Now we're talking....

Saturday. Four and a half hours. Half done, the rest of the roof will be finished tomorrow.

Bays F1 thru F6 completed today. 

It is an exciting time, for the partial bays to be completed, there is a definite production line required for each twenty-five inches of the side to be completed, and a very odd process, because for each bay that was completed, one sixth of our energy was depleted, after all we all have a resevoir, and that is divided into six pieces for some reason, and today, six bits were definitely used up. 

We are done for today, but we will regroup for Sunday and start afresh.

Rain stopped play.

The first front hole, designated F1 has now been filled. 

The upper panel is 24" wide and 48" long, lower panel is 24" wide and 12" long. Splicing those two together are two 22" long pieces of matched H-channel, an upper and lower piece that clip into each other, the lower piece is attached to a 23.5" cross beam that connects between two joists.

On the upper surface of the fascia beam, there are two lengths of lower H-channel that run the length of the greenhouse, on a temporary basis, the two long upper pieces will not be clipped into it yet, so each bay will have a short piece just to hold it against any gusts of wind.

Two screws with washers were added to reinforce the connection, we will add them each time a major joint is completed, it should also be noted that the upper edge of the lower 24" x 12" polycarbonate panel was sealed with aluminum HVAC tape and on the upper side of the cross beam H-channel, neutral cure silicon caulk was added to reduce leaks.

This process will now be completed five more times on the front side, bays F2 thru F6 and when they are all completed as above, the two long pieces of H-channel will be clipped into place along the fascia, after that, a few retention screws and washers will be added and then we will move onto the back side.

The blog, and our brains, feel a little overloaded and tired at the moment, happily it is an anti-social Thursday and we will attempt to correct everything by applying appropriate amounts of imported Czech Lager this afternoon while it is supposed to be raining.

Preparing to fill in the holes

The fascia boards have been installed and we are left with the 12 holes on the roof to fill in.

At the top right of the picture you can see the first "test" cross beam with "bottom" H-channel attached that has been fitted to retain the upper piece of polycarbonate and also to work out the smaller piece dimensions. If you can visulaize the area, the required piece should be 24" wide and about 11" long which, due to all our tolerances and lack of straightness, will vary for each bay.

Once the two fascia boards were fitted (which also have bottom H-channel attached to the top surface) the dimensions of each piece front F1-F6 and back B1-B6 will be worked out one by one, when all twelve pieces are cut and in place, two long pieces of "top" H-channel will be clipped in down the sides and all will be retained. It should be noted that also every bay, F1-F6 and B1-B6 will have a short 22" piece of top H-channel to clip on which splices the two pieces of polycarbonate sheet.

Up to speed?

All pieces of top and bottom H-channel will be clipped into place and the roof should be complete and we know what will be next after that :

Considering that all the other holes need to be filled and painted, the front side windows are being prepainted before being installed. They are being painted grey and the retaining surrounds will be brown, as someone pointed out, we are not painting the windows as that would be silly.

The daily quota for painting is definitely around the three mark. Any more than that is just out of the question.

Major Milestone Days

Yesterday and today we danced with the big ladder and installed the majority of the twin walled polycarbonate sheets, each measuring 24" x 48" and approximately 0.25" thick. The sheets had been taped at the top and after a learning curve day on Sunday, today we completed the optimized "production line" of positioning each sheet, placing the upper H-channel in position, applying the correct caulk and adhesive at the top, installing a shingle on top of that then installing the EZ-Ridge XT on top, all while dancing with that ladder, making sure we were safe, dropping things, losing things, forgetting things...

The majority of the polycarbonate is installed and the big ladder has gone back in the garage.

This is what the EZ-Ridge product looks like when installed almost correctly.

You can see that the H-channel pieces are not closed off at the lower ends yet, this is because our next steps are to install 23.5" long 2x4 cross beams between each rafter at the lower end of each polycarbonate sheet, each beam will have a piece of H-channel attached to trap the large upper panel, in addition to that 48" long piece, we will be adding a short length at the bottom to extend the polycarbonate to the end of the rafter H-channels, the ends of the rafters will then be capped in some way, we have not worked that detail out yet. 

That starts in the morning, for now we are both tired, but happy to have this milestone behind us.

Temporary Column number One.

There is a sort of excitement building, this morning we taped twelve of the twin wall 24" x 48" polycarbonate panels upper (open) edge with aluminum tape, basically HVAC duct tape, to keep moisture out, the asphalt shingles are folded, but need to be cut into 29" lengths for approximately a 4" overlap with the 25" pitch of the rafters.

A temporary column has been installed on the "front" side and in the morning we will do the same with the "back" side - this is to sort of square out the entire roof structure for the installation of the polycarbonate, as we have said from the start "there can be no windows installed until the roof is done" because waving big ladders about in a confined space will always result in tears.

