Greenhouse Glazing

Find someone who is replacing their double glazed windows/doors and steal the panels? Two panes for every panel, whether they can be made to fit the holes in the greenhouse is part of the fun?

They can be found on ebay/FB/Freecycle etc but also check local skips.

Theo (just a thought, never tried it)

I would have gone for something like 4mm twin-wall polycarbonate, for example:

That won't quite make your <£100, as a pack would do the long sides and roof, and part of one end only.

It'd be worth it as it's much more vandal-proof than even toughened glass, and being twin-walled will provide better insulation than a single-walled product.

Do you know how to cut toughened glass without it shattering? I've only done this to clad an old shed before adding external larch lap fence panels to prolong its use, so don't know how sun would affext it. Get a commercial roll of clingfilm for wrapping food producs. Perhaps a mile long and about 0.4m wide , and double sided carpet tape for edges/ rough parts of metal

I believe it to be impossible

Greenhouse glass is not toughened. It is in fact total s*it :-)

'agricultural glass'

Ingenious...

Good point. I think only some double glazing is toughened though - it's supposed to be toughened if people will walk into it (so doors etc) but doesn't need to be for windows. When you order it, websites ask whether you want toughened or not.

Just makes skip diving more fun :-)

Theo

Some windows need to be toughened. I know one of our bathroom windows needed this. I'm not sure of the rules, but I assume anywhere someone is likely to fall against it.

Cheers

Dave R

Any pane where part of it is below 1500mm needs to be toughened.

That's for doors, 800mm for windows.

our greenhouse was supplied with toughened glass,

Thanks - that's a lot less than I thought, and worth a go if there's not too much cutting to fit.

Some greenhouses come with toughened glass.

A friend also had the same dilemma when acquiring a greenhouse frame without glass. I forget the make but it used non-standard greenhouse glass sizes and the replacement toughened glass from the greenhouse manufacturer cost an arm and a leg.

In the end it was glazed with cheap agricultural glass with large overlap between panes with 2 to 3 inch Z clips made from builders band.

I believe the criteria is anything below a certain height from an internal floor.

I very recently acquired an unglazed green aluminium GH frame for £50. By knocking on the door of the stranger whose garden it's been lying in for years. He inherited it years earlier, with glazing, but had never installed the glazing or used the GH. He included an assortment of filthy old glass panels unsure if they were enough.

I washed and sorted the glazing. From images of the metal frame., a google search identified its manufacturer ( Halls) . Halls website helpfully listed the model, its erection instructions and full list of required glass parts/sizes.

So now knew my gh was short of glass. However, I saw offered (free) a number of redundant Covid protection screens (HD acrylic, still in wrappers, never used), sawed those up to fit the roof panels and one side of the GH, same glazing clips from BQ worked fine, and found I now had enough original glazing to complete the job.

Halls still supply the accessories for that model so I bought a glass louvre vent kit, and gutter stops and down pipes to collect roof water. Those cost more than the GH but my water butts were free (Freecycle). So were the concrete slabs floor the GH frame is bolted on to; and the staging inside it.

It's a cracking little GH, better than new, and stuffed with seedlings atm.

Freecycle and Next Door app are your friend. Them as don't ask don't get.

Janet

I think if *any* window is above a certain size it has to be toughened.

It's worth checking other sources of the twin-walled polycarbonate sheet, and be sure the sizes match the greenhouse glazing sizes.

I specified toughened glass for my Halls 14 x 8. It was fine for 10 years until two panes went in quick succession (vandalism?). I can't tell you how long it took to remove thousands of pieces of glass from the plants in there and what was mixed in the sandy soil. I just convinced myself that what was left was like gravel drainage in the soil!

cheepskate

From a quick look, that does seem to be a good price - about £7m2.

Yep thanks

But not very strong so I would recommend lots of additional bracing to the frame (Its the glass that makes these small greenhouse rigid)