5 Essential Polycarbonate Greenhouse Upgrades: Honest Review & Tips

Hi family thanks for watching um I'm just taking a break for a second in the greenhouse my child was ever so kind to

share his cold with me so my voice Probably sounds off I've been promising that we would make a onee review video

of our polycarbonate Greenhouse that we got from um online I don't remember how to

pronounce the proper name of it of this particular version but I think overall we've been fairly satisfied with it

however I would share that a it's not for everyone on B there are probably about like five necessary things that we

didn't anticipate that you have to do when you get a greenhouse like this I guess you call them hidden fees

essentially there are basically five necessary upgrades to get your Greenhouse up and running that we will

go over in this video [Music] you know as hard as it is believe two

weeks ago I was suffering from heat stroke because it was 109 which I think is like 42 degrees

C and now it's just above freezing it's crazy but it also means that have to start getting the

greenhouse ready to do what we originally intended for it which is keep the frost off our plans last weekend

thankfully before I got too cold like it is right now I had the opportunity to rinse and clean out the greenhouse got

in here with the hose and just kind of scrub down all the walls before I jump too far into like the five uh necessary

upgrades just to give you a bit of history about this uh Greenhouse we were kind of going back and forth about uh

using milled wood we had and building our own and trying to like get corrugated plastic roofing materials but

we didn't exactly have the knowhow and we priced assessed what more materials we would need to do it ourselves with

all the material we had and we realized it was about the same price as it was to buy this so we went ahead and made a

decision to buy this instead because the beautiful thing about it is it came with all the instruction plans you didn't

have to kind of sort that stuff out yourself and you could Theory put it up in a day of course we picked a hot

weekend to do it put it all up and uh posted it online and people have been asking us since uh how we have found it

I wouldn't go so far as to say I love it but I definitely like it we've had to do a lot to tweak it to make it usable for

our needs if you are just thinking about getting a greenhouse definitely think about what you are intending to use it

for another thing too that you should really think about is again these five things that are

going to be necessary purchases the cost of the greenhouse for us at the time was $450 American dollars of course the

additional purchases we've made have well exceeded that just because the price tag seems affordable there are

other things to consider that may or may not change your mind so let me go through those five things right now so I

think the first thing that is essential upgrade for your polycarbonate prefab Greenhouse is improving the overall

structure point in case being the base now these polycarbonate prefab green houses are really ideal in the

sense that they can be shipped to your home they're very inexpensive and lightweight because they are lightweight

it is uh easy for them to fly away on you and basically our solution to anchoring the greenhouse was twofold a

was to mount it to uh pressure treated wood that would help Elevate the whole thing so that us who are very tall

people could have some head room in here and the second was to buy these actual anchors this bad boy has got these giant

eyelet screws driven down to the ground and is tied to them so it's pretty stable uh made everything Square before

we did that uh but agreeably that wasn't like an additional $200 between these anchors which I think

were about 40 and the pressure treated wood um and these plates that we screwed to both to connect them and of course

what you use to Anchor your building will really depend on what weather is like where you live now we never

bothered putting the extra support beams because we don't usually get heavy snowfall here if you do get heavy

snowfall here this would be a continuation of extra support and you can put wood support beams between the

panels to reinforce them should you get a heavy snowfall now the second necessary upgrade is

sealant now to be fair the instruction manuals for this particular model did actually specifically state that you

should probably be buying anchors like I mentioned in one um and you should probably buying sealant like I'm now

mentioning the thing though is they just suggested clear silicon cough um sealant which we found was not

sufficient enough no matter what we did we couldn't get that sealant to hold and and keep the water out until we found

this beautiful stuff which is RV sealant tape and it has done a marvelous job and you know a

little rain isn't a big deal but that was our problem we were getting a lot of rain the entire walls would be like

those decorative waterfall HS in like those fany restaurants where the wall is the waterfall I did lose a couple plants

because it was too wet and cold in here but the sealant tape really made a huge difference you still need the silicone

where the uh polycarbonate board meets the frame but for specifically the roof ridges you want something a little

stronger 4 in hey and it cost about I want to say $30 the Silicon we put on all the edges I can't remember if we

went through two or three tubes but I think that was $14 a pack now my number three necessary upgrade suggestion is

one of my favorites and I actually think it could work for all green houses not just these prefab ones H I guess in a

way all of these recommendations could apply to green houses anyway uh and my third favorite is the automatic beeswax

window let me show you so right now it is too cold in here for this thing to open up but this thing

is a beauty we stumbled upon it from YouTube we got it on Amazon it is a little bit cumbersome to install however

we were getting ready to go on holiday and had been manually opening this window and closing it every day and we

were worried about those who are watching after our home while we were gone having to do that because they

would have to come to our house twice a day and we wanted to make it easier on them I don't fully understand the

mechanics of how this thing works I know the way the Springs are and such makes a huge difference but there is beeswax in