The slight curvature of the front side beam has been mostly corrected, the second column will be installed on the back side as logically, even though it is not too noticeable, there will be a curvature, every time we add structure, it makes moving the ladder around more difficult, and it would be impossible if we had installed any of the windows.

I was explaining the curvature to Karen, being all engineering and all that, and I was reminded of a really funny line (well, funny to a couple of geeky engineers) that a great friend of mine, Alan Marsden, said and it goes something like this : "no matter what you do in life, you should always consider Young's Modulus!" and this is a perfect example.

Windows, back side.

I think we were both surprised this morning when we went to pick up the additional free windows from a local address, the photo on the listing showed perhaps five or six windows but when they were all loaded into the little car, there were eleven.

That is eleven approximately 28" x 33" single pane windows, with three double frames, which means that perhaps we can have a couple of sliding windows on the back side of the greenhouse for ventilation.

We believe now we have too many windows, however we are not complaining as the price was right!

No big progress today besides a few extra boards attached to the apex, which still took over an hour, once they are sorted out we will be affixing shingles, which signals that the roof is about to start, and once we are finished with the ladder work, all the windows, and the door, will be painted and start to go in.

Windows. Front side.

It is true at some point, that symmetry is discarded on what we build, and this is no exception, there is also that moment when we realise that we do not have enough windows, even though days ago, we were convinced that we had enough. I had a long, basically silly, conversation with AI today, and it is concluded that "garbage in and garbage out" is what you get with most of the so called artificial intelligence services nowadays, I could say they are quite mad, but the "services" are only as mad as their programmers.

Therefore, we went old school with our layout for the "front side" of the greenhouse.

In the middle there, at the top, we will place a vent.

When laying them all out, for this side of the structure, we realised how very big the thing is, and that more windows will be required for the "shed side" and so this afternoon, through marketplace and a seller in Sooke, we have found more free single pane windows for that side. We will pick them up in the morning, mainly as we have already had a few beers on our lovely Thursday afternoon "far from the madding crowds"

Big Progress

We class yesterday as one of the milestones of the greenhouse build, in the last week, everything has been tiny details, assembly of things, staining little blocks, staining big blocks...

Yesterday and this morning, all of that came together as the roof structure was added, of course it is "just" the rafters, but so much work went into the planning and construction of what you will see in the next photo, in addition, this was an awful lot of ladder work and it literally sucked the energy out of both of us to finish this barebones joist/rafter situation, we will leave placing temporary columns in the middles of the sides until another day.

What you cannot see from this photo (because they were not installed at that point) are the multitude of four hole 2-7/8" custom blocks that we created, sanded, stained and installed, to ensure that the roof is not just attached with brackets, believe me when I tell you, the roof is so attached now you could pick up the entire structure.

We considered what we should do next and the usual 'trip to the legion for a couple of beers" seemed to be perfectly adequate.

We slept like logs last night.

Lots of progress, but mostly little details continued...

An update, as the title says, lots of progress on little things, but it feels at times like the project has stalled and as you can see from the latest photo, it does not look that different, so I will highlight the changes.

Each one of the gaps in the corners, that will hold the patio door glass pieces (34" x 76") have been updated with strips of pressure treated 2x1 all cut and attached with nails or screws and then stained. In addition, four 65" long 4x4 have been stained and added to the base sides, smaller pieces will be cut to fill the gaps, and then another layer added to build up the side walls, we intend to use up all our materials if possible.

Today, on the side rails, the brackets have been added to locate the rafters, or joists, whatever you want to call them, the rafters will also be pre-drilled and "toenailed" into the upper side beams and apex, before we do that we will add a temporary middle support on each side to prevent those beams from sagging with the added weight.

The rafters have been updated as an assembly with the polycarbonate H-Channel bottom pieces, each held in place with five special screws to allow for flex and expansion, there are 14 rafters in all, 10 of them for the middle of the greenhouse and 4 have been modified to be end pieces.

The plan is to install the middle columns at the sides and all the brackets along the ridge beam tomorrow, which may be the day that all the rafters are installed.

We will see how much enthusiasm we have then...

Little Details

The creation of the rafters meant that we had a lot of small pieces of 2x4 sitting around in a scrap heap, so yesterday we decided to start filling in the middle space at the end of the greenhouse which will be below a specific window we purchased, we did a lot of cutting, and as we progressed we did cut some the wrong size, but we managed in the end without strangling each other. Today it was a far more relaxing day as staining was involved and at each corner of the upper structure, little details added.

Recycling end cuts of recycled wood.

Those top corners needed a "feature" to allow for the end rafters and angle brackets to extend past the outer frame of the greenhouse, along with four filler pieces to make the upper edge of the frame continuous. This involved much cutting, clamping, attaching and staining and even though it was all very relaxing, the workers have voted and we have decided that we deserve a pint.

