The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: sheeponthebrain on January 11, 2017, 03:12:14 pm
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Having recently built a second hand polytunnel, you can imagine my dismay at seeing the cover torn and flapping in the wind this morning. anyhow 3 hours later several cans of glue and a roll of duck tape seem to have held the thing down. And after Deglueing my beard and eyebrows ( thank god I wore a hat) I thought I'd pop on here and ask if anyone has any better ideas to stick plastic back together in the rain and snow. and if nothing else I thought I might give folk a bit of a laugh
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Lovely mental image :roflanim:
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Been there, done that :roflanim: In our case (many years ago but it lives on in my mind) the whole of the downwind side came free - and a flapping polytunnel cover in 80mph wind packs a powerful punch. We hadn't put the little bits of wood that attach the polythene to the base rail on the right way round. OH with flu and in his jim-jams had to swing from the crop bars and cut the polythene right down the middle of the roof so of course new cover required. I'm definitely not laughing at you sotb - I found our adventure quite scary, especially when I tried to hold on to a corner to stop it flapping :dunce: :dunce: :dunce:
Since then we have had several holes and a tear - courtesy of a 4 horned Jacob who cut a neat triangle in the cover so he and his mates could step inside and demolish the brassicas. The very best way to repair torn polythene is with the widest repair stuff sold by the tunnel manufacturers. It's clear tape and sticks really well - we have never had a repeat repair in the same place. It is expensive but duck tape doesn't last long in the wet.
The trick to not getting tears, is to put the cover on extremely tightly, on a warm day, so it's soft and pliable. The ends are the most difficult bits with pleats etc, but it's worth fiddling with to get it right.
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Nightmare! I'm amazed you got it all fixed if the wind was still up!
I had a door ripped out of my tunnel last year by the wind, it shattered one of the door frames and ripped a good section of the plastic on the side. I fixed it using a roll of clear tape ( the tape was about 4 or 5 inches across). It might even be called poly tunnel repair tape?? It came with the 2nd hand tunnel.
I treated it like a torn sail - at the end of the tear I put some tape (on both sides of the cover) running at 90 degrees to the tear (to stop it from getting worse). Once the wind had calmed down I put in a new door post, joined some old plastic I had to the existing one using more of the tape and then reattached the cover to the door frame. Doesnt look great but it was still standing this morning...
Hopefully you wont need to be out wrestling the tunnel anytime soon,
Cuddles
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woohoo still standing this morning (unexpectedly) fingers crossed that's the worst of the winds passed for a while :sunshine: