Hoop house vs geodesic dome.
Which one is cheaper to build?
In tis video I compare the cost of building a hoop house to a 4v geodesic dome greenhouse
frame using metal purchased from home depo, first in the USA and then showing the differences
to buy the same thing in Canada.
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We'll start by comparing a 40 foot long 20 foot wide hoop house and a 32 foot diameter
or 16 foot radius geodesic dome.
These two greenhouses are almost exactly the same sq footage, about 800 sq feet each.
To keep the comparison fair I'm going to use online prices listed from home depo, if you
know of places to get these supplies cheaper please list them in the comment below.
Strarting with a hoop house, we'll use what's called chain link top rails for the steel.
They have a beveled end so they link up together easily.
A top rail is just that, the top metal rail on a chain link fence.
They are fine for a small greenhouse like this, but if you wanna go wider, I suggest
you buy thicker steel.
Top rails sell for $9.95 each at home depo if you buy 20 or more and to make a hoop house
with 4 foot arch spacing you need 3 top rails put together for a total of 10 arches.
So 30 top rails total just under $300.
Next you need anchors to put the top rails into, chain link fence posts work well for
this.
They come in 8 foot lengths and you can usually cut them in half burying 3 feet into the ground
and leaving a foot above ground for the top rails to bolt into.
At $16.98 each, 10 of them, needed to make 20 anchors, will cost you about $170.
Don't forget the perils.
Perlins are necessary to keep the hoop house together, without them the whole thing would
have no stability.
I highlighted what a peril is in the picture with red.
Chain link top rails work well as perlins and we'll add another 12 poles to our total
for an additional $120.
Finally, we're going to need some wood.
Specifically pressure treated wood so it will last more than a couple of seasons.
Home depo sells ten foot 2x4s for $7.17, so we're going to need about $85 in wood to go
around the base of the hoop house for a place to tie the plastic sheeting to.
That means it's going to cost $673.38 to build a metal greenhouse hoop house frame buying
all the wood and steel from the home depo.
Now lets compare this to building an 800 sq foot 4V geodesic dome greenhouse frame.
Because there is much more steel in a geodesic dome, we can use 3/4 inch electrical conduit
pipes and end up with more strength than the 1 and 3/8 inch top rails used on the hoop
house.
Using an online dome calculator we find that we need 120 ten foot pipes.
At $4.60 each it's $552.
Just like the hoop house we need ground anchors for the dome.
20 of them for a 4V.
But the dome anchors can almost be flush with the ground, so they only need to be 3 feet
each.
10 foot pipes means only 7 pipes are needed for 21 ground anchors.
Again, just like the hoop house, we need a wood base to secure the plastic to, but an
800 sq foot geodesic dome has only 20 five foot sides to it.
So that means only 10 ten foot 2x4s are needed for a total of $71.70.
That leaves us with a gran total of $655.70 to build a metal geodesic dome greenhouse
frame.
Compared to a hoop house cost of $673.38, they seem very close, but remember I didn't
calculate the end walls into the hoop house, about another $100 in wood, still for such
a little difference why choose a dome? the answer is height.
The hoop house is 8 feet tall but the geodesic dome is 14 feet tall, tall enough for a fruit
tree.
So ask yourself, why spend more money on a hoop house when you can build a dome cheaper
and have a higher ceiling?
Here's where this gets a little crazy.
I live in Canada and for some reason the pricing is a little bit different at home depo in
Canada than the USA.
I'm going to show some of the calculations with Canadian home depo prices and lets see
what happens.
Starting with the hoop house, in Canada the top rails are $19.58 each, same top rail as
the USA only much more money.
That changes our pole price to $587.40 The post price is $15.20, not much
difference and our pressure treated wood is $7.26 a ten foot board, very similar.
That top rail is what hugely changes things though.
In Canada a hoop house will run you over $1000 dollars!
You'd think the same thing would happen to the cost to build a dome.
You'd think that, until you looked at the price of 3/4 inch electrical conduit in Canadian
home depos.
Ten feet metal conduit in Canada is only $3.88, I say again $3.88!
When we run this price across our expense sheet find the geodesic dome materials bought
in Canadian home depos are only $559.15, it's half the cost to build the 4V geodesic dome
in Canada than a hoop house, same sq footage!
Who'd have thought!
Thank you for watching, and I hope you found this helpful.
Please post your price findings in the comments below.
And don't forget to share this video!