 

Fit

The rafters are all stained and available, special roofing screws with neoprene compound washers ordered from Amazon, the "dry" fit of the polycarbonate has been done, as you can see, two rafters at the 25 inch pitch, H-channel that has been cut and one piece of the 2' x 4' polycarbonate twin wall used to verify the dimensions from the spreadsheet...

 ...and just to make sure we did not miscalculate the lengths, two end rafters were placed in position.

As mentioned, special screws that will allow for expansion have been ordered, once we have them, all of the rafters will be assembled with the H-channel, five screws per length and pre-drilled holes. There will also be a couple of "pitch guides" created that will help with the positions of the hurricane brackets, anything to make life easier, especially when up on ladders.

Joists or rafters, Ridge angle and supplies...

It is labour day, supposedly a day off for the workers, but not on this job site.

We need 14 rafters, and need to have a couple spare for the back end of the greenhouse if the tolerance stackup works against us. Therefore we cut 16 rafters, or joists, whatever you want to call them and they are 65" long 2x4 material, then an extra cut of 22 degrees at the ridge point. 

It became somewhat of a production line, finding straight (ish) wood, cutting to length, then cutting the angle at one end. Then all of them needed to be stained, which will take a couple of days because they need to be stained on both sides.

In the photo above, in the distance you will see three bundles of wood that someone on the estate was giving away, 8 foot long strapping for siding, we will use it for the inner, and perhaps, outer retention of the large 34x76 window panes on the left there which are scheduled to be installed after we have finished the roof.

Talking of that, it was looking like we may have to exceed the budget on the ridge line of the roof, plus we needed a plan, we always need a plan. I had worked out that as I still have plenty of the 2x4 wood, I could use a double width of 7" on each side of the ridge, so that factors into other calculations of polycarbonate length, positions of H-channel and some clearance, and all that material is on hand, except for sealing the ridge, which of course is essential to minimize leaks.

On marketplace yesterday, the above popped up with a price tag of $20 and after talking to the chap, we arranged to pick it up today, which made it quite a labour filled labour day. The EZ-Ridge XT has 24 of the original 30 remaining (a full box costs around $180) and 24 of them covers a 16' length so it is perfect, plus the shingles will also be used to cover over the 2x4 external ridge beams, which will also be stained and retained with those angle brackets we bought a week or so back.

We love it when a plan comes together.

That means that, besides a box of roofing nails, caulk and some short screws and washers, we should have all the materials required to finish the project. 

Famous last words.

Back in the saddle...

We had a great four days in Calgary and returned on Saturday, on the drive back from the airport we stopped off at Home Depot for an eight foot piece of epoxy coated rebar and as usual, strapped it to the roof rack but this time using four zip-ties we had found in Calgary City Center - it was odd that zip-ties would be lying around on the street, however, there was construction everywhere and one thing for sure is, I cannot walk past a free zip-tie on the floor without picking it up and subsequently watch Karen give me the look.

There was to be no photo today, mainly because after about two hours working on the greenhouse, it does not look any different, as though nothing happened. Ok, I will show a photo as it is a record of what happened, plus when we add the 4x4 on top it will never be seen again, except here :

The rebar was cut into six 16" pieces using the reciprocating saw, then on each side of the greenhouse base three holes were drilled at about equal distance, the base being approximately 5-3/4" deep and the gravel was cleared below the holes before the stakes were driven into the compacted ground using a sledgehammer, after that we pushed the gravel back and finished off with some stain.

This two hour process is merely to add some lateral stability to the structure. A greenhouse, or a shed, will move over time because of vibration, gravel shifting and of course, the weather, especially the wind. Although this greenhouse is quite sheltered we decided that placing six stakes about nine inches into the ground provides a little sleep at night factor that at least we did something to stop the structure moving.

As we say, time will tell.

Not painting today.

It feels like a lifetime ago, when I was a teenager, I would be tasked with creosoting the fence at "The Cottage" on Pottery Lane, Whiston. Technically I wasn't painting the fence, Technically, I was applying a coal-tar distillate wood preservative, but in practice and appearance, it functioned far more like a penetrating stain than a paint.

The nice man at the Dulux store told us of the difference a few years ago when we tried to buy "paint" for our fence and he expressed how it was important not to mix the two things up.

So today, we did not paint the greenhouse over a three and a half hour period :

The weather cooperated and it was a lot of fun, we even had a break for a cuppa.

The wonders of Marketplace

As an update to yesterdays blog, in the afternoon we bought 32 x H1A Simpson Hurricane Brackets and 13 x A35 corner brackets for $40 cash from a local chap who had saved them from a jobsite dumpster. The retail cost from Home Depot would have been $143.92 so it was a great deal and the expenditure sits at $425 with very little now to buy besides short screws and caulk as I have just checked that we have nothing suitable in the caulking department, I also need some waterproof tape and fasteners for the polycarbonate joints and H-Channel and I suspect our remaining $75 could be used up in the blink of an eye if we are not careful.

