Bows!

Well putting the bows in took some time since the leg pipe are under pressure. We tried putting each side in at the same time, but eventually concluded that putting one side in and then the other went faster. A rubber mallet works well for this task to help persuade those bows into place.

We had a great deal of nice weather but the rain eventually rolled in so we pulled out some straw bales to help control the clay muck. The dirt in the greenhouse will need to be amended to help soil drainage and provide richer soil for our plants.

Time for the grinder! Since these are used bows, some additional work needed to be done to make them usable for our project. There were a few bows that we couldn't remove the bolts during the take-down phase, so out came the grinder to speed up the job and smooth out some rough metal.

Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the purlin pipe being installed but here's what the ridge purlin looks like complete. We used the tracker to accomplish this task. I sat in the bucket with all the tools (drill, Tek screws, purlin clamps) while my husband rolled me back to each connection. Each connection comes together with U shaped purlin clamps and Tek screws to secure the bows and pipe together.

The excess pipe was cut off using the handy sawzall and used on the other two greenhouse purlins.