beginning at the actual planting hole--like some kind of Jedi version of fracking--would have the effect of improving water flow AND would introduce important microbial development which would encourage root growth outward. So I though that solved some of the problems. I think you're exactly right that we'd need to repeat the process as much as twice a year, but maybe more like every year or so. So that's a problem. But, again, you don't like amending. So I'm back at the beginning. One last thing: the person with AirTech did say that in addition to the treatment, we should come in with two inches of good topsoil and another two to four inches of mulch on top. He said that this would work its way downward. He also said that mixing 5-10% organic matter into the planting hole wouldn't be a bad thing, but it's not necessarily vital.

It is unusual to use Cabot Bleaching Oil for a fence and even more unusual to use it for wood in contact with the ground. It will age to a pale silver gray that will tend to become discolored close to the ground. It also has a petroleum distillate solvent base which is why you got a headache smelling it. Since the Bleaching Oil contains a small amount of Driftwood Gray stain, a good alternative might be a Cabot acrylic water based stain in Driftwood Gray or you could use an acrylic Bleaching Stain if you wanted it to be a pale Driftwood Gray or you could mix the two together. The VOC difference between the solvent based Bleaching Oil and the acrylic stain is 150 lbs/gal vs 550 lbs/gal.