"Cheap" is key!
I found some prices for "metal wiring conduit EMT", but forgot to get the prices on flimsy PVC at Home depot for comparison.
>> 10' sticks of 3/4" PVC
>> This will be the first year for a walkin hoop house.
>> It will be 13' 3" wide and have 20' ribs of 1" PVC
Yowsa! I think that your hoop houses will be almost as big as my little manufactured home (exageration).
But bigger than any part of my yard. I'm picturing a hoop tunnel just big enough to straddle the RBs, like 3-5 feet wide. Bigger and more rigid than floating row covers, with more heat protection, and also able to keep rain off in the spring so i don't have to wait until summer for soil to be dry enough to work.
Ideally, they would be light enough and sturdy enough that I could flip them over for warm days, and back on in the evening. If course, there tends to be a trade-off between "light" and "sturdy".
>> Building the ends and putting in the old storm door
Smart! With rigid ends, you have a lot of options, even those "gas cylinder" vent openers.
I've been wondering what kind of flap system I'll make, to have an option for opening and closing flaps instead of flipping the whole tunnel off.
Then I start to daydream about temperature sensors and tiny motors to open and close sliding vents while i'm at work ... corrugated plexiglas or polycarbonate walls ... dream on!
We just had a night below 50 F, rendering the three tomato vines I'm trying out even more of an academic exercise than they were before. They are willing to put out pretty yellow flowers, and at the "peak" of the summer I got two green golf balls and a few marbles, but not anything I'd call a "tomato".
I brought them home from a nursery as a learning exercise, and wasn't too surprised that the nursery clerk kind of raised an eyebrow like "we didn't think ANYBODY was going to be THAT optimisitc". I carried them in and out of my house daily for a month before the nighttime low temps serttled to MOSTLY above 50.
Baby needs a hoop tunnel.
