Showing posts with label 5 dollar greenhouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 5 dollar greenhouse. Show all posts

Home-made low cost pallet wood greenhouse, viable, safe, year-round food production.

The following article goes into detail on materials, uses, modifications and upgrades to suit your needs, budget and woodworking experience. 

The 5 Euro/Dollar/Pound Greenhouse...


its organic produce..

Home-made low cost pallet wood greenhouse - $5
Good companions, Courgettes and Tagetes erecta

its tenants..


We use our organic poultry to weed a control pests in the greenhouses. Depending on the scale of the job we alternate between the chickens and the quail. Above, Vladamir, Diavolo and Co., pretending not to notice that the quail have a big heap of compost to play in. At the end of the courgette season the quail move in to clean up the woodlice from the rotted compost so that we can plant the next lot of vegetables.

and its next lot of produce..
  

In line with tradition, we planted our garlic on the shortest day and harvested it on the longest.



Build a greenhouse to suit your budget

Anybody with the ability to assemble flat pack furniture can get to grips with this design in its cheapest form.

Home-made low cost old window glass and pallet wood greenhouse


We designed three models of greenhouse, which were made on the same principles of construction. The most expensive (left), made from recycled glass windows and pallet wood, will cost more if you purchase the leaded light and wooden posts. Our cost was 50 Euros but I estimate it would cost around 100 Euros if you needed to purchase the above items.

With water shortages, uncertain weather and continuing fallout from Fukushima, you can provide your family with year round vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers. The 7 Euro Greenhouse incorporates an old glass window and has purchased polythene on all sides. In Summer, its gable ends and door panels can be swapped for wire mesh, to allow for  ventilation.Home-made low cost old window glass pallet wood greenhouse


The glass greenhouse has walls made of recuperated windows, is more robust and remains warmer longer, once heated by the sun. With the addition of fleece covers, we can grow more tender vegetables throughout the year. In addition we can grow medicinals and tropicals. For more information see link at end of this article.
Start small - work up!



Our first design - the 5 Euro Greenhouse is still up and running after 4 years and a couple of mini hurricanes as well as deep snow.

Home-made low cost pallet wood greenhouse $5 greenhouse

Materials - Pallets

For the sides and door: I used 6 of the pallet wood shelving frames (illustrated below), which if you can't get you can make from 5 standard pallets (120cm x 80cm), this would mean 3 sections each side rather than 2 in my design.
For the roof trusses: 4 standard pallets
For the bottom rails to allow raised beds: 1.5 standard pallets
To make the jig for the trusses: 2 standard pallets

Home-made low cost pallet wood greenhouse - pallets


The greenhouse walls were made using the vertical uprights taken from a set of pallet shelving which originally had served to hold pot plants. They were 80cm wide and 170cm tall. I was able to recuperate some wire fencing from our local dump and cut it to fit these rectangular frames. I have since recuperated several of these shelving systems so they seem to be a standard throw-away pallet item. If however, you can not get hold of them just use your stock of pallet wood to create something similar. I used four of these frames (shown opposite) for the side walls and two more for the door and end wall.



 

Mass Production: Home-made pallet jig

Home-made low cost pallet wood greenhouseThe first thing I always consider, in a design of this sort is to create a way of getting a uniformity of construction. This is not just for aesthetics but because it makes everything easier when you come to fit the project together! To this end I set up a simple jig - out of pallet wood of course!

Make a cheap but robust pallet wood greenhouse

To fabricate the 5 identical roof trusses needed for this design, I constructed a jig from two pallets joined together to create a work-surface of roughly 2.40m in length. Wooden blocks were then screwed at key positions so as to act as 'stops' when the truss components were laid onto the pallet.

Something perhaps not so obvious in the Youtube film, is that my design incorporates a vertical piece of wood at the lower end of each truss. This enables each truss to be fitted to the inside face of the greenhouse wall. Once screwed into place, this addition prevents the tendency for the truss to move outwards. I felt that this vertical piece of wood, pushing against the inside face of the greenhouse, would be more secure than just relying on a screw or nail to hold the truss in place.

Once attached to the opposite walls the trusses were joined to each other at the side of the roof apex using pallet wood planks. This way of linking each truss means the whole roof structure becomes stiffer and provides a 'smooth' surface for the polythene roofing at the apex. See photo above.


To upgrade the 5 Euro Greenhouse, purchase some horticultural grade 200 micron polythene for around 30 Euros.

Pallet wood greenhouse design and construction

Our Little Helpers

And now if you'd like to, sit back and watch the film:



RELATED PROJECTS with live links to our detailed articles




If you're feeling more ambitious and have a good local source of discarded glass windows, then you might think of building our Glass Window Greenhouse 




Our Pallet Wood Chicken Coop - Hen House design and construction. This is also a prototype Tiny House and can be made in kit form and transported easily to where needed.



Our Dry Toilet System Save water, save money and make yourself some great compost!

Wheelbarrow rebuild using pallet wood

I made a pallet wood replacement for our wheelbarrow and it served its purpose for about 8-10 years. During the last few months of life, I could see the inherent mechanical weaknesses in my version and so as the frame and wheel were still in running order, I determined...read more


All the best and thanks for dropping by. Please feel free to share this article, comment and/or ask for further information.

Cheers, Andy
© Andy Colley 2014

Including more greenhouse projects)


Where & How to Collect Pallets - Identifying untreated wood, safety and good housekeeping

Pallets - The Low-down - Where, What and How?


