Hoop House Build

[jwcarlson]

I always have a "big" project to work on when I'm on vacation to deer hunt. This year it's a 20x40 hoop house. The main goal here is to house the rabbits and chickens. It will have roughly five foot roll up sides for ventilation. And next spring or summer, I'll buy a shade cloth to go over the whole thing, which may be taken off seasonally. I'll have to get a feel for that.
I have the main structure "done", it's ready for plastic as of this afternoon. Tomorrow, I need to frame in the end walls a bit so that I can get a door installed. I am hoping to come up with a large enough removable panel that I could eventually drive a tractor into it. And within that panel it will have a man door to use for normal entry.

Apparently, I haven't taken a picture of it the last couple of days. So here's all I have for pics so far. You'll have to imagine the base boards, hip boards, and wiggle wire channel mounted.

It's mainly chain link fence hardware repurposed. These are four feet long pounded in two feet. The ground is a bit rocky in spots. Kind of blew out my pounder. Had to borrow my dad's which weighs 2 or 3x what this one does. It got the job done well.


First hoop up. The hoop is three 10' "top rail" sections bent on a special bender that came with the kit that I bought.

There's the rest of the hoops installed. My dad came over and helped after I got to this point, so in a few hours we made some good progress. I'm hoping to have the rest of it done except for plastic by tomorrow.

Will update when it's done. Weather is VERY warm compared to normal. It was about 75 today and will be 70 again tomorrow.

[Second Hand Pat]

Very cool Jacob and looking forward to seeing how it goes together. Guessing you are not putting in a raised floor but you mention putting in a door?
Pat

[brewmaster15]

I always have a "big" project to work on when I'm on vacation to deer hunt. This year it's a 20x40 hoop house. The main goal here is to house the rabbits and chickens. It will have roughly five foot roll up sides for ventilation. And next spring or summer, I'll buy a shade cloth to go over the whole thing, which may be taken off seasonally. I'll have to get a feel for that.
I have the main structure "done", it's ready for plastic as of this afternoon. Tomorrow, I need to frame in the end walls a bit so that I can get a door installed. I am hoping to come up with a large enough removable panel that I could eventually drive a tractor into it. And within that panel it will have a man door to use for normal entry.

Apparently, I haven't taken a picture of it the last couple of days. So here's all I have for pics so far. You'll have to imagine the base boards, hip boards, and wiggle wire channel mounted.

It's mainly chain link fence hardware repurposed. These are four feet long pounded in two feet. The ground is a bit rocky in spots. Kind of blew out my pounder. Had to borrow my dad's which weighs 2 or 3x what this one does. It got the job done well.


First hoop up. The hoop is three 10' "top rail" sections bent on a special bender that came with the kit that I bought.

There's the rest of the hoops installed. My dad came over and helped after I got to this point, so in a few hours we made some good progress. I'm hoping to have the rest of it done except for plastic by tomorrow.

Will update when it's done. Weather is VERY warm compared to normal. It was about 75 today and will be 70 again tomorrow.

Thats so weird on the weather... we have been pretty chilly here.. not terribly but normal for this time of year. Most of my garden has gone by but with nights in freezing range I have had to protect a few I want to keep longer. My parlsely, swiss chard, beets and some lettuces are still alive.. though i cover the swiss chard and parsely with a wool blanket at night. I brought in some veggies for extended season.

The hoophouse build out looks great so far Jacob. I really want to build a greenhouse here this year.Its something I have always wanted to do but have yet to. I will have to update my thread on gardening as it really was a great year here... I experimented with alot of new vegetables crops some of which did incredibly well.

Look forward to watching the build out!

Al

[jwcarlson]

Thanks, Al! Garden got away from me here. But was a great year for peppers.

Pat, no floor, just dirt. Will initially get some straw and eventually woodchips to keep the waste mixed up with carbon for compost basically.

[jwcarlson]

A couple of progress pics. Plastic goes on tomorrow, hopefully. I have a bit more work to do on the end wall and need to finish building a door.



That's a frame inside of a frame. It's about 8x8. In theory, I hope to be able to drive a tractor through that opening someday. I can remove a few screws and move the inner part of that frame. It basically tips in in one piece. Fairly heavy, but we're talking about something that I would remove 1-2 times a year if that.



Just need to buy a tractor.

[Second Hand Pat]

Nice Jacob, I had a tractor once. It was one of the old ford (red and white) tractors. Used it for bush-hogging the pasture area. I even took it out on the road and it did a whooping 25 miles per hour.
Pat

[jwcarlson]

It's not completely done, but it's in a very good state. Plastic is all on it. I need to finalize what I am going to do for the man door and get plastic on that. I also want to add a couple of vent patches higher up on the ends. Not sure what to use for that, but I will figure that out.

It turned out really well.





Yeah, Pat, those old tractors don't move terribly fast! haha

[Second Hand Pat]

Came out super nice Jacob
Pat

[danotaylor]

Very nice mate!

[jwcarlson]

Thanks, Pat and Danny!
Getting 50 MPH winds now. Hope it holds. Hope to have if finished up before the weekend. 5-8" of snow and very cold after that. Lows single digits and highs in the teens coming. Gotta get the animals sheltered a bit better than they currently are.

[jwcarlson]

Well, it didn't get destroyed last night. But it certainly needed some help this morning. The sides that I hadn't finished with blew the weights I had off of them off and flapped all night. No major damage, but the plastic looks like it got whipped around all night. The wind also broke one of the doors off of the old, unused chicken coop. Blew part of the roof off of my current chicken run. Just a real mess.

Thankfully... it stayed standing and didn't take any real damage at all. I ended up "wiggle wiring" all of the lower plastic this morning, so I was a bit later to work than I'd hoped. I think I'll probably move the rabbits over into the new place tonight and will bring the birds over tomorrow during daylight. And will work on getting the last little bit of work done on the structure (door and a bit more plastic on the bigger vehicle opening). I still need to get some hardware cloth put up around the inside to keep the birds off of the plastic, but until I can get to that (hopefully this weekend?)... the electric fence will have to serve that purpose.

Kind of a funny note, this morning when the geese did their normal early morning "zoomies" where they kind of run about and do some light flying... it was so windy that they generated unexpected lift and kind of overshot what they normally do. One of them went over the fence and the other two kept going higher in the air than they'd expected so they were a bit confused. They were like kites, going higher even without flapping.