How to make a greenhouse with your own hands? Why do many summer residents ask this question? The thing is that this building is very important. Seedlings planted inside the greenhouse will perfectly survive the last spring frosts. In addition, the presence of this building will allow planting heat-loving crops, which cannot be grown in an open field under any circumstances.
Choosing a building site
To approach the question of how to make a greenhouse with your own hands, it is worth choosing a place for arranging it. At first glance it seems that this is not so important, but it is not. The southernmost part of the site is considered the ideal place for the location of the greenhouse. You can also place it on the west side. The northern parts are completely unsuitable for such a construction. The best option would be to arrange the site in such a way that it has a slope to the south, and from the north it is protected from the cold wind.
Another very important point to pay attention to is the shadow. Ideally, you need to place a greenhouse where there is no shade throughout the daylight hours. In addition, in order to create maximumillumination, a gable roof is oriented north-south, and a single-pitched roof is oriented west-east.
Weather protection
The next important point for those who decide how to make a greenhouse with their own hands is protection from strong winds. In order to create maximum protection from the wind, it is best to place the building on the south side of the building or fence. If this option is not feasible, then you can plant tall dense bushes on the northwest side to cover the greenhouse.
Since plants planted inside an object need a lot of light, it is not recommended to plant or build a greenhouse next to tall trees, as they will create unwanted shade. In addition, large trees will also hurt because they have very long roots that can penetrate inside the greenhouse, into fertile soil and take food from plants.
Temperature conditions
How to make a greenhouse with your own hands suitable for any plants? A very important point is maintaining the optimum temperature. It is necessary either to maintain constantly the same temperature regime, or to make sure that the fluctuations are as minimal as possible. Since sunny days may not always be, and at night the temperature drops even more, it is necessary to take care of the correct heating system for the greenhouse. To date, there are several types of such networks.
Methods of heating an object
Naturally, the first and easiest way is solar energy,however, as mentioned above, this method is unstable and unreliable.
The second method requires electricity. In order to create the required temperature inside with the help of electrical energy, insulated heating cables are used. For the arrangement of such heating, a special foundation is needed. To do this, 2 cm of gravel are poured onto the ground, 3 cm of sand on top. After that, the cable is laid with a snake. About 5 cm of sand is poured on top of it. The resulting layers are covered with sheets of iron. This item will help avoid damaging the heating cables.
A layer of nutrient soil is poured on top of the metal. The obvious disadvantage of this method of heating is the high cost of electricity. However, it will allow plants to be planted inside the building in the very early spring. Here it is very important not to forget about the arrangement of high-quality insulation, including under layers of gravel, so that the heat does not leave the greenhouse.
How to make a greenhouse with your own hands at home heated with biofuel? This is the third option for arranging a room with independent heating. In addition, the use of biofuels today is considered the most affordable and optimal. To do this, it is necessary to lay out manure, straw and various remains of vegetation at the bottom of the greenhouse. All these products will release heat during their decomposition. If we talk about the shortcomings, then there are two of them. Firstly, there is no possibility of temperature control, except to ventilate the room. Secondly, during the season, the fuel will decompose, creating less and less heat. However, expertsclaim that this is enough for one season.
What are greenhouses made of?
How to make a greenhouse with your own hands from improvised materials? It's actually not that hard to do. Such an object has only two components - this is the frame and the material with which it is covered. Most often, greenhouses in suburban areas are built using plastic film, glass, polycarbonate, non-woven material.
Such buildings can differ in their shape. The creation of the form occurs through the formation of a frame, which can be triangular, arcuate, and any other. Most often, metal or fiberglass reinforcement is used to make the frame. You can make a greenhouse out of plastic pipes with your own hands, from window frames, from wooden beams.
Technical requirements for cucumber greenhouse
Building for cucumbers should provide the most comfortable conditions for growth. To do this, you need to create a comfortable temperature regime. For this reason, you need to make a greenhouse low, since then it is easier to heat it.
