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Building a cattle panel hoop house

 
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Location: Tonasket, WA
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Does anyone have tips on building with cattle panels? I have several 16' by 4' ones and having just moved back onto our place, am in need of a quick "shelter" for my tools and in the stacking functions tradition, will probably use it as an unheated greenhouse to extend my season or start veggies in the spring. I have found several blogs on doing this type of thing for hogs and chickens, but just wanted to check in with the Permie crowd to see if there is some group wisdom about this. BTW, I also have a huge amount of transparent plastic in a roll left over from putting it under our RV, which I hope to use in this project.
Thanks!
 
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The sky's the limit if you have plenty of panels. I find one can make a very sturdy hoop house with the use of T posts and basic horizontal panels and then attach the arched hoops to this base to get more space and height to the house. I've made a sheep run in shelter in this manner and found it to be infinitely sturdy and stable.

If attaching to a wooden base, you are limited by the length of the panels in forming your arch/height to the house. I've made a coop on a wooden base 8 x 10 and it didn't budge in the recent 70-80 mph winds and storms we had recently.

How large a structure are you wanting to build?
 
Barbara Greene
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I have 6 panels, but was only planning to use 2 of them for this project. Thanks for your reply, I was wondering about wind worthiness, so if they are tied down well (as in T posts) they will do fairly well?
 
Jay Green
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That depends on how strongly you build. Cattle panels have good flex and tensile strength but that flexibility can work against you if you don't have them stabilized to a sturdy base that works with the height of the structure.
 
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