To the left are the A35 corner brackets, not sure what I will use them for yet, but they will be used, the H1A hurricane brackets are to the right, they will make the rafter installation far easier, which is important when balanced on a ladder eight feet above the ground.

The shopping list is for short screws, #9 1-1/2" long, to attach the H1A brackets, a quick calculation would be about 28 x  6 or about 170 screws. A quick check of my "old man" screw supply shows that I probably have enough. Then there is waterproof tape, caulk and fasteners for the H-Channel, I probably have the fasteners in my supply, but I think a fibre or rubber washer will be needed, or perhaps a blob of caulk for each fastener.

I will need to do some research...

The ridge beam arrives and we practice ladder safety.

It is Friday, the end of the working week for the two retired labourers, although we may do some staining at the the weekend. It was priority today to construct and place the ridge beam down the centre of the structure, the design of which required an old fashioned diagram to work out the roof pitch, ridge beam height and length, which is longer than the greenhouse 145.75" to cater for a rafter at each end to ensure that the total of seven rafters on each side can be at the correct pitch for the six polycarbonate panels and snap H-channels.

Ladder safety was important because of the height getting up there, 110" now to the top, the ridge beam should give the greenhouse rafters a slope of about 22.5 degrees or thereabouts. Additional work done today was the reinforcement of the step plate at the bottom of the door and as mentioned yesterday, the far right corner has had a tie added to true up the second wall and add to the XY rigidity.

I was on the top step of the ladder and I told Karen that "I can see your house from here" and I was careful not to drop power tools, clamps or large pieces of wood on her head.

It has now been just three weeks since we purchased the door and the single pane wooden windows and the current expenditure sits at around $385 which includes all wood, stain, screws, glass and polycarbonate roofing materials. There will be some hardware needed, some hurricane brackets for the rafters, perhaps some plates here and there, but it seems that our $500 budget is more than enough.

The barn of many planes and angles.

The greenhouse continues to evolve, and today we erected wall number two or the "far end" of the structure and another set of pivot blocks and XZ ties were used in a similar fashion to make the wall approximately square to the approximately level base. 

The whole frame is surprisingly square, despite our low standards.

It was quite a bit of fun, especially when installing the two upper side beams which involved stretching, ladders, some danger and balance, all of which went together quite well and the fore and aft stiffness (XZ) of the structure is good, some play in the side to side stiffness (XY) at wall two end, but that is expected as it is weaker in that plane than wall one with the stiffness of the 4" x 4" door posts and the play will reduce each time we add more side wall, or populate the middle rectangle of that second wall, which will include a (free) fitted 35" x 59" two pane window and wood in the lower 20" or thereabouts. 

There may eventually be short 45 degree inner ties at each corner to increase the stiffness and provide more real estate for hanging baskets. We will leave those until later as we observe how continuing the greenhouse with the wood framed windows increases the rigidity. There will definitely be at least one temporary external tie beam installed in the XY plane to pull wall two so that a small, mostly optical, vertical offset is corrected on that stud wall, that will be on the lower far right side.

 

There will be many opportunities to hide tolerance gapping, which we have decided is more of a feature than a flaw. There are some slightly out of plane uprights which will be corrected, or disguised, as time goes by, but after all, we don't really care as it is our greenhouse, made with our own hands on a really low budget, and our own tomatoes and peppers will taste far better than any from a five star construction costing ten times as much.

The next stage is to reinstall the front door step and then paint/stain the structure before the next phase, we're not decided on the roof design yet, but we have the materials so that could be next.  

Building the barn, part one

The weather at the moment is perfect and after creating the two side beams, today was the day to start "building the barn" which involves erecting the two ends to be (almost) level and then joining the two ends with the 145.75" beams.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that the original beams were to be approximately 145" long and then later, when we assembled the lower base frame, the number was measured as an average 145.75" showing the amazing precision of our joining process and how tolerances stack when you just don't care!

There are 2" x 4" top plates on walls one and two, the side top plates will sit on top of that, so a composite top plate of 145.75" - 7.00" = 138.75" is needed along with wiggle room of 0.25" per end, so the "hanging top plates" on the side are 138.25" which leaves a 3.75" gap at each end that can be used to attach to both walls.

It matters not, just numbers, too many numbers.

The door wall, wall number one, was raised using those two little pieces of wood as pivot blocks, once in a vertical position we then used our steel right angle for a rough guide and then used a 3' x 4' x 5' tie arrangement (classic right angled triangle) to lock all into place. Then it was a case of screwing down the wall to the base. It was a lot of fun and the pair of us put some work in and had a giggle, for the first time in the construction a ladder was used to correct a joint at the top right end of the wall, this thing has height now!

