The pond The greenhouse
If you take a look at the two pictures below, showing the JCB doing its stuff to create an area for the greenhouse and then compare the shot below, you may not recognize that the JCB shoveling rocks and apparently surrounded by bushes and young trees, was standing roughly in the middle of where the new lawn is. Its amazing what a JCB, a chainsaw and 60 cubic metres of top soil can achieve!
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| The hardest thing to gauge when looking at
these pictures must be size. Some of the rocks that have been added to the
left hand side here are large, I would estimate them at around 60 - 70kg
each. As you can see from this picture quite clearly the water level is a
little low, that's because we have not filled it properly yet, but also as
the waterfall was leaking to both sides slightly when we first had it
flowing. Running it none stop for several days showed that those small leaks
can leak out quite a bit of water so attempts are being made to seal it
better. Hopefully we can persuade the local fire brigade to visit again soon and to fill up the pond the rest of the way.
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The pond is filtered by a Hozelok Bioforce 9000
UV filter system which I have located in this box. There is a submerged pump
in the pond which feeds water to the filter under pressure and from there it
is returned to the pond via the waterfall. The first switch on the box powers the filter (for the UV light) and the pump, the second the halogen lights on the waterfall, cunningly disguised as stones. Speaking of which, that's something we're not short of, here is my latest crop ready to conceal the other side of the waterfull and the plumbing.
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Left you can see that the lawn area has yet to be extended to go around the pond. However, we've already added a simple "viewing platform" for the waterfall´produced with a few logs and a chainsaw. |
| The decision to buy a greenhouse was taken in
July, however the Finnish vendors / importers were reluctant to supply one
of the size we wanted. Those available locally were just too small
and so we sourced one from the UK and had it shipped here. All in
all the cost of acquisition including freight compared favourably with the
retail price in Finland so we were quite happy.
The greenhouse arrived in early August but we were unable to start work until the area where we had chosen to locate it was cleared. We already had a large quantity of topsoil available so we wanted to dig out the area and replace the earth there. A quick attempt to dig it out by hand revealed that there was more rocks than soil in our chosen location so a JCB was used to clear the site. The JCB was also used to remove a pair of tree stumps that were close to the greenhouse's location. Although not in the way, they did obstruct the potential entrance area to the greenhouse
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Tree stumps removed. Thank you Mr JCB! I would never have got these out with my spade. |
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| So that was Saturday morning, preparing the
site and building the mould that the foundation for the base would be made
with.
By Saturday night the 300 kg of cement had been mixed (By hand - never again!) and the base laid. Pictured right is the concrete base, still in the wooden mould, with the metal base lying on top. In the foreground along the top of the base is a spirit level. The base looks a little bent in this picture - the spirit level confirms all is well - its an optical illusion. |
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| Sunday was another sweltering day and I set
about constructing the frame. Pictured right I am trying to figure
out how the corners are supposed to go together. The instructions
were worse than useless. Most daft was that the instructions showed
part numbers, but very few of the parts actually bore a number. A
very large jigsaw puzzle therefore!
By Sunday night the main frame was erected and there only remains the glazing to be done. Then we'll turn to filling the beds of the greenhouse with soil and tidying up the area around it. |
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| Next Phase: Glazing and power | |
| The glazing took a little longer than it should
have done as there were several pieces of glass broken in the shipping
from the UK to Finland. However, a quick RFQ process to several
glaziers and a chat with the greenhouse vendor and the problem was sorted.
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| Having completed the basic construction we then thought about how to create the beds inside the house. Above you can see a wall that is lying on it's side made from pine logs, each about 35cm long and fixed together by attaching to a plank at their foot. One of these will be erected either side of the footpath down the centre of the greenhouse. The path in the centre will be two paving stones wide (40cm each), this should give enough room for a reasonably large wheel barrow to be put in there while maintaining a decent sized bed either side. Also visible in the picture is a piece of conduit. Power has now been fed to the greenhouse and we will be putting in underground heating coils to take the frost out in early Spring. The heating provided will be 800 watts, 400w per side. Its hoped that this will bring the greenhouse into use a few weeks earlier than otherwise, in March / April 2003. | 
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