Today I acquired...........

[4String.]

I couldn't source the staging I wanted for my greenhouse so ended up buying five two shelf hostess trolleys with one pair of lockable wheels at one end off eBay shipped from China .. supposed to be stainless steel but they do rust if something is stood on them for weeks & weeks without it being moved and the trolley cleaned off astey are usually getting wet several times a day .
That was six years ago and they are still going strong .

My 13 yr old daughter (at the time ) helped me lay some nice smooth 500 x 500 x 35 mm thick slabs on top of the rough concrete floor. She soon picked up the idea to a six foot spirit level and the 15 mm incline to one corner where she'd bust the concrete out to put a drain in for me , it's now like an operating theatre .
The best thing about the trolley's is that they can be moved about with ease and taken out of the glass house and almost have the plants wheeled to their final location . At £50 a pop inc. delivery they worked out about £12 cheaper than a normal fixed galv glasshouse staging . One of my better buys I can tell you , as I can quickly & easily empty the glass house to wash & sterilize it each spring and at the onset of winter .


re Growing containers ..
B&Q do a nice bright orange plastic buckets for 99p , they are OK to grow toms , cucs , capsicums , egg plants & ginger etc in so long as you put four equal space 10 mm dia drain holes 12 mm up from the floor . I used mine for almost four years till I was able to pick up 25 end of season heavy duty 30 (?) litre tubs from /Range and Better Bargains or B&M etc . for five or six pounds each during those four years .

I can source the right staging from Two West’s and Elliot at Chesterfield, but I’ll be hanged if I’m paying phone number prices!

Their aluminium staging looks gorgeous and would last for ever, but I can live with £25’s worth of tantalised timber from B&Q, a box of screws, and a couple of hours work. Next purchase will be some automatic openers for the roof lights, (went in at 10 o’clock this morning and it was 46 degrees ), and need to look into rainwater harvesting and an irrigation system.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Slim pickings today, but I got what I was after.

To right.
Old fashioned bicycle Ever Ready lamp. This one will replaced the other one I owned. As that one was sold on.

Set of Hole saws, to be donated to MIS.
Hole saw arbour, to be mine, brand new

Old style side cutters, with serrated sections to fix crimps.
Multi Tool, stolen already by Mini Me.

Plus a old glass bottle.
No other reason than I liked it. £2:00.

The rest £4:00.


Plus a nice lunch with 2 ladies who were in deep debate.

 

[zx9]

I can source the right staging from Two West’s and Elliot at Chesterfield, but I’ll be hanged if I’m paying phone number prices!

Their aluminium staging looks gorgeous and would last for ever, but I can live with £25’s worth of tantalised timber from B&Q, a box of screws, and a couple of hours work. Next purchase will be some automatic openers for the roof lights, (went in at 10 o’clock this morning and it was 46 degrees ), and need to look into rainwater harvesting and an irrigation system.

I have two Bayliss Auto vents in my 8x10 ft greenhouse's roof, well worth the money. I want to get a couple for the louvres in the sides but non of them look as robust as the Bayliss roof vent openers.

 

[Munkul]

Yesterday, I bought a pillar drill for £180...

So what it actually was, was I paid £180 for a Bison 6" machine vice with a pair of original jaws, and a hefty X-Y positioning table, to fit to my Arboga geared head drill.

And it came with a free 1.5hp MT3 pillar drill with a 240v VFD!

Anyone want to buy a drill?

 

[Jlg]

Yesterday, I bought a pillar drill for £180...

So what it actually was, was I paid £180 for a Bison 6" machine vice with a pair of original jaws, and a hefty X-Y positioning table, to fit to my Arboga geared head drill.

And it came with a free 1.5hp MT3 pillar drill with a 240v VFD!

Anyone want to buy a drill?

I'll give you a tenner for it

 

[DAPPH]

I can source the right staging from Two West’s and Elliot at Chesterfield, but I’ll be hanged if I’m paying phone number prices!

Their aluminium staging looks gorgeous and would last for ever, but I can live with £25’s worth of tantalised timber from B&Q, a box of screws, and a couple of hours work. Next purchase will be some automatic openers for the roof lights, (went in at 10 o’clock this morning and it was 46 degrees ), and need to look into rainwater harvesting and an irrigation system.

It's worth buying quality once rather than cheap dozens of times & getting ruined crops in the glasshouse as a result .
I've spent a lot of money buying that experience .

