If you’re thinking about building a greenhouse here’s an opportunity to learn from my misfortune.
This is bad.
Only 3 inches of ice and snow did this to my hoop-house.
I think I’ve discovered a design flaw in my 50 dollar greenhouse.
Fortunately After removing the snow from my collapse greenhouse it's almost as good as new. But, I think I can prevent this from happening again.
This isn’t a great thing to find on a winters morning, but on the other hand a minor fail like this is just the thing to help improve a design. Fortunately I got the snow off of it before any real damage was done – this time. If I didn’t live in the (usually) sunny south it wouldn’t have taken me over a year to discover this design flaw. So – to anyone who’s been inspired by this blog to build a greenhouse… Sorry about that.
Here’s the thing – as long as rain or snow runs off and doesn’t accumulate which it usually doesn’t – all is well. It’s even OK for a little bit of snow to accumulate on top, because it just falls right off of the steep sides, and no harm is done. But once the peak starts to sag then it doesn’t run off like it needs to, and it can build up more weight making it sag even more, which allows more to collect, more weight, more sag… Until you get an ugly surprise.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to run a 2×6 ridge pole right down the middle at the peak of the greenhouse so that the snow (or rain) should slide off before it builds up enough weight to do this again. I hope.
I will also have to beef up the end frames a little bit to accomodate the extra weight of the 2×6 and of any snow that does accumulate on top. If I were starting over I would probably either:
- Use more ribs and put them closer together
- Use larger pipe for the ribs – probably 1 1/2″ PVC conduit.
- Both.
BTW, there are many hoop houses in my area and in areas that get lots more snow that work fine and don’t collapse when it snows or when the wind blows – including a HUGE commercial operation about 10 miles away that grows hydroponic lettuce year round. My design just needs a little refinement.
For example:
Ontario Canada
If you never fail it’s probably because you never do anything.
As soon as I can I’ll post pictures of the improvements.
Ain’t gardening fun!?
“Some Mothers Do Have Them”
DUMB…
THICK
DOWN.RIGHT STUPID !!!
Tunnel Houses aren’t meant for SNOW Area’s !
How DUMB…can one get………!@$#%^&^%$#…………
That is simply not true my friend. There are many of them in use not only in my area, but in places that get lots more snow than we do. My design just isn’t quite strong enough as built.
@ Mahaki – I live in the Buffalo, NY area – and there are *tons* of hoop houses around here, so you can’t say that they aren’t meant for snow areas
@ David – Thank you so much for your site – your ideas are invaluable! I’m going to try a lot of your ideas in/for my garden this year… please don’t stop sharing!
And the commercial hoop house by you that didn’t give in to the weight of the snow? It probably cost *thousands* of dollars more than yours. I’ll take yours any day of the week
Thanks Jill.
Built the greenhouse and the same happened to me, only worse…it collapsed like a soup bowl with heavy wet snow. The only way to fix was to cut the plastic and let the snow/rain drain inside the greenhouse. I also have a top ridge now and will need some general repairs and beefing up when the -30 windchill eases. In addition I put 2×4s perpendicular under the top ridge. That has held the roof up under heavy snow. A temp fix to the plastic was a roll from local building supply big box, unrolled, stapled firring to each end, rolled up like a blind and pushed up one side and over top. Secures both side with snow. I have some lettuce and kale surviving under plastic milk jugs. Any plant not protected by a milk jug pushed into ground was eaten by “critters” – voles? I live on the “Down East” coast of Maine. Where there is a will – there is a way!
Sorry Karen. I really am.
oops – if I had noticed before I would have warned you. I live in the (usually) snow free Pacific Northwest and built my house much the same as yours but put in the ridge pole on the advice of someone who had gone before me. Still a great idea and when you add the ridge pole it will be skookum.
Cheers and thanks for the blog.
Is there any way to send you a picture? I found that one of those 2 story window squeegies works well at pulling / pushing the accumulating snow off the roof. Then the snow piles up along the sides and starts to push inward. I shovel the snow away to prevent that and to let more daylight in. Snow half way up the walls reduces the light.
I am truly sorry! What a pain, not to mention a disappointment.
BTW what is that first idiot poster’s problem? Why does he even stay on the list? Were I you, I would simply delete his/her subscription. This should be a support place, not one of blatant criticism. That was simply unwarranted.
You know, I really meant what I said – this is just an opportunity to learn as far as I’m concerned. It didn’t really even hurt the greenhouse (this time) but even if it had it’s a $50 greenhouse – I’ve more than gotten my moneys worth out of it already. I’m mostly sorry that other people who used my design as a guide have had similar problems.
