122 



THE FLORISTS MANUAL. 



knuckle joints so that the 1-inch pipe 

 leading from them can be set at any 

 angle. 



t|lN. 



It will be readily seen that the 

 weight from the purlins pressing to a 

 common center must be the best of 

 support. The purlins, one on each side 

 of the ridge, should be situated about 

 halfway between ridge and gutter or 

 plate; or if you use a heavy bar let it 

 be a little nearer the ridge than the 

 gutter, because it will keep the bars 

 more rigid near the ventilators. There 

 should be 1-inch pipe set every eight 

 feet (same distance apart as the center 

 posts). You must put in a tee into which 

 will screw the 1-inch pipe that leads 

 from the fitting on the center post. 



The bars are fastened to the purlins 

 neatly and quickly by a steam fitter s 

 galvanized iron clip, which you buy 

 by the weight. The clip is screwed into 

 the bar with a %-inch screw and holds 



the bar firmly, but not so firmly but 

 what a rap with the hammer will 

 move it either way when you are glazing. 

 Be sure that you get the pattern for the 

 bar the exact bevel both for the ridge 

 and plate. Nothing looks worse than an 

 ill-fitting open joint at the heel of the 

 bar on the plate. Once get your pat 

 tern correct and the mitre box laid out 

 right and you will have every joint cor 

 rect. 



When putting on the bars we put up 

 the ridge the whole length, nailing up 

 a bar on each side every five or six 

 feet, but only temporarily, and then 

 the iron work is put up. By sighting 

 along the bars the fitting that controls 

 the purlins can be raised or lowered 

 till you can get an exactly straight roof. 



Glazing has been dealt with in an 

 other chapter. 



Cypress. 



It is a great pleasure to build houses 

 nowadays. You know you are putting 

 them up to stay. It is quickly done 

 and much of the pleasure arises from 

 the fact that you are building with a 

 material that is well nigh indestructi 

 ble, and that is cypress lumber. Cy 

 press can be procured in any lumber 

 market, but for greenhouse building 

 we should be afraid to trust it, and 

 we prefer to get our supply from firms 

 who make a specialty of greenhouse 



material and have the facilities for 

 getting out material of any dimensions 

 you w r ish. 



We began using cypress some eighteen 

 years ago for bars, ridge, plate and gut 

 ter, and to this date have discovered no 

 rot or decay in a single piece of the ma 

 terial. 



Painting. 



When you contemplate building get 

 the woodwork on the ground at the 

 earliest possible moment, and get a 

 priming coat of paint, mostly linseed 

 oil, applied at once. And as soon as 

 the plates, ridge and bars are cut to 

 their lengths, two more coats should be 

 given. You can paint on the ground 

 just ten times as fast as you can on the 

 roof. 



As we butt our glass, there is no 

 need of any painting after the roof is 

 up and the glass in. The ends of the 

 bars are always given an extra daub of 

 thick paint just before they are nailed 

 up, and this should be done by a boy 

 who hands them up to the carpenter. 



I will mention here that no part of 

 the woodwork where moisture can lie 

 should be flat. All parts should have 

 a bevel either in or out. 



General Notes. 



The length of a house is largely 

 your own choice. If for plants there 

 is a continual