hey everyone welcome to this episode of digging deeper today we're talking
about five mistakes to avoid when installing a greenhouse
okay so first things first we're at the Old Mill my new Farm project and we just completed the
installation of a brand new Greenhouse it's a 35 foot by 125 foot long oval Tech freestanding
Greenhouse from arnowa arnua is the company that I like to work with a lot of my greenhouses and
my different projects are from our Noir they're the leading manufacturer in North America for
Greenhouse products and every time I buy a greenhouse from anua the flow is good the
instruction manuals are great and they're just amazing greenhouses so because we just went
through the motion of it all it was really easy for me to pick up some of the common mistakes
that we make when installing the greenhouses so the first mistake that a lot of Growers make is
to avoid proper site preparation so the greenhouse is a big investment it's going to be there for a
long period of time so it needs to be correctly positioned with regards to everything else on
the farm there should be a master plan that tells you this is the the right place for the
greenhouse to be that's one but most importantly the soil needs to be prepared first rocks should
be taken out the site of the greenhouse should be raised and it should be leveled
and so that will maintain a really good rigidity to the structure of the greenhouse it's going to
be parallel so there's a side preparation that needs to be done which in depending
on the size of your Greenhouse might require an excavator to come in and do part of the job
mistake number two and it's it's one that's really common is to not be properly prepared for delivery
of the greenhouse and so there's a lot of things that can go wrong at the delivery uh first of all
you need to make sure that you have an access road so that you know the truck the delivery truck can
be as close as possible to where the greenhouse will be installed it shouldn't be muddy and you
know the delivery truck should be able to move around as close as possible so here for example
we thought that the ground was solved but it wasn't so the truck got stuck and it was seven
hundred dollars to tow it out of the mud so this is an extra expenditure that definitely could have
been avoided then unloading everything from the delivery truck is another part of the project
if you don't have a lift or a tractor you definitely want to make sure that you have
a lot of people that day that can help if you're only counting on the driver of the delivery truck
to help you you might be in for a surprise he might end up just leaving the project if there's
no one there to you know unpack the greenhouse so that's something that you carefully need to
prepare mistake number three is not inspecting or organizing the greenhouse parts and so you'll get
a package and slip with the greenhouse you want to make sure that there's no parts missing that's
really really important because it does happen and when you're doing the work of installing
the greenhouse it won't be the time to order the missing part could create a lot of layovers that
are definitely not what you want then making sure that everything is properly laid out is important
some parts will be laid on the ground but you should also have a table so that you'll put
all your nuts and bolts have all your material lined up anything that can be done damaged by
the weather make sure that it's covered your furnaces whatever again taking the time to
fully assess and organize all the pieces of the greenhouse will save you a lot of time later on
so the fourth mistake and it's a biggie is not having the right tools for the job installing a
greenhouse correctly will require some some tools that are different from perhaps your regular Tools
in your tool shed and you want to be prepared so some of the tools that you'll want for sure are
namely saw horses to not work on the ground and having everything raised while you're working
mounting The Arches for example Sledge hammers or even a jackhammer to properly install the
rods the anchoring rods into the ground impact drills are a must having a tool belt also to
carry those having more than one impact drills if there's more than one on people installing
this saves a lot of time levels and Plumb are your best friends you'll need to to have them
and you'll need to know how to use them correctly some Growers swear by having forklifts to do the
installation I think that you can go around that with good ladders but make sure that you have
quality ones and make sure that they're heavy and properly secured when using the lathers measuring
tape water and an angle grinder to cut the metal you'll have to cut metal proper eye protection
glasses all of these are tools that you're going to need when installing your Greenhouse
mistake number five that's the biggest mistake
and it's the most common one is to install the plastic on a windy day
this is the perfect scenario to either rip it or have it not tight enough or have it be a complete
disaster and I've probably built and installed 10 to 12 Greenhouse in my farming career and I know
from experience that when Growers are excited they have the whole crew everything's prepared
and if there's more than five miles per hour winds you shouldn't go ahead even
if you have everything ready wait for a calm day to do it it's going to save you a
lot of stress it's going to save you perhaps a replacement of those expensive Plastics and so
don't put your Plastics if it's too windy it's not worth it wait for another day and you're
better off that way so all in all these are some of the most common mistakes that you can make
when installing a greenhouse the best strategy if you want to make sure that you're doing this
the right way again is to follow a really good guideline or an instruction video about how to
do this the proper way like the pros would do it we have a video like that with the market
Gardener Institute you can check it out I hope this was helpful for you I hope everything's
growing well where you are I'm I'm having a blast I'm really excited about this new
greenhouse and I'm going to be looking forward to showing you what we grow inside especially
in the winter months this is it for this week JM out don't forget to subscribe see you next time
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