As far as Mahaki up there. It’s the Internet – you’re gonna get some of that. I considered just deleting it, but he had a point (incorrect and rudely expressed) in that I didn’t take snow load sufficiently into consideration because we don’t get it very often.
David,
I’m sorry to see this happen! A ridge beam does sound like a good fix. Your first commenter is fairly ruse and doesn’t quite understand Tennessee winters. The problem probably wasn’t the snow – I bet it would have fallen off – it was the ice. Anyway what you have is a good design that needs a tweak. Only instead of a $50 greenhouse it might have to $55 – still a bargain!
Hi Dave. How’s your greenhouse coming?
My wife and I are new to this. We live in Wisconsin and are wanting to grow our own fresh veggies in the winter. Do you need any type of heat source for something like this? I have read other sites where putting a 55 gallon drum of in the house, painting it black and filling with water will essentially heat the house at night. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.
Love the site and design! Thanks for posting. I’m thinking of trying something like this or also looking at building my own out of wood and using some polycarbonate panels, but not sure yet. Those get a little pricey. Although I did find a site that sells them for a little over $100 for a 4′ x 8′ sheet.
Thanks much!
When it is really cold nothing really grows. What the greenhouse does is allows it to get much warmer on sunny days than it does outside, and prevent rapid radiant cooling when the sun goes down – so it greatly minimizes frost dammage. Heating a greenhouse like this takes a LOT of energy. What you can do is have cold frames inside of the greenhouse and use heat cable (preferably with a thermostat) in the soil in those. So for a small amount of energy you can greatly increase the growth rate – because you aren’t trying to heat the entire space inside the greenhouse.
Barrels of water are thermal mass. They absorb heat during the day – making it a little bit cooler – and release heat at night – making it a little bit warmer. They even out the highs and lows. The soil does the same thing. You probably don’t want to use barrels in a hoophouse though – they would be much more effective in a solar greenhouse that has glazing that only faces toward the sun, and has insulated walls on the other sides.
Thanks so much David. My wife and I are so excited about this for next year!
Thanks for sharing your mistakes with the hope of resolutions. I enjoy your posts.
For anyone interested in extending the growing season, and looking for good tips, and suggestions on varieties that are cold tolerant there is a book out there “Four Season Harvest” the author grows commercially year round in Maine. They do not use heat in all their greenhouses. The trick is to get the cold tolerant varieties to germinate in August so they get big enough by winter. In addition to the cold the decreased daylight from mid November to mid February shuts down plant growth. The book is on Amazon and their farm “Four Season Farm” has a web site.
I too use the tips found here and thank Dave for the web site. Gardening is an adventure and an experiment – and there is always “next year”. Thanks Dave!
Dave, sorry about the misshap, same thing happend to to me at deer camp under a tarp, i should have seen it comming, here in oklahoma i have 2″ of ice and 16″ of snow would have had the same problem had i had the time to build a hoop house this year. i know get to learn your fix first. never quit, keep up the work and be of good cheer, we all make mistakes and need to learn from them. carry on dave
Dave, sorry about the misshap, same thing happend to to me at deer camp under a tarp, i should have seen it comming, here in oklahoma i have 2″ of ice and 16″ of snow would have had the same problem had i had the time to build a hoop house this year. i now get to learn your fix first. never quit, keep up the good work and be of good cheer, we all make mistakes and get to learn from them. carry on dave.
I’m so glad you wrote about this. We just had 6 feet of snow last week and it can really devastate unprepared structures.
Thanks for sharing your design flaws and how to improve.
Everybody else, don’t get hung up on whether or not you can have a hoop house in the snow. He’s telling you that you can, if you take certain things into consideration.
Hello Dave-There are quite a few commercial hoop houses here in the Chicago area that seem to not have any problems making it through the winter. I’ve been thinking of put one up for quite some time and by coincidence Birds and Blooms magazine printed an article recently. I have a thought for adding some heat that I would like you to consider. If I took several black garbage bags and packed them with manure and placed inside, do you think it would add a enough heat to make a difference? Thanks for all the ideas they are going to be a big help.
Coincidentally the Birds and Blooms article is by me – and the B+B editor.