Both of us are really into our 36 " high raised brick built veg & flower beds and bonsai , so we needed something very reliable and something that would not clog up . Decided after that after 15 years of many false starts the watering had to be house mains pressure .
It took a while & £££££'s to get water & electricity out to the garage , greenhouse , & log cabin but was worth it . I have numerous external bib taps all running of a copper line that has one of the break pipe shut off devices in it & winter isolators & drain downs .

I now have five of our irrigation systems in use , using the following :-

Hoselock C2 clock timers at mains pressure eBay 150467877484 not found anything to beat them and always use Hoselock fittings & connectors .

We use mainly fine micro misting heads that have an on off capability as you don't always want everywhere getting the same amount of water .

eBay
262990524514
These are excellent micro vari flow watering heads by Antelcoc , the on off is also used to vari the volume of water . As I've said we tend to use the misting heads but on some of the raised beds at the ends we use a few directional micro sprays.

Getting the 1/2 " main line hose was also from the same company as is the 1/4 " break off lines , 1/4" straight connectors and all half inch elbows , " T"'s , straight connector and end plugs these are held on the fitting using plastic ratchet crimps .. we found that when the systems had drained down...... if it was really hot day the pipe work got soft & blew off connectors before the new incoming water cooled the pipes down .

The same for the 1/4 " lines to each spray / misting head , but this time for each end of the line most of which are 1500 mm long ( means you can move them about easily to different tubs pots or positions , I cut 25 mm lengths of 8 mm copper gas pipe with a thin blade angle grinder de burred them at both ends and then slid a sleeve over both ends of the umbilical neoprene tube leaving a 1.5 mm proud neck to make a sealing washer when the head is screwed fully in . Then screwed the fittings in the tubes , the copper stops the softened pipes expanding and getting blown off with the pressure .

In the roof of the glass house on only one side away from the sun I have two misting heads on home made variable angle knuckles so I can mist spray seedlings & newly sown seeds in seconds

All our tubs of plants have a spray head turned down to a couple of drips or so per second . ( used a moisture probe to get optimum settings for each plant )

For extra nutrient other than the basic growth medium I use I give most plants a 1/3 litre of hand watering with tomato grow once every four days once the first flowers have set .

Re Your auto vents . It's worth having one auto louvre set in the middle of the wall at a low level on the least sunny side of the glasshouse , so that when the top vents open if the door is closed air the hotter can circulate up & out and cooler air is drawn in .

 

[DAPPH]

I have two Bayliss Auto vents in my 8x10 ft greenhouse's roof, well worth the money. I want to get a couple for the louvres in the sides but non of them look as robust as the Bayliss roof vent openers.

The Two Wests louvre vent with auto opening attachment seems OK for the low level vent , I 've had mine for about 10 years come Feb 2020 . Had to lubricate the screw threads on the piston mount with Vaseline when I was fitting things up as things were so tight I felt I might break something .

 

[4String.]

Excellent advice, many thanks .

 

[Tangledfeet]

Two-stage regulator and flow meter... spot the issue! (Email to supplier sent.)

 

[JLP]

Two-stage regulator and flow meter... spot the issue! (Email to supplier sent.)

No gas float?

 

[slim_boy_fat]

A piece of leather apron, thanks to @Yamhon

 

[Tangledfeet]

No gas float?

Nope! Try again...

 

[Maker]

The numbers face the wrong way?

 

[Tangledfeet]

The numbers face the wrong way?

We have a winner!

Both from the same manufacturer, too.

 

[Munkul]

I can't think of any time that could possibly be an issue. You get regulators with outlets left or right so they can't please everyone.

 

[Tangledfeet]

I can't think of any time that could possibly be an issue. You get regulators with outlets left or right so they can't please everyone.

Refer to my post; same manufacturer so one would've hoped that they'd make things fully compatible, no? Looking at Weldability's website it would seem that they all exit on the RHS. Minor issue but shortsighted and unfortunate all the same.

 

[bigegg]

dont you unscrew the brass ring at the bottom of the glass to loosen it, and turn it round?

 

[Tangledfeet]

dont you unscrew the brass ring at the bottom of the glass to loosen it, and turn it round?

I'll go take a look... it seemed quite well assembled. Cheers!

 

[Tangledfeet]

Oh dear... I've just made a Grade A plonker of myself on the forum... the clear plastic cover easily unscrews and the inside can be rotated... time to take the dogs for a walk and step away from the internet for a wee while.

 

[bigegg]

Oh dear... I've just made a Grade A plonker of myself on the forum... the clear plastic cover easily unscrews and the inside can be rotated... time to take the dogs for a walk and step away from the internet for a wee while.

dont consider the day a waste:

it made *me* happy.