This wall is now very firm in the XZ direction due to those ties, mostly level and mostly square. The two side top beams can be seen in the photo, fully constructed and ready for the raising of wall number two to an upright position, which should be tomorrow. 

We commented yesterday that the structure coud not be seen from the road, that changed today!

Wall number two

Another day goes by and we made ourselves busy by creating the second end of the greenhouse. This assembly will be called wall number two. 

This one seemed to be a little easier than the other, it was also less heavy so moving it over to the job site was not so bad. There we have it, the two ends completed and lying on top of the base frame and we think that the next bit will be to "build the barn" and create the structure, which will require a couple of temporary pieces of wood to act as ties in the XZ direction and guides to make wall one square with the frame, followed by two 145.5" composite beams to connect wall one and two together. 

It may even require an extra pair of hands.

After that, we can start adding wood and windows and start thinking about a roof structure.

Wall number One.

This morning we went to pick up another double paned window from a local chap on marketplace, we have not done a full inventory yet, but believe that we have about 80% of the required glass.

It makes sense then, that we need places to put the glass, and in this case, the door that we picked up just a few weeks ago. It was a case of jotting down a sketch of the door end, after all, the 111" that the frame measures is not by accident, we need to be able to fit one 30" x 77" door and two pieces of 34" x 76" glass from one side of the patio doors, the 4x4 door frame and the 2x4 end studs.

We will call this wall number one, another component in the kit for the vertical walls, wall one (door) and wall two (far end) with initially two 145" cross beams to keep the pair of them up, almost square, and almost level.

There it is, wall number one, 111" wide and 83" tall. This was the heaviest piece that we actually had to move in one assembly, but of course, we managed. The second wall will be constructed, probably tomorrow, along with two 145" composite beams that will sit on top of the two ends. Interim 45 degree supports will be added for some semblance of squareness and rigidity, and then when we are happy, we will paint the vertical frames before installing windows.

Wednesday : A square, level foundation, well, mostly...

Today a couple of hours spent joining the four sides together with two goals in mind, well maybe three if you include position in relation to the shed and fence. The first plan was to make the corners square so that it creates a rectangle, not a parallelogram, we used a couple of techniques to achieve that, the first being 3 nails, tapped in at 3' and 4' distances and on one corner and then measuring to achieve a 5' hypotenuse. 

After that, we threw caution to the wind and used a large metal square for the other corners, surprisingly we created a pretty good representation of a rectangular base, all of the joints being very unprofessional with multiple toenail screws going in left, right and centre. The second task was to make the sides level with each other, which meant moving some gravel about over many iterations, but again, we did it.

The result is an almost square, almost level, frame for our greenhouse build.

It is time to take a short break from the project, we are off up to Port Renfrew for a well deserved break, looking at nature and the bottom of a glass.

Tuesday : The End Bits

Three days have passed since the construction of the "side bits" and after doing some preliminary painting (staining) yesterday, we assembled each beam with many screws and have almost finished the "end bits" for the greenhouse foundation. It should be noted that on Sunday we bought two more gallons of stain, this time from the Restore, Habitat for Humanity, for the grand price of $18.19 a gallon, so there will be a lot more brushwork involved during this project, some of which will be later on today to finish off these two beams on the unseen sides.

In theory, we should be able to screw the sides and the ends together on Wednesday and as previously mentioned, we will attempt to position the finished 12' 1" x 9' 3" frame as level and as square as we can on our gravel base, I suspect there will be some fun and perhaps a little frustration during that levelling process! - but to check if the frame is square, we will use a bit of old fashioned trigonometry.

Monday, shovelling away

Another day, another task, more excitement. 

On the marketplace we noticed that someone quite local was selling a yard of crushed 5/8" rock for twenty bucks, a cheap foundation for the greenhouse. The main task being to transport over a ton of the stuff from A to B and of course, the little car that could was put to task once again, along with the pair of us doing the grunt work which we managed to complete in four trips.

The base is not levelled yet, but we needed somewhere to store the two side beams, which are ready to be matched up with the yet to be constructed end beams. We will paint the wood this afternoon so that we can start assembly tomorrow.

Although not level in the photo, the side beams give an idea of scale with the existing shed structure and I can mention that as with the tolerancing of the beams and frames and roof, and almost everything else on the project, that base will never truly be level, it will be close, but we are just building a greenhouse here, not the Taj Mahal.

Exact tolerances are for working engineers, not retired ones.

Later That Day

Two of the foundation beams of the greenhouse have evolved over the course of the day. 

Give or take 1/4" here and there, the two "mirror image" side beams have been assembled, The combined length is approximately 145" with 137" from the 4x4 beams, joined sort of in the middle and the pressure treated (which will be on the bottom) has a 4" overlap at each end which will help with the assembly of the rectangular frame when the end pieces are complete.

