I'm planning to put up a hoophouse before fall and would like to hear from recent purchasers regarding their opinion of different manufacturers.
The house will be 30X96 and unheated. I have quotes from Rimol, Atlas and Farmtek. Any other vendors who should be considered? Any reason to rule any of these vendors out?
How about design your own? Built a greenhouse last winter and when farmtek could not deliver on time did some research and ended up putting up a PVC frame. Mine is 22 X 32, the designs that I found were only 12 feet wide, made a few design changes added the additional width and no problems with the snow. It can be made any length. The covering plastic and holders for the plastic came from Farmtek.
I have an Atlas 24x96 growing house and a 16x96 hoop house and am very pleased with them. I also have a 30x96 Connley hoop house and it's hard to keep the snow off it. I like the Atlas best because of the round bows and the ease of construction. Atlas is just an 800 call away and they build there own, ther customer service is great and that's what sold me. Plastic covering is usually available locally and should be tax free for a farm, this will help keep down shipping cost. Good luck and let us know what you will grow. Mac
What model Atlas do you have? I'm looking at their Snow Arch. A friend put up their RT20 model last year and wasn't real happy with how it went up as he had problems setting the ground posts for the rectangular bows.
I'm planning on using the house as a hoophouse for early season greens, tomatoes & peppers and late season greens. Several farmers nearby have put up hoophouses and they are able to get to market about 4 weeks earlier than everyone else.
AndyF, I don't remember the model # of my houses, the web site has newer styles and don't even list a 16' hoop house or a 24' growing house. The 16' hoop house only has one purlin fron front to back overhead, the bigger houses have top and side purlins with cross braces. They are alot more trouble to install, but the extra bracing is needed for wind and snow. I would study a little on bow spacing in a heavy wind,ice, or snow area, all my houses are on 4' spacing. I have seen plastic sag with just a little ice or snow. That suggestion to build your own with pvc in your part of the country should be taken with a grain of salt. Ain't gonna make it brother. Two other ideas that might help are planting directly in the soil ( World famous Granger County Tomatoes) all plant in the soil under there hoop houses. The other idea is to use clear plastic and when the sun starts to get too hot just spray it with some cheap latex paint (the cheapest) to cut the sun down or maybe by that timne the plastic is ready to come off. I did that to my 16' hoop house last season and all the flowers had a good jump on spring. Sorry to be so long winded but there are 2 million tricks to the greenhouse business and I have only learned about 14. Mac
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