At the same time, you need to take care of the access of fresh air inside. This means that it is necessary to create maximum ventilation during the daytime.
Thus, it turns out that the building should be low, have a heating system and the possibility of ventilation during the daytime, when the temperature allows you to open the windows inward. If the region is cold enough or the weather is not entirely favorable, then ventilation is recommended to create ventilation anddo not disturb the temperature balance.
The first version of the greenhouse
How to make a greenhouse for cucumbers with your own hands? The easiest way is to build an arc structure. Naturally, in this case, arc elements will act as a frame. They are installed either directly into the soil or into a wooden base. The poles can be metal or plastic.
The essential advantage of such greenhouses is that they are mobile. This is especially important when observing crop rotation. If the greenhouse is of a stationary type, then inside it will have to change the soil annually. This option is considered the easiest to manufacture.
If we consider the essence of the structure, then the arc greenhouse is a tunnel that is covered with a film or any other material that transmits the sun's rays well. The material for the frame must be strong enough and able to take the desired shape. For these reasons, two paths are most often chosen:
- metal frame, installed directly into the soil;
- do-it-yourself pipe frame, making a greenhouse even easier this way, and the pipes themselves are fixed in the soil with stakes.
In order to increase the strength of the structure, the arcs are fastened together with horizontal wooden slats or tied with wire. It is worth adding here that if the arc greenhouse is long enough, then the first and last frame should be horizontal. As a cover materi althe most commonly used plastic film.
How to make a polycarbonate greenhouse with your own hands?
For the manufacture of this type of structure, a frame is used to which sheets of material are attached. Here, most often, the problem of choosing a material for the frame arises. If it is an ordinary metal, then corrosion will be the main problem. It is better to choose a galvanized profile, although this will increase the cost of construction.
Another option for a frame would be wood, but rotting will be a problem here. The service life is about five years. Although, of course, you can process wood with special tools to increase this period.
Where to start work?
To make a greenhouse with your own hands at home from a material such as polycarbonate, you need a certain base. It can be either a concrete foundation or a foundation from the base of the timber. If you pour concrete, then the room, of course, will be stationary. When based on a bar, it can be transferred.
It is best to create a rectangular base. Each owner chooses the sizes individually. It is also necessary to create waterproofing. For this, a layer of roofing material is most often used. The roof is made of bars 20 x 40. The type of roof is usually gable. If the slope angle is 300°, then the length will be about half a meter, and the total height of the greenhouse is 1.25 meters.
After the frame is ready, you can start attaching the sidewalls from the hundredth polycarbonate. The final step will be the shelter of the roofreinforced or air-bubble polyethylene film. Self-tapping screws of various sizes are used as fasteners for the entire structure. One very important point: to avoid such a problem as cracking polycarbonate while screwing in screws, you need to put an aluminum washer under them.
Frame greenhouse
How to make a greenhouse out of frames with your own hands? It would seem that using material such as window frames to build something is impossible, but this is not so.
To build a building, you will need not only the frames themselves, but also a certain amount of boards and timber. The length can be any, but the width will be determined by the width of the frames themselves. For example, if according to the plan, a greenhouse is placed close to the wall of another building, then only the side walls and the front need to be made of timber. It is important to note here that the beam is not placed on the ground, but on a brick layer in order to increase the life of the tree. From the inside, boards are attached to the timber, which will serve as supports for the frames. The frames themselves are best placed at a slight angle. Thus, it will be better to accumulate solar heat, and also better to drain precipitation. Another important point is the fastening of one of the sides of the frames to the hinges so that they can be raised for airing and watering the plants. It is recommended to attach the far side to the hinges.
Separate greenhouse
Some today have begun to use separate mini-greenhouses for especially fragile plants on the site. Most often these are elite varieties of flowers. Such small greenhouses are an ordinary greenhouse, but inreduced form. The frame and the covering element here are the same as in conventional buildings. It is easier to build them yourself than large ones, and you will need a minimum of consumables.