It was a learning day for young Karen, how to use the drill to drive the salvaged 3" screws into place safely, how to keep the job site tidy and how to combat various ants that wished to be in her pants. It was a good group effort, but as it was a hot day, the enthusiasm completely disappeared at the end of the work session to be replaced with a good old fashioned relaxation session with a beer or three.

The above two will be fully stained and then other sessions, probably Monday and Tuesday, will involve the creation of the end beams and perhaps on Wednesday, the base will be complete and we can start building a greenhouse.

...and so it begins

Another Saturday and today some of the slow but necessary bits of the construction preparation begin. Staining. We have one large dropcloth and the base 4x4 pieces for the sides shown (two 72" and two 65" lengths) will add up to 137" which when added to the end widths of 4" will add up to a total length of 145" or 12' 1" and the end pieces in turn will be created from an 80" and 31" piece, for a total width of 111" or 9' 3" (calculated for the cumulative sizes of the two 34" windows and the 30" door and associated uprights) and those will undergo the same process.

Below those will be pressure treated 1x6 to partially join them (with minimum overlap of 12") and they will provide the initial join, so I've painted one face of each so the stain will be the sandwich filling. I was thinking about putting a plastic sheet in between as well, but stopped worrying about rot, the assembly will actually be mounted on 1.75" high 8x16 concrete pavers at 3' intervals, and regardless, I cannot do much about weather and insects, because it is Canada...

I will stain it more.

The stain I am using, a cheap mistint from the Dulux store, is Wood Pride 9690A Oil based Acylic Stain and was quite a deal at $5 for almost a gallon, it will provide some protection for a while I hope.

Time will tell.

Mind boggling Saturday.

In the last week or so, when free wood appears on marketplace it is usually gone before you even get a chance to ask. The other extreme being that you ask, and ask, and ask and never receive a reply, this is the conundrum of marketplace.

An advert came up for free wood, so I asked, and amazingly the guy replied, and we arranged a meeting for Saturday morning at 11.30am and even though we were a little tired from our Friday adventure, we set off with hope, I thought that we could get a dozen or so 2x4 for framing the greenhouse, perhaps more. 

We arrived and found the chap, Linden, and it was obvious that he, and his family had build a very impressive duplex, it was about 35 minutes away in the Florence Lake area, up around where Costco is if that means anything to anyone. The guy was enthusiastic about unloading his wood, and started moving it from an upper area. It was very obvious that we would be leaving with a lot more wood than we expected.

This may not look like a lot of wood, but altogether, on the first run, we picked up around 35 pieces of 2x4 all of which were between 6' and 8' and mostly straight and in good, yet dusty condition, at the time of writing an 8' piece would be about four bucks from Home Depot. As we were loading the first batch he said to Karen that we could come back as many times as we wanted, so we decided, as it was about a one and a quarter hour round trip, that we would go back for another load.

So there it is, around 70 or more pieces. We thanked Linden for his generosity and he equally thanked us, he explained he needed to clear out all of his construction materials in the final phase and was just happy to see it go. You can also see all of the 4x4 posts at the back that we bought on Friday and this new pile of 2x4 will be more than enough to fully frame up the greenhouse, complete the roof truss frames, probably provide all the materials required for growing tables or boxes as well.

The pair of us ended the day tired with all the lifting, but it was truly an amazing day and we went off to the hotel for a well deserved pint.

The plan evolves and is modified...

In the last few days we have been out having adventures, the first one on Friday when a marketplace contact let me know that he had some 4x4 frames that he could let me have for fifty bucks. It was quite local and we expected to, as usual, put the materials on top of the car, however, we rapidly realised that the frames were a lot bigger (and heavier) than expected. It was time to "phone a friend" and ask for a favour, luckily Keith was five minutes away and turned up, by coincidence, with an empty truck, mainly as he had only just disposed of a hot water tank. 

Two of the frames were 6'8" x 5'9" and there were cross beams, and in addition, more of the 4x4 in the form of a rough and ready table and a small ladder frame. I worked out the there was about 120' altogether, probably more. It was a struggle to load it all up and the chap included several pieces of OSB as well, I am sure we will make use of that.

One of the frames has already been disassambled, along with a smaller ladder frame and the table which has yielded a small supply of screws (another bonus). We placed the remaining large frame in place to gauge our intended sizing. It was apparent that a 10' width would be a little too big, so we arranged some of the loose 4x4 pieces and came up with an 8'2" x 12'2" template which seems a perfect size for the space we have.

In the afternoon we sat with Keith in the back yard and had a few beers and caught up with the latest Sooke gossip, some very interesting stuff, well not as impressive as our greenhouse project, which suddenly had a door, some windows and a good solid base.    

