The Walipini Project (aka greenhouse shenanigans)

That's what they traditionally used for greenhouses.

 

Actual work plan is yet to be worked out but the construction could indeed have been cedar. It's definitely end of life for it though!

 

My cedar greenhouse is trying to come out in sympathy

 

What will you replace it with @shiney ?

 

A lot of the lower sections have rotted. They are the bottom cross pieces at the bottom of the roof (holding the glass in) and those have been repaired with whatever hardwood timber my chippy friend had in his workshop.

A lot of the wood along the bottom of the sides is rotten and can't be replaced without disturbing the uprights and the roof caving in . The uprights are still surviving so when the bottom struts rot I prop the glass up in the vertical slots in the uprights with cedar off cuts that came from some furniture. sounds very professional

I'll try to remember to take photos. I put the greenhouse in about 47 years ago. About five years ago the manufacturer sent their local engineer in to assess the thing and said that they don't do repairs but just replace with complete glazed section units. Those are all 5ft x 2.5 ft - but they now only make them in metric so can't replace them!

His parting comment was:- "to replace the whole greenhouse with the same spec would cost £9,000 to include fitting. If we don't do that then it could last anything from three years to thirty years with the occasional patching. If I were you I would wait until it falls down!" It's now a matter of whether the greenhouse or myself falls down first.

 

Haha! Well there's the trick isn't it! Mine was simply too far gone and I'd hate to be picking timber and glass out of my head so I headed it off. Not sure on pressure treated timber or something like cedar yet

 

Patch up job (@pete keep your eyes closed ).

The roof was the first important thing to get done as the glass was sliding out. The glass is in rebated timber (as pete said) but the timber below it was a single piece that had small plastic clips screwed into it to hold the glass. As those timber strips rotted the plastic clips couldn't hold the weight of the glass. So we ran one piece of timber along where the rotted ones were and instead of putting plastic clips back in we then ran a second piece of timber to hold the glass. The cedar uprights are still solid.





Along the bottom of the side walls the wood has now rotted.


So we shall be working on putting supports in but, in the meantime, where it is bad we have just got blocks of wood holding the glass in place


As the greenhouse stands on a set of concrete plinths, with support channels in them, I put a wooden strip on the plinth and used glass support brackets to hold the pane of glass. This may be a better solution but as we have a few thousand plants in the greenhouse it may be difficult. I'd need to get someone in to do the job as bending is difficult for me.

 

Thanks @Kristen but I don't think we could cope with the project. It certainly couldn't replace our existing one as it couldn't house everything in it and I don't think Mrs Shiney would be able to choose where it should be sited (I don't make those sort of decisions as they are the domain of her Ladyship ). We don't have much spare space away from tall trees that isn't endangered by flying branches. The only place would be the centre of our veg area (haven't used it for veg growing for some years) but dismantling it and erecting it is beyond me nowadays.

 

Wow! you can see through the glass! Ours is dirty enough to not need summer shading.