Contents
A greenhouse is a wonderful help in the household of any summer resident. The ability to grow greens and vegetables a month or two earlier than in the open field, grow seedlings, harvest two crops per season, and even grow flowers for sale – all this is definitely worth the effort spent on building a greenhouse. And taking into account the development of the building materials market, it will not be difficult to assemble it with your own hands. Easy to assemble and easy to use greenhouses, the frame of which is made of a metal profile pipe.
Pros and cons of a profile pipe
Profile pipes are usually made from low-alloy carbon steel. They can be of any shape except round, but in construction for the construction of various types of frames, rectangular and square are most in demand. Multi-stage heat treatment of the profile pipe guarantees the reliability of the butt joints and the absence of mechanical stress inside. Thus, the main advantage of the profile pipe is the high strength and durability of the material.
Such structures are not subject to rust and corrosion, are light in weight, but are able to withstand a serious load during operation. They are easy to work with – cut or weld, and they are inexpensive. This type of material has practically no drawbacks. The only difficulty in the work is difficult bending. Profile pipes are the most common material for building the frames of greenhouses and even houses with your own hands.
Pipe size selection
On sale there are pipes of almost any size. The manufacturers themselves recommend using a profile with a cross section of 25 mm or more for the construction of greenhouses and hotbeds, depending on the type of polycarbonate that the frame will be sheathed with. For the base of the greenhouse, it is advisable to use pipes of a larger diameter. For wind resistance and, especially, snow resistance, the thickness of the metal must be at least one and a half millimeters.
Drawings of improvised structures (types)
The first step in assembling a greenhouse is a detailed diagram or drawing. You can take drawings from the Internet as a basis, but adapt them to your site. Each type of greenhouse has its own drawings and manufacturing features. The most common type is a gable greenhouse or a house. In second place in terms of prevalence is the arched form.
The dimensions of buildings are usually calculated based on the length and width of the polycarbonate sheets that will be used for sheathing, so that large pieces do not have to be cut off and thrown away. If you do not grow vegetables for sale, then a greenhouse up to three meters wide and about six meters long is enough. The optimum angle of inclination of the roof is about 30 degrees. Making a greenhouse can take about two to three days.
We are building a frame
The basic set of tools for assembling a frame with your own hands is a tape measure, a level, a grinder (or metal shears) and an electric screwdriver. For end walls, it is recommended to use profiles 40 by 20 mm. To speed up the work, and if you are confident in your drawing and know how to handle metal profiles, you can immediately cut all the details of the frame.
If not, then the first step is to assemble the frame of the rear wall of the greenhouse. Given the drawing, cut the profile to the desired length. The segments are fastened with screws, self-tapping screws or rivets. Further, it is necessary to measure the resulting frame element in all parameters – length, width, diagonals. The last measurement is fundamentally important – the size of the diagonals must match. Similarly, you need to assemble the front end wall and fix both walls to the base, adjusting the correct installation with a plumb line.
Then you can cut the guides for the side walls. Here it is enough to use a pipe 20 by 20 millimeters. The guides must be fixed to the base every 50 centimeters. The frame of the side walls is completed by a profile fixed on top parallel to the bottom profile. Side rails and roof rails are attached to it. Another guide is attached under the roof ridge.
Video “How to build a frame”
In this video you can see the algorithm of actions during the erection of the frame for the greenhouse.
Foundation
A gable greenhouse is the easiest to assemble with your own hands, but the first thing to do for it is to prepare the foundation. It can be wood, brick or concrete. The concrete foundation is the simplest, but quite reliable. Along the perimeter of the future greenhouse, you need to dig a ditch up to thirty centimeters deep and about 20 centimeters wide.
It is necessary to drive reinforcement into the ground (you can cut a profile pipe), on which cuts of a profile pipe will be welded under the base of the greenhouse. It is enough to do this after a meter and a half. In the corners, it is better to drive in not one piece of reinforcement, but two – at a minimum distance to the actual corner. The bottom layer of the foundation is fine gravel.
Before laying the concrete, it must be compacted with your own hands and the final height of the gravel layer should be no more than 5 centimeters. Concrete is poured over this layer. After the concrete has dried, a 40×20 mm profile pipe must be welded to the reinforcement.
How to bend pipes
One of the main issues when assembling a gable greenhouse is to cut or bend the profile pipe at the transition point between the walls and the roof.
Before bending the pipe, you need to double-check the drawing and make sure that the bend angle is chosen correctly. In order to bend the pipe with your own hands, you need to cut it with a grinder at the place of the intended bend.
After such processing, the pipe bends quite easily. Next, the fold point needs to be welded. Also on the net you can find tips on bending profile pipes with sand or water. And the third option is to use a pipe bender, but these are additional costs.
Welding a greenhouse from metal pipes
As mentioned above, welding is needed to fix the frame to the foundation or pipe bends. This is the simplest reason why a welding machine may be needed to build a greenhouse. In the event that it is planned to manufacture a year-round capital greenhouse, it is better to connect parts of the profile not with self-tapping screws, but also by welding. The assembled frame of the greenhouse is ready to be sheathed with polycarbonate sheets or film.
Video “What the finished frame for the greenhouse looks like”
This video shows what a finished frame for a greenhouse from a profile pipe looks like.