So you've been round to your local big chain supermarket and they've told you all their pallets are reused. Well this maybe true for them but not for all pallets. In Europe consigned/reusable pallets are painted a specific colour, which designates the company who owns them. Funnily enough sometimes bits of these blue and red pallets actually turn up on building sites in scrap wood but they are the least useful of all the pallets and I would never use them. What you are looking for are the unpainted untreated pallets.



The pallet shown above is a very unusual one in that it is an 'in-house' pallet made of untreated wood for the specific purpose of transporting a display stand for an exhibition. It was put out for me after use.

BE PREPARED Any time we are out in our car I carry what I call my pallet finder's kit:

ropes

quality work gloves
 

wood saw

steel toe capped work boots

a hard hat (for entering building sites)

and a red flag!




That way I'm ready for a maximum pallet haul!


For a specific job you may also require thicker or longer timber so you should have a whole range of pallet providers in your recuperating itinerary. Pallet collecting is logical. Firms which transport/manufacture/sell large and heavy items have substantial pallets. So a few of the companies I collect from, for example, are swimming pool manufacturers, exhibition stand makers and a double glazing and joinery firm. All these are small family type businesses. I know the people who own them and/or the foreman. I didn't start out knowing them I just saw the pallets and went in and asked.


The upright from a plant transporter pallet.

Using five of these uprights I created the sides of the greenhouse frame below.






This is one of my first major pallet wood projects and you can find the link to the written article and film: The Five Euro Greenhouse, which shows the detailed construction at end of this post.

After I had made the above greenhouse, I then went on to design and make another but this time combining recuperated glass windows with the pallet wood frame, again there is a link at the end of this post.




Let Companies Know What You Are Doing With Their Pallets


I always make a point of telling the providers why I want the pallets and I ask for their e-mail addresses to send pictures of the finished item. I also give out  links to my youtube site so they can see the films. That way my pallet donors get feedback on the transformation of an eyesore and nuisance which was hanging around their parking lot. There is another side to this too, many of these businesses are only too glad to find I am recycling this resource. As intelligent, thinking people, they are only too aware that their waste is ending up in landfill and/or is being burnt in open fields and they are, to say the least, not very comfortable with this idea. So in repurposing and reusing pallets you are, helping yourself, helping others and helping in the long-term to conserve the planet. Often company personnel will see you entering their premises and bring out pallets fresh from the warehouse, on rainy days this can be very welcome!

Cracking the pallet codes


Understanding pallet 'seals' is an important factor and something you need to mug-up on before you set out on your first collecting trip. There are many sites including Wikipedia, which will explain these but I'm posting this here to give you an example of what you are looking for.

This 'seal' will be located on one of the pallet blocks:

The 'wheat stamp' denotes IPPC compliance, confirming the pallet to be made of de-barked wood. Useful if you were unsure whether the wood was real!

DK -  the country code i.e. in this case Denmark.

8C - the pallet manufacturer.

S5 - the treatment company.

HT - Heat Treated = Gravy!


All wooden crates and pallets in 74 countries of the world have an International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) seal on them. These denote several things but the most important are the bottom two letters - you are looking for pallets with no chemical treatment. In the US fumigation with methyl bromide, coded MB, is more common than in Europe, where heat treatment (HT) is the norm. However, treated pallets do occur in Europe even though you will find several sites informing you they don't! In the case of chemical treatment you will also see the resultant discolouration. Many garden centre suppliers, for example, dip items or conveyor spray them and their carrier pallets simultaneously and you will see immediate evidence of this in the blue-green 'dye' infusing the whole pallet.



Here's something we haven't seen before on pallets but is very welcome. It's the eco label for managed and sustainable forestry. Read all about it here: http://www.sacert.org/woodmark/pefc






Happy Hunting!

All the best and thanks for dropping by and if you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share, ask questions or comment.
Cheers, Andy

© Andy Colley 2014

RELATED ARTICLES

A Few Guidelines for Collecting Pallets

I thought it might be helpful if I shared my five rules to make it easier for you to obtain the basic material...read more

How to Dismantle Pallets for free Carpentry Wood

The first thing to do with your pallet when you’ve got it out of the car is look underneath it and see if the nails attaching the planks are visible...read more

The 5 Euro/Dollar/Pound Greenhouse

Home-made low cost greenhouse designed to use free untreated pallet wood. How to build a viable, safe, year-round food production system...read more 

Home-made, Big Cheap Glass Greenhouse from Old Windows Pt 1 (of 3) - Design

The idea for the greenhouse was to have something that was both decorative and practical...read more

DIY verandah-style greenhouse, sunspace, draught lobby

I love this greenhouse, it seems so right in the surrounding rural scene and it's made from an interesting eclectic mix of recuperated...read more

Pallet Wood Hen House/Chicken Coop & Tiny Tiny House - Part 1 (of 4) Construction

We designed and have already built one of these coops not just as accommodation for the hens but as a prototype we could build here in the workshops... read more
 


Pallet Wood Garden Gazebo Part 1 - Posts & Framework

We want to spend as much leisure time in the garden as possible. Much as we love our poultry we do draw the line at...read more


Pallet Wood Garden Gazebo Part 2 - Trellis and Door

The perimeter of the garden gazebo now being complete,  the next stage was to make it chicken proof, starting with the door...read more



RETURN TO GREEN LEVER CONTENTS PAGE FOR MORE ARTICLES