Sunday, July 12, 2020

Greenhouse Stub Fence

I've been working on a way to seal the south end of the garden from my little garden glutton.  Given the opportunity Harley will eat everything in the garden.  Yes he is just a walking stomach.  Previously I had an impromptu piece of wood blocking the north side of the greenhouse to the garden.  Well, that wasn't really a good solution, and it was deteriorating.  So, I had a need to replace it, and also one of the fence posts broke adjacent to the spot I wanted to add this stub fence.
Above is the finished stub fence.  Below is where I started.  On the right there is a broken post on the outer fence.  Need to fix that, but also wanted to tie the outer fence into the greenhouse frame to make this stub fence.  The greenhouse has been in this state for about seven years.  It is time to do some renovation.
I cleaned out the greenhouse several weeks ago, and that gave me some ideas about where I wanted to go with it.  At first this was a legitimate greenhouse that I used to start plants.  Then I kept building on it, and the Trumpet Vine grew over it, so it wasn't as useful as a greenhouse.  Then it was repurposed to overwinter plants.  Well, it wasn't sealed very well, and the heater broke, so it failed that mission.  After that it became sort of a garden shed for the power equipment, and garden tools.
So, first I need a new post for the outer fence.  This is a regular thing for me.  The outer fence was built with Cedar posts, and they just don't last very long.  So, when they break I replace them with Pressure Treated Pine Posts.  Also, I use two posts per panel in the middle of the runners instead of at the ends.  This doubles the strength of the fence.
Post holes are tough to dig in this Texas Clay Soil, and it is oppressively hot during the day, so I've been digging my post holes at night.  I did this one at about 10 PM.  It's still hot, but not beat you down, and burn you to a cinder hot.  Also I have added a 2x4 support beam on the greenhouse to support the runners that hold the slats.
Previously I had tried to seal the greenhouse for overwintering plants.  Well, that didn't work too well.  So, now I am going for a flow through design to let the air freely circulate through the greenhouse.  This involves removing that materials that I had previously used to seal the greenhouse.  I've pulled the slats off the sides of the greenhouse to remove the plastic sheeting, and I'll replace the slats with an air gap between them.
Then, finally, the white door has to go.  It was another attempt to seal the greenhouse.  Again, didn't work very well.  I am going to replace it with a gate type half door that can be folded back against the greenhouse on the right.  After cleaning all of this up the last thing to do is to put the slats back on.  This has been a neat project over the last week.  Now I got to hit that Trumpet Vine again...

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