Polytunnel cleaning

Hi, I'm a student who's starting a design/engineering project relating to polytunnels and I was hoping to get some background information from people such as yourselves who are involved with them on a daily basis.

The main questions are how dirty do they get and how regularly do they get to a point where you need to clean them. Do you clean them at all? If you do, how do you go about it and what are the advantages and disadvantages of these methods?

Also, if you find that they do get dirty, what kind of grime is present (e.g algae, mud etc), and do you think your local weather worsens or betters the condition of your tunnels?

Thanks for any replies...

Stephen

 

Hi Stephen, and Welcome to Gardeners Corner.

I've moved your enquiry into the polytunnel forum, you should get a better response here.

 

maybe this will help ....

I recently helped a client clean his greenhouse .... He used jeyes fluid mixed with water and sprayed with a karcher pressure washer with the nozzle that spirals

came out sparkling clean and fresh .... the windows had brown stains etc before we started

not sure if it can be used on polytunnels?

 

Ziggy, will i still get responses in this thread even though you've moved it to another forum? I'm new to this whole forum thing!

 

The inside gets dirtier than outside as it doesn't get washed by rain. Over the growing season dust and algae can build up so ours gets a wash down in very early Spring. I just use warm water and washing up liquid and a sponge and then hose it. Outside it isn't so dirty but I still give it a wash down.
I don't use chemicals as there's a chance they could degrade the polythene.

 

Don't do as I did!

I used a bleach solution on a sponge mop to clean both the interior and exterior of my Poly tunnel It looked good, however, the bleach had contamiated the soil, no doubt breaking down to common salt. All the plants grew, but showed a lot of yellowing and were sub standard. They sort of recovered during the season, but then ther tomatoes developed blight so with only half the crop usable, I ditched the lot.

There is always next year to do better!