Hoophouse: The frame goes up

Time to start the real construction! My parents were visiting today and I hijacked them to help get the hoophouse frame up. They ended up helping me the entire afternoon, but we got a lot done.

I did most of the work getting the base together and level before they arrived. The spot in our garden where the hoophouse is going isn't quite even, so I had to dig down a bit on two sides to get the base level. I attached the 2'x8' hemlock lumber together with some long lag screws.

The EMT hoops will attach to the base on the inside of the base with strapping and lag screws. For the end hoops, I had to bend one end of the strapping and screw it into the end of the 16' base side before attaching the base ends.



This hoophouse shouldn't be going anywhere, but it'll act like a big sail and we get some string winds, so we also added four 4"x4" post anchors. They're screwed to the base and buried about 18" down. This should give the entire building some more stability.



With the base done, I marked off the locations for the hoops: every 27" on center, except the middle two hoops which would have a 30" separation. My parents held the hoops plumb and in place while I attached them with the two pieces of EMT strapping. This part went pretty fast and soon we had all eight hoops up. To add more support to the hoops, I drilled 1/4" holes through them, between the two strapping pieces and installed a lag screw to really secure them to the base.

The 16' ridge purlin was made from two 10' 3/4" EMT conduit pieces. I cut one piece to 6' and spliced it with a 10' piece. Installing the purlin was also pretty easy since I had the connectors already in place, but it was still a two person job and we had to make sure the hoops were evenly spaced at the ridge before tightening the connectors.

With just that, the hoops were feeling pretty stable, but I had fashioned some diagonal braces to attach on the sides to add more rigidity. These braces were made from 5' sections of 3/4" EMT. I pounded about 1 1/2" flat on each end with a sledgehammer and bench vise. Note that the flattened sections are perpendicular to each other because one end is lag screwed to the top of the base frame and the other end is attached to a hoop with a self-drilling tek screw.

We installed a siderail/kneerail (made from two 1"x4"x8' boards spliced in the middle) on each side, attaching them with more EMT strapping and 3/4" wood screws. The strapping pieces on the end had to have one end bent around and screwed into the end of the board because we don't want the board sticking out beyond the end hoops. The siderails are multipurpose. They're used to tie the hoops together and will have wigglewire installed on the outside to attach the plastic to. They will also be used when installing the roll-up sides.

The hoops were now done, on to framing in the end walls. I had another 2"x8"x12' plank and cut that in half and nailed it to the middle inside of each base end. That gave me a 4"x6' base top to frame off of. The end frames are very simple with four vertical 2x4s and one header 2x4. The door frame was set for 36" wide. All the 2x4s were attached with framing nails for metal framing brackets and wood screws. The header 2x4 was attached to the end hoop with a modified piece of EMT strapping.











This guy is licensed to drill!