Manure can be used as a heat source, and it used to be a pretty common practice before heat cable. The usual practice was to dig a fairly deep hole under a cold frame and fill it with quite a lot of manure – rather fresh not “well rotted”. Replace a layer of topsoil and plant. If you do this in late winter it will produce a lot of heat within a few days and your seeds will quickly emerge, then as the manure cools the weather warms and the plants are well fertilized as they grow on. It’s called a hot bed. Marvelous green technology – ideal for starting tomatoes and sweet potatoes.
Sorry I didn’t make the connection. I’ve looked at every hoop house design I can find on the internet and have a pretty good idea of the differenet features of each that I’ll use to build it. I’m going to try the manure idea on a small scope this year and see how it works, I’ll bag some and also bury some and see what happens. Thanks again.
Been out of the loop for a while David. Good idea on the ridge pole. Might also want to get some of the U shaped conduit mounting straps, straighten the tabs so it forms a true “U” and install a straight piece on each bow using the U to loop around the bow one per side. It won’t add much cost, it will add a lot of strength. Think of it as the string on the bow. Oh, and don’t worry about some posters, they probably are just suffering from irregular bowel movements.
Keep up the great work David, you are an encouragement to us all, except those who have irregular bowel movements and make nasty posts.
I am getting ready to build this as soon as spring hits and want to build a barrel aqua phonics system inside this. I was wondering if i should build the aqua phonics system in the basement to hopefully grow veggies and raise fish year round. I want to know how warm can it possibly stay in this greenhouse? I live in Missouri so it can dip in the single digits a few nights but mostly 20 to 30s in the winter. thanks,
Jon
When the sun goes down the air temp will be almost as low as it is outside. However the ground temp stays higher than it does outside, and it gets much warmer inside when the sun shines.
Despite the cold night time temps It has to get really cold before it frosts inside the greenhouse.
I was thinking maybe if I get a water heater for the fish tank perhaps this will keep the fish safer and maybe put some moist heat in the greenhouse too but not sure my logic is correct.
What temp can the fish tolerate?
I’m not sure … Tilapia is what is recommended for hte system but Google says it recommends 80s and i’m guessing that won’t work in this greenhouse in the winter.
It might also be possible to cut the hoops in the center and insert a 45 degree elbow. This would give you a slight point and possibly prevent the build up since there will no longer be an surface that is close to flat.
I am not sure if this increases the chances of the plastic tearing if it ever got under load, tho.
That very well might work. It probably wouldn’t stress the plastic as much as having 3-400 lbs of wet snow laying on top does. I think though that just a little bit more structural strength will do wonders.
Hey Dave, I was planing to remove the plastic before the snow. We can get 15-20″ dumps of wet snow. I’m just trying to get tomatoes and the like thru the normal groing deason. We can’t plant until the second week of June above ground and August can have heavy frosts. Ridge pole sounds like a great idea, and that poster above,well, he must have a tumor.
Hi Dave — I just came across your site since we are expanding our garden this year to include a plan for 4-season gardening. I really like your hooop house design and all the additional information about improvements, things to learn from, etc. Also just bought Eliot Coleman’s “Four Season Harvest” which also has excellent guidelines. I am in Western North Carolina, so probably will have similiar conditions as yours. Thank you for providing all this excellent information.
David,
Became aware of your greenhouse & website through my subscription to Bird & Blooms. I’ve been kinda lurking in the background.
I’ve been investigating a hoop house design for a couple of years and found your design the best for a DYIer.
I intend to support my frame using the top rails (freebies) from a chain link fence as girts, but the balance of the design will be a knock-off of your design with maybe changing to heavier PVC.
Keep up the good work!!!
You know, I love this idea, I built one 16′x10′ and 7.5 high, I live in southern WV and we got tons of snow. The heater probably heats it up so I never see snow laying on the plastic. My biggest problem is keeping out the cold air around where the greenhouse sits on the ground, not sure how to fix that issue. Other than that and dripping condensation its perfect. (Well maybe not, as I stuffed it plum full and am out of room). Ok off to make another one! Thanks for the idea for the $50 greenhouse!!!!!
As for supporting the middle, I made an inner doorway out of 2×4’s, and in your greenhouse you didn’t put a strip of wood at the peak of the hoops, that would keep it from sagging.
David, can you email me, i’d like to share my greenhouse pics with you.
Zane.zirklejr@yahoo.com
David, can you email me, i’d like to share my greenhouse pics with you.
Zane.zirklejr@yahoo.com. Sorry about all of the posts but my computer will freeze when I try to edit something. I’ve had things bloom in my hoop house that have never bloomed before. I agree that the 1st poster was rude, and his comment should have been removed. I love your idea .