That was Friday, what happened on Saturday was quite amazing.

The start of a new Project...

The start of August and we decided that instead of buying a greenhouse (approximate cost $2000 or more for a decent one) we should, like we did in Gibsons back in 2015, build one. Therefore we are in the planning phase and have a goal to spend $500 on a solid wooden structure, using recycled materials from the four corners of the island.

The first batch of materials were bought yesterday, the primary item being a door, because as with the previous built greenhouse, we started with a door and built outwards from it. The door was listed on marketplace for $30 and we noticed that the seller, Wolfgang, had many wooden sash type windows and he said he would make a deal.

The door, plus a dozen wooden windows, were $100 cash, which worked out about $6 a window. There are eight 24" x 34", two 23" x 28" and another two which the chap gave us after the deal was done which are 18" x 39" so quite a mix of sizes.

Oh, and we asked if he had a door knob. Which he donated to the project.

We have started a spreadsheet (of course) and the above materials represent about 28% of the vertical surfaces of our intended 10' x 12' greenhouse, which means, of course, we need to buy more stuff, probably from the same chap, plus some structural lumber.

Will keep you posted on the progress.

Monday, end of a work week...

This is a different week, only one workday as we are off on our travels tomorrow, a vacation from the vacation, so we decided to empty the left side of the compost heap today, which was quite easy as it was ten easy wheelbarrows full, another yard of soil/humus for the new shrub bed near the hedge.

That is almost the end of the process for the compost heap cycle, the left side is excavated except for a couple of inches of humus as a starter layer, the right side has about eight inches of transition zone that will be incrementally shovelled to the other side each time we have a foot of fresh weeds, clippings and kitchen scraps, the starter layer, new materials and transition layers will then be the engine of the process all over again, all we have to do is feed it and wait a few years.

The new bed is ready, new soil for the influx of the shrubs and plants in September. The photo looks basically the same as the previous blog except there are ten more wheelbarrows dumped on the top, another cubic yard moved and no compost left, which means that the wheelbarrow has now been parked back in the shed for the season, no more mulch or soil to move this year.

Time for a short vacation! 

The new bed, morning shade, afternoon sun.

Today, five more wheelbarrows full of soil from "the other side" and a few rocks to define an extension to an existing path, a fork in the road that will be a project for another year. The new bed is destined to hold some of the shrubs and plants that we will buy in September during our yearly pilgrimage to Russell Nursery up near Sidney.

That represents 24 wheelbarrows full of soil, about two and a half cubic yards moved at the end of our "working week" of Monday to Friday half-hour sessions in the garden. The right hand side has been heavily weeded during the week by the good lady, yet there are still more weeds to be removed, to be relocated to the compost heap and I estimate five more wheelbarrows of soil will finish off the job, but that will all have to wait until Monday, because we now deserve our weekend.

The left hand side of the compost heap has amazing fully composted humus, rich in nutrients, after finishing off this bed I will need to remove the rest of it, probably to a temporary heap on a tarp and then onto another new bed which has not been imagined yet, if we define where it will be, then we will cut out the middleman (tarp) and move it right to the job site. I will post a photo of the left side of the compost heap completely empty before we start filling it up again with weeds and kitchen waste.

The sun is shining, life is good, make the most of it.

Compost heap, Step Two

Today I took the last of the soil from the right side, it was another five full barrows, bringing the total on the new garden bed so far to nineteen. Once I was satisfied that I was at ground level, I started dragging the upper loose material, using a rake, from the left side. It was hard work on a hot day, there was a lot to go in the empty space and from time to time I would compact the compost down by stomping on it and wet the right side down with a hose, to keep dust down, but also to help with the composting process.

Apparently it is good to urinate on a compost heap to add nitrogen and other goodness, I tend not to do that though, you know, neighbours and all that.

We now have the right side filled up, new material will go on top of that until I have excavated the left side down to the ground level, then any new stuff will go to the bottom of that side. In the process of digging the left side, some of the upper material will be retained and moved to the top of the right side on a temporary basis, this is because that material is partially decomposed, not quite ready as soil for our beds, so I will drag it back into the left side at the end.

If you want a technical explanation, a three-stage composting system is essentially a biological conveyor belt driven by time and microbes. At the top layer, fresh organic inputs like kitchen scraps, weeds and yard clippings are introduced; this raw material is highly energetic, recognizable, and rapidly consumed by initial bacteria. As these materials break down and sink, they enter the middle layer—often called active or semi-mature compost—where the intense heat of initial decomposition has subsided, leaving behind a fibrous, dark transition zone where fungi and actinomycetes slowly break down tougher fibers. Finally, at the very bottom layer, the process reaches completion, resulting in finished humus: a rich, stable, and dark, crumbly soil-like material that is completely unrecognizable from its original forms and fully ready to nourish the garden.

