"Chris Hogg" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 4 May 2011 22:36:51 +0000, Tractorboy
wrote:


Hi,
I'm a newbie here. I've just bought a secondhand 8x10 Alton greenhouse
and now must go and dismantle and collect it from the seller.
I'd like advice about the best way to do this... eg should I remove all
glass or transport the panels with glass in situ?
I've ordered a complete set of assembly hardware from Alton so I can be
savage when dismantling and use new screws etc when reassembling.
What sequence should I dismantle - eg roof....walls... ends. Or roof...
ends...walls?

I've downloaded the assembly instructions from the Alton website and
notice that there is mastic used along the ridge. Is this easy to
access and cut through with a Stanley knife?

I will be hiring a van to transport the greenhouse and will need to
bring all the tools I'm likely to need (screwdrivers, saw, knife,
spanners) Anything else?

Number all the angles where struts, beams, cross members, side members
etc come together: 1,1,1,1; 2,2,2; 3,3,3,3; 4,4 etc. so that you know
which bits go together in which corners etc. Take a felt pen or two.

--

Chris

Gardening in West Cornwall overlooking the sea.
Mild, but very exposed to salt gales

Chris I think you put it just as well as I did in ......

You can probably get away with transporting any opening windows and doors
as entire subassemblies, but everything else needs to be broken down.
Expect to have to deal with broken glass and have some suitable non-slip
gloves for handling it. Also worth having a wrench and the right socket
set for the bolts as well as a couple of adjustables.

The bolts do tend to have corroded/seized even if they are aluminium -
particularly the ones near the ground. Apart from that it should be
obvious that the order to dismantle is glass out first - especially from
the roof. Hard hat not a bad idea here. The structure is quite vulnerable
to wind damage during this stage if it is in an exposed location. As the
other poster said take lots of pictures and if possible mark the corners
with numbers before taking it apart. It will almost certainly go together
more easily in the same configuration.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Martin's post above has just reminded me of marking corners etc. I was Stage
Manager of a play which when the run was finished at one theatre
http://www.apollo-theatre.org.uk/ we moved it to another theatre
http://www.friendsofshanklintheatre.org.uk/ for a further run. I numbered
each of the joints of the 'flats' (the 'walls' of the set) and it all went
together so easily. Start at one corner of your greenhouse and mark
everything '1' with a felt tip pen, the next joint '2' the next '3' etc.Then
take close up photos ;-) Now when you start to assemble and you pick a
piece up if it has a '10' at one end and '14' at the other, you will get a
'rough' idea of where it is going. In my case at the theatre, a flat with
'1' on one edge and '2' on the other was downstage left, '7' and '8'
somewhere in the middle. "Where's flat '2' and '3'?"

Treat it all as an engineering project not a gardening project

Mike
--

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It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
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