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.