In the late 1960s, my grandfather, John Edward Edwards, or Jack to those that knew him, understood all of that, no need for google or AI, he knew stuff without the internet, how could that be possible?

It also helps to have worms and other insects in the compost heap, worms consume and pass the composted material through themselves as they bore through it, they tend to live at the lower levels of the heap, creating tunnels and aerating the pile, every time I walked away from the heap with those nineteen wheel barrows of soil, our local robins would swoop in to snatch a worm or two, which is why when we are digging in other areas of the garden, if we find a worm, it is abducted by "aliens" and moved through time and space to the new planet called the compost heap. 

The yearly cycle. Compost heap.

It is more like every two years that the compost heap gets really full and in the last couple of days we have been moving some of the excellent soil out of the bottom layer of the heap, it is being moved to the front yard where we are creating a new shrub bed for the planting phase in September.

The process is hard labour, basically moving material about, the exposed lower level, on the right, has very good soil and it is being transported to the new bed, when I hit solid ground and empty all the corners, the newish upper layers of the left hand side will be moved over to the right hand side, exposing the great soil underneath. In just two days, during our half-hour sessions, I have moved fourteen very full barrows of good soil from the right which I estimate to be one and a half cubic yards, that would be about twenty-four 50L bags.

The cost is zero, besides physical labour, and we have had many lots of good soil out of this compost heap since we built it back in March 2017. 

As they say Aardvark never killed anyone.

In the days to come I will continue the cycle, it means that the upper material on the left is moved to the lower of the excavated side, then if needed, I will remove the good soil from the bottom of the left hand side and we will start adding new compostable plants and peelings to that side first then both sides, in about two years time, we will have more good soil to use, the only problem being is, where will we use it?

Photos of the newly constructed bed will follow in the next week I expect.

Princess Auto

I have a buddy out in Nova Scotia, he notices that when something breaks or is needed, Canadian Tire often have it on sale that same weekend, in a similar fashion, after the wheel blew up a few days ago, I was browsing the vastness of the interwebs and noticed that Princess Auto had a 13 x 2-1/2 in. Solid Rubber Wheel Assembly with 32% off, usually $21.99 and on sale for $14.99 and it was a stars aligned moment as we were down in Victoria on a mini break, so a visit to the smelly place was required, a warehouse full of forever chemicals and foreign goods, to hopefully buy one, and we were not disappointed!

So, the old wheelbarrow is now back in business, all I needed to do was cut the spacers to the correct dimensions, apply lashings of grease to all the old bolts, add bigger washers to the bed connections (the bed is split in four places, this old "spare" wheelbarrow will live the rest of it's life on light duty) and I oiled the wood, which is in surprising condition for the age of a "lower shelf" unit.

In the next few days, three more yards of alder mulch will be delivered, moved and spread, which fundamentally gives us a break from gardening for the rest of the year.

Wheelbarrow, sort of...

The end of the month of April brought lots of weeding, as usual, and a delivery from Sooke Soils of some alder mulch, a dark, almost black mulch that we lay an inch or two on top of our weeded areas, it has been a fun week and of course, the old wheelbarrow was dusted down again, the tire was inflated and another year in the long life was to be started.

It was today that I was moving the last of the first lot of mulch about that I felt the inner tube go, I found that out afterwards, when it happened I just thought I had hit a bump. It was another issue in the life of a garden object, originally bought from Gibsons Building Supply, and I considered I would repair it again, so taking it apart I noticed that indeed, the inner tube was breached at the root of the valve, the tire and wheel seemed good except for the rusted out bearing, time to consider options.

Usually, taking my time and repairing things, while saving money, is the approved approach but at the moment, we are on a timetable with the mulching and need to finish phase one (more mulch arriving soon) so I replaced the old wheel with an "in stock" smaller diameter one which was sufficient but made the wheelbarrow a little more unstable and difficult to tip up over the larger rocks. In addition, overall the entire thing was in need of triage as the old bed of the barrow had previously split in four places, the handles needed attention and of course, now the tiny wheel, so perhaps it was time to replace the whole thing, although of course, logically I would keep the old one for a future repair or even if it is destined to be a planter.

The research online took no time, a new inner tube would be $20, a new wheel would be $30 which included an inner tube, no contest there, and then a whole new barrow, with two pneumatic tires would be $80 and after a little thought we had a trip to Home Hardware and a new sparkling one was bought and assembled over the period of an hour or so.

It is more of a garden cart type of wheelbarrow, more suited for bringing all the items to various job zones in the yard :

It is always a strange thing to move on from something so familiar, as I have said, the old 'true" single wheel barrow will not be discarded, I will bide my time and take it apart, maybe repair the split bed, oil the handles and brackets and keep my eye out for a full size replacement wheel or inner tube.

After all, storing useless stuff, that's what garden sheds are for.