DIY Hoop House Plans
1. First, we leveled the ground in the area and dug trenches around it. We installed pressure treated boards in the dimensions of the greenhouse. These would become support for the rebar later in the build.
2. Next, we installed landscape fabric as a weed barrier and backfilled on the outside of the pressure treated boards.
3. In the top right, you can see rebar on the inside of the boards. Three foot pieces of rebar were buried two feet into the ground, leaving 12 inches above ground at two foot intervals.
4. I believe the PVC we used in this step was 1" schedule 40 in twenty-one foot lengths. With two people, it was fairly easy to bend and put the ends over the rebar. It looked a little "off" in places at first, but once the weather warmed in the spring everything evened itself out nicely.
5. We also used the same PVC to make a midridge down the middle which would help in keeping the arches evenly spaced at the top. It was just zip tied to the arches at this point, but later in the build we secured it to the endwalls as well.
6. We built the endwall frames with 2x4s. At this point, make sure you figure out where the door and potentially windows will be.
7. We screwed the midridge down to the top of the endwall frames but left it zip tied to the arches.
Here's a picture of the inside of the door just to show how we framed it.
7. The endwalls were made of 4'x8' panels of a material called SmartSide Panels. It's more resistant to fungus and termites, so we chose it as a better option than plywood for a greenhouse that gets wet often.
8. We added some extra support boards along the sides when we installed the endwalls. This would also allow us to make an air bubble between two layers of poly film covering for better insulation. We could double the covering, then sandwich it between two boards and leave some loose at the bottom. The end result would be a well insulated double layer covering with roll-up sides for good air-flow.
9. Before covering the greenhouse, we put pipe insulation over the tops of the endwalls to prevent tearing and prolong the life of the covering.
10. Flexible plastic tubing laid along the outside and screwed down holds the covering in place.
11. For the roll-up sides, we connected several lengths of one inch PVC and made a T at each end. We capped the sides of the T, leaving one uncovered, and filled it with play sand, shaking as much of the sand as we could into the whole pipe. This made it heavier to weigh down the sides in case of cold and wind. Duct tape held the pipe onto the end of the plastic covering. When rolled up, there are nails attached to the side boards which it can be rested on. We had problems with it trying to spring back and unroll, and the only solution we came up with was to wedge a board so it would prevent the T from spinning.
12. We installed a blower inflator to keep air between the layers of the plastic covering. This goes a long way in insulating the greenhouse.
During the early spring months, we did heat with a small propane heater. I don't think I have pictures unfortunately.
The entire project cost us somewhere around $800. We built some greenhouse benches and a potting bench, but this year my dad build some raised beds inside it and he's growing a gorgeous tomato crop. It would work well for just about any gardening application I can think of. You could even forego the landscape fabric and grow directly in the ground, as long as your tiller and other tools can fit through the door. The size of the greenhouse could be altered as well. There are plenty of calculators online to figure out blower size, covering size, and heater size, and the calculations for the length of PVC needed are fairly simple as well.
If you're considering building a simple, functional greenhouse on a budget, this setup was super straightforward. If you have any questions about the process, don't hesitate to contact me via email or in the comments below.
-Rose
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