Saturday was another miserable day with rain on and off all day and it was still quite breezy.
During a little break in the weather I headed up to our home greenhouse to measure up for some new polycarbonate sheeting to replaced that damaged in this weeks storm.
This is where one of the sheets had blown out. It measures 1.660m x 0.730m which would be an enormous pane of glass and not easy to deal with. The only sensible replacement is to use another sheet of polycarbonate which is much lighter and safer than glass. I noticed when I first inspected the damage that all the sheeting had blown outwards from the greenhouse and that the wind had lifted it upwards. The problem with the sheeting is that it is very flexible. I have added the two wooden laths across the window opening to support the polycarbonate and stop it flexing downwards and falling into the greenhouse when we have any snowfalls. I obviously need to add some additional strengthening material to stop any upward flexing taking place.
On first inspection, I hadn't noticed that this large sheet of polycarbonate remained in one piece down the side of the greenhouse. The smaller piece at the far end of the path is broken and will need replacing. By this time it was raining again but I thought it worthwhile to try to replace this undamaged sheet to keep some of the rainfall out of the greenhouse. I could only make a temporary repair as I still need to think up a way of stopping any upward flexing.
It didn't take too long before the panel was slid back inside its grooves in the old greenhouse timbers and the end batten refixed to stop it sliding back down. The problem is how to fix a new timber batten to the old greenhouse timbers as it’s a long reach. Perhaps an alternative is to actually glue a timber batten to the polycarbonate to stiffen it and to stop it flexing completely. A similar technique seems to have worked on a much smaller pane in our plot greenhouse so this could be a way forward. Whilst I'm refurbishing the polycarbonate sheeting it’s probably a good time to give the remaining glass panels a good clean too.
You may have noticed that the greenhouse guttering is in need of some attention too and that the path at the back of the path leads to what is now “The Coldframe Courtyard ”. Some decent weather is needed before a serious start can be made on either the greenhouse refurbishment or our new “Coldframe Courtyard”.
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Glad the damage wasn't too bad. I think we're all waiting for that spell of decent weather...
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