Building a greenhouse

[Overway]

Hi,
I intend building a greenhouse soon and would appreciate any advice. I am thinking of using PAR redwood (from wickes) but I'll need to treat it. Thinking of using the thin ronseal wood treatment and then painting it white.
I will glue and dowel the joints where I can. What do you think???
I am an engineer not a chippy so any advice would help....thanks
Pete

 

[Woody2Shoes]

Hi - have you looked at Accoya as an alternative to redwood? It's what I would probably use - it's more expensive but intrinsically durable. I think that roof timbers, especially, take a real pounding from the elements and of course you want continued structural solidity for safety of yourself and your plants. No matter what you try and treat your redwood with e.g. tanalith preservative and some kind of paint system, it almost certainly won't outlast Accoya.

Cheers, W2S

a couple of links:

http://www.accoya.com/
http://www.handmadewindows.co.uk/accoya

 

[AJB Temple]

Whatever you do don't paint it. I guarantee that if you paint it you will regret this in the years to come as you try to maintain it. Fiddly beyond belief repainting greenhouses. I have just built a fairly large cold frame 12ft by 4ft and used cedar. Accoya as above works well. Also I strongly recommend toughened glass. You can also buy cedar greenhouse kits at quite sensible prices. I will zap you details of a supplier i have used in the past for supply and fit if you PM me. You may find you save relatively little doing it yourself.

 

[blackrodd]

hello Overway and welcome, Very wise words from the above. You would need a good quality redwood, from a good supplier, or red cedar,and as said the weather that gets thrown at it means that good sized cills, and framing for the glass, and the roofing details not really easy for a novice.
The red cedar greenhouse kit sounds ideal and You'd probably enjoy putting it together.
Western Red Cedar is about the best lasting timber to use so would possibly represent the best value for yer money!
Regards Rodders

 

[Overway]

Hi,
Thanks to everyone that posted. It was very interesting to see your comments.......
I can only buy timber ready planed as I have no way of sizing it....
I will definitely look at the kits but I feel they will be out of my price range.....about £200 at the last count...
As for painting white or any colour I will take your advice....and not do it ( I'll tell the wife YOU said not to bother)

Once again thanks to every reply. Peter

 

[Woodchips2]

Another idea would be to post on Freecycle http://uk.freecycle.org/ a 'wanted' ad for a greenhouse. You'd probably have to dismantle it and buy some glass but mqay save you lots of cash that you could spend on tomato plants etc

Regards Keith

 

[beganasatree]

Hi Peter ,
Welcome to the club,if you can build it bigger than you think you will need if you have the space.

Peter

 

[AJB Temple]

You have no chance of making a decent greenhouse for £200 if you are having to buy pre-finished timber and also glass. The recycling option above is a good idea. In the meantime, poly tunnels are cheap and effective solutions. To make a watertight wooden greenhouse frame is quite fiddly joinery.

Greenhouses are difficult environments as they get very hot in summer (lots of frame movement) and must be well vented (probably automatically, e.g. with a wax expansion venting system) and in winter they are cold and exposed to harsh elements. Good wooden greenhouses usually have quite substantial timbers. Don't underestimate the weight of glass. You can use poly, which is much lighter, but flexes a good deal and unless you buy quite expensive horticultural stuff it tends to go brittle and discolour. To put this in context price wise, it cost me £120 just to buy glass to replace about a third of the panes in a 12frt by 8ft aluminium greenhouse earlier this year, about £14 for guttering kits and £20 for a couple of vents.

It does not really sound as if you gave the facilities to do a trouble free build, and in your shoes with limited budget I would look for a second hand aluminium frame on gumtree and local ads.

Another thought is Costco do small proper greenhouses (alloy frame) for about £300 as I recall. That might be a good starting point for a low budget, with minimal hassle.

The cedar ones I was thinking of start around £800.

 

[dickm]

A cedarwood greenhouse is lovely, but well, well out of the budget range suggested. The aluminium option, secondhand is less aesthetically pleasing, but much more practical and economical. Trying to make a useable house with other softwoods is likely to be the worst of all worlds - ceaseless maintenance and probably no money saving by the time the timber is moulded to section. There are lots of wooden designs available in old (i.e. pre-1950) books and magazines, but they are only there because extruded aluminium hadn't really hit the market.
Strongly suggest you swallow pride and aesthetic sense and scan the for sale columns of your local paper. They should provide a very useful ali model for £100 at most within a few weeks.

 

[Rhossydd]

Lots of good advice already in this thread.
Wooden greenhouses can be lovely things, IF they're well made of Teak or Western Red Cedar. Teak is to all intents and purposes total overkill and cripplingly expensive now. WRC is a good timber choice, but again isn't a cheap option. To make anything properly durable will take a lot of time and skill. In manufactured wooden greenhouses you'll always see proper joinery, not dowel joints too.

If you want it to be actually useful, rather than just decorative, an Aluminium house is definitely the way to go. B&Q offer some good budget ali houses that, with a concession discount, can be bought for just over your £200 budget.
Second-hand is a good source. You can get decent houses for almost nothing, but will probably have to dis-assemble and remove it yourself. If you do have to shift one, make sure you take loads of photos before disassembly so you can work out what goes where when rebuilding it. Expect to budget for a few broken panes of glass and extra glazing clips and nuts 'n bolts too.

 

[blackrodd]

Lots of good advice already in this thread.
Wooden greenhouses can be lovely things, IF they're well made of Teak or Western Red Cedar. Teak is to all intents and purposes total overkill and cripplingly expensive now. WRC is a good timber choice, but again isn't a cheap option. To make anything properly durable will take a lot of time and skill. In manufactured wooden greenhouses you'll always see proper joinery, not dowel joints too.

If you want it to be actually useful, rather than just decorative, an Aluminium house is definitely the way to go. B&Q offer some good budget ali houses that, with a concession discount, can be bought for just over your £200 budget.
Second-hand is a good source. You can get decent houses for almost nothing, but will probably have to dis-assemble and remove it yourself. If you do have to shift one, make sure you take loads of photos before disassembly so you can work out what goes where when rebuilding it. Expect to budget for a few broken panes of glass and extra glazing clips and nuts 'n bolts too.

Well said, + 1 for the above! Rodders