Under Way

Chinese flu notwithstanding, it has been difficult finding time to work on the hoop house project. Between semi-retirement not being so semi-, and meetings right and left, it has been slow going. Now that nobody is supposed to gather in groups — social distancing is the buzzword — maybe I can do a bit more, if the weather co-operates, and if the Gummint doesn’t close the building supply stores.

I mentioned my boxes for starting cuttings in a previous post. Here is my smaller box; the blueberry cuttings are budding out.

Having made the tubing bender, and buying 2 contractor packs of 3/4” EMT, I set to work. If you are a perfectionist, you might not like my results. The bends did not turn out as smooth as I had hoped, but they should be close enough. It didn’t really take too long to bend 18 tubes. 4 of them were marked at the middle so they could be cut in two to make the 5’ sections.

Brent, the fellow with the You Tube channel “Hydroponic Gardening & More with Brent” used 6” lengths of 1” EMT as sleeves to join his 3/4” EMT hoops. One of the items to be concerned about with plastic film is making sure that there aren’t rough edges to cause it to wear and tear. He taped his joints with duct tape to make them smooth. I figured that if my connectors were on the inside, my joint would be even smoother. So, I used 6” lengths of 1/2” EMT as connectors fastened with 3/4” self-tapping Teks screws.

You can see how the two sections but up to each other smoothly. The screws are on the sides of the hoop, not the top or bottom surface.

Once one side of the hoop was fastened, the hoop was flipped over and 4 screws were added to the other side of each joint. Assembling them on the deck kept the sections in the same plane. Duct tape will be used then over the joints as well, but the joints are starting out much smoother to begin with.

Back in the garage, using a reciprocating saw, I cut my 1” EMT into 30” lengths for the sleeves that will be driven into the ground.

The assembled hoops are waiting to be installed.

Last Wednesday I began the layout. The starting point is 40’ from the lot line, and will end 8’ from the row of upright yews. Those will have to be replanted; the deer destroyed them cleaning the velvet from their antlers. I tore out the boxes that held the strawberry plants and some of the tomatoes last year. The box with the garlic will stay for this season. One of the reasons why I am placing the hoop house here is that this area of the garden never did well. Things just seemed to refuse to grow. Notice the raspberry plants - very poor. The garlic bed was filled with a peat moss mix; that is the only way I was able to grow anything in it successfully. If I use hydroponics inside the hoop house, I don’t need to worry about the soil. The other reason is that this area is the most level spot I have left to work with.

Did I say most level? The slope here is just a bit over an inch per foot. That is a lot of digging. The 1” EMT was driven into the ground until about 18” was left.

Do you see the spindly hemlock tree in the center of the picture between the yews? Barely 8’ tall. The one on the other side of the garden, planted at the same time, is almost 40’ high. Poor soil.

It rained overnight, making things a bit mucky. This has gotten me thinking that I might be wise to install some 4” perf pipe outside the wall.

The project is getting a bit more complex. I originally planned to use 2x6 boards for my base, which was why I left 18” of EMT above grade. However, Lowe’s did not have any in-ground grade 2x6s, so I figured that my bottom course could be 2x8s, which they did have for in-ground applications. I did not realize the extent of the slope until I actually got to digging, and now it looks like I will need 3 courses of 2x8s instead of 3 courses of 2x6s. That will bring the top of the rim a few inches out of the ground on the upper side.

Here is how the boards are fastened to the 1” EMT using 2-hole EMT straps. I started out using the 1” Teks screws, but I have since replaced them with 1/4x2 galvanized carriage bolts through the planks. It turns out that neither the 2-hole EMT or Rigid tubing straps have 1/4” holes; I have had to drill them out using a step bit. A little extra work, but the connection is solid when it is done.

Rigid tubing has an OD of 1.315” as opposed to EMT’s OD of 1.163”. I bought one pack of 4 rigid straps to see how it would work; it’s OK, but the EMT straps make it just a bit tighter. Hardware is a bear; at this point I have spent about $375 on materials and roughly $83 of that was screws and bolts and I will probably need close to $60 more in just hardware.

This evening it rained. Will I need drain tile? Looks like. At least I know that my bottom course is level. But — what is this?

There is a reason why the street to the east is called Silver Springs. Every year in the springtime the center of my hillside has seepage that makes it difficult to mow until things dry out. But this? Do I have an intermittent spring here? When Grandpa Jim starts a project, you never know what will happen. See you next time.