As with all builds, there comes a stage of which you question why you decided to do something a bit.. extreme 😉

In this case, the questionable decision of adding 10 tons of 1 inch rock to setup the base of your greenhouse. This was how I spent my Saturday. Thankfully my good friend came over to lend me a hand and we made good progress. All in all, it took us about 6 hours to move all 10 tons, or about 1.6ish tons per hour.. and boy were we both beat by the end of it.

I’ve had the opportunity to move that much rock before.. but that was roughly 12 years ago.. and as in all things.. the mind is willing, but the flesh.. well its a bit dated 😉

I am grateful that the path between the dump site and the end goal of where it needed to end up, was for the most part level and maybe only 20-30 yards. We took time alternating between wheeling the barrel back and forth, as any more than 2-3 times in continuous succession and we had a tendency to get sloppy or almost tip the load.

At the start of the job I had been worried that I didn’t order enough rock, but by the time we had got through half the pile it was obvious that I had figured out the proper amount for the job.. whew! Even had enough to run a good portion around our chicken/coop run (see previous post).

My recommendations for those thinking of proceeding with such a job.. if you’re gonna order that much rock, you most definitely want 3 or more people to help even out the workload. It can be done with less, but at that point satisfying one’s pride can come at a cost. The more friends you can drag into it.. the better!

The next step of the build will now be to add the end frames, then the grow beds/nft raft trough and finally the greenhouse film, door and fan ventilation. After that I will need to proceed with getting the shed/tank installed and then work on running the plumbing.

Still a ways off from completion, but progress has been great.. and steady. As long as I maintain momentum, I’m probably looking at around May/June to get started on cycling up the system.

I’ll keep you appraised 🙂