We finally did it, we got started on building the greenhouse. For those of you that can’t remember exactly what we have in mind, since we have been talking about it a lot but have had a week in delay in getting started here is a refresher. While the greenhouse is technically designed for setup on dirt and hence has a foundation made up of 10x10cm beams we don’t really need that since we poured a concrete foundation. We still decided to go with the beams though to give us that extra 10cm headroom. Yes we could have just made the beams in the side walls longer, but we like the sturdiness of the extra foundation.
The original plans called for staking the beams in place, but this was not an option here. We used 14 cm bolts and used a special attachment for our drill to make the heads sunk in as not to interfere with the side walls attached to them. For the screw to hold in the foundation we used “spray anchor” it is essentially a mortar which you squeeze into the hole. It hardens around the screw, bonding it to the foundation.
To connect the beams together we used one 10cm screw (our beams are actually 8x10cm) long screw for each of the corners to give it a preliminary bond. After making sure the beams where in the right position to form a perfect rectangle we used steel brackets to reinforce the bond.
We followed the instructions for building the walls exactly and found the process quite simple. Our beams are already 3m long, so there was a minimum of cutting involved. The process of building both walls took us roughly 1.5 hours.
We ran into problems while starting to build the rafters. Our miter saw doesn’t cut angles this steep and we realized we didn’t have a protractor. Unfortunately we also spaced a bit on the degree scale on the saw. The middle is marked 0% – sure, it’s in the middle – but actually it’s a 90% angle, so the required 30% cut when set on the miter saw is actually a 60% cut. Well, let’s just say we are glad we bought a few more beams than necessary as one of them has become scrap wood. We are officially grounded until we get our hands on a protractor, as today will not become another “3 trips to the home improvement store” day.
