Shade House Construction
After getting a load of the prices for high tunnel type frame kits, I decided to go with the design principles used at a number of university ag demonstrations. I settled on 18 by 40 feet as being a manageable size with plenty of headroom and sufficiently vertical sides as to not lose the use of the space nearest the walls. Eleven ribs, each thirty feet long, works fine. Throughout this, remember that you can scale this idea to any size, from a small backyard installation to a 300 foot long high tunnel. Briefly, the structure is eleven 30-foot long 1-1/2 inch PVC ribs, with a 40-foot center brace of the same pipe material. The rib arc is maintained by rebar stakes, over which the ends of the pipe ribs slide. That’s your first task, to locate the stakes. I used fairly heavy rebar, 3/8 to 1/2 inch diameter. I picked up surplus rebar from a metal recycler, but frugalistas might find it for free wherever concrete is being poured. You need pieces of very roughly two feet, which...