this cylinder and as it's cold the beeswax hardens and the window contracts and closes itself but when the weather

heats up the beeswax melts and the Springs activate and let this window pop open so we no longer have to to come in

and out every day you know when the the weather is like 30° at night or 0° C and then during the day it's like 6010 I

love it to bits uh it's set it and forget it and it makes your life so much easier I think it was about $40 to $50

when I purchased it so number four is ironic because there are none in here uh that is shelving

that's because of how we like to use the space now shelving is really going to depend on what you use this greenhouse

for if you use it for some to just keep the frost off of your plants then basically you could probably get away uh

maybe like a bench to maximize the area that you can use to put plants in I actually wouldn't even recommend getting

a greenhouse this size I would recommend getting one of those like little small ones

that you can put the plants in and out of because it'll be so much easier but we wanted kind of a dual purpose we

wanted to be able to keep our plants that are Frost sensitive protected during the winter and then we also

wanted to use the space for seedlings now we don't do any potting or any of that kind of stuff in the greenhouse uh

we do all that outside the greenhouse mostly because we're too tall to do it in here and this space is a little small

you'll see a lot of green houses where like they put their little potting bench in the back and then they'll have like

rows of of shelves with all their plants on it which I guess is an ideal and neat if you live in an area where it's always

cold but we get fluctuations when it's really really hot we don't want to be working in here so I just put my potting

bench outside shelving is deceptively expensive if you're building it yourself you still have to buy the Timber and Lum

or Lumber I bought this bamboo rack from the store it was $60 supposed to be nice because it could

fold up and easily be taken in and out I don't think it's worth that cut price cuz you can take like old wood furniture

paint it so it doesn't mold too badly and bring it into this space and that would probably be the cheapest option

the only thing that's kind of a permanent fixture in here is our lemon tree which is just starting to turn

yellow yay so five is all about regulating the temperature in here during the winters this place will

get incred incredibly cold colder than it is outside and during the summer it'll get incredibly hot hotter than it

is outside so it will dramatically swing into the different Realms so if you're like us and you're King a plant in there

all year long you got to think about how you're going to handle it we did a lot of research about kind of off-grid or

passive heating methods including like getting uh buckets of water in here but the 10g buckets we used last year did

nothing the garbage can of um basically compost it did nothing so we have these giant barrels that I'm going to fill

with water I'm not banking on this working but I'll buy one of those uh little kits like we did for the chicken

coup that uh will turn this into a spet so that I can drain it because agreeably moving this full of water will be

possible one idea that I did get from YouTube that I'm kind of excited to try is getting one of those aquarium heaters

for like tropical fish and dropping it in here for one of the bigger drums but those run off of electricity I

eventually decided to build a solar system because I want to be able to have power out here I want to be able to have

my heat Maps my heating mats in the winter working I want to be able to have my fan going all the time I don't want

to be doing this checking on every day there are loads of options online we bought one of these uh vents that you

have to cut out and mount I bought a DC powered fan with an included monitor that will that will kick on when it hits

a certain temperature or a certain humidity degree but of course I don't want extension cords running throughout

my yard this fan is connected here to this cord which goes underneath the greenhouse and connects to here to my

very Hightech filing cabinet yeah that someone was throwing away my solar system in here is it going

yeah so it's got ventilation it's got a fan that's running in

there to run the fan but you know inverters they can't get hot and then I have the solar panel out here charging

it I think that all the parts together probably cost me somewhere around $300 Maybe even

$400 like I said I hadn't had much success with the passive options the solar system was definitely a luxury ad

another thing we had was this uh shade cloth which I just threw over the whole Greenhouse I probably should have

mounted it to the tree over here and put a couple poles in the ground and let it offset from the greenhouse if you can

give a minimum of 3 in between the shade cloth and the greenhouse you can get the maximum cool

number five's upgrade really kind of depends on where you live and what your expectations of use for your green hous

is for some maybe just getting this is enough this shade cloth cost something like

$50 the fan probably cost was 80 that blue Barrel that we've got you know that was

another $50 purchase when you consider the adapter that we'll get for it eventually as well you can end up

spending more money on keeping this thing being regulated temperature- wise than you actually spent on the

greenhouse itself so it's definitely something to think about in advance of how you want to use the space and what

your requirements for it are I don't think it would have changed our minds because ultimately it was fairly simple

to assemble and with some necessary modifications it has become quite robust and versatile for our needs so there you

have it please feel free to leave comments let us know if this review was helpful or if there's anything specific

that you want us to review in the future my favorite upgrade is by far the uh beeswax automatic window vent not having

to come out here every day to open and close that thing is so wonderful if you've made it this far to the end of

the video and you haven't already subscribed to our Channel please do we've greatly appreciated it and thank

you for taking the time watch me ramble on about things thanks for watching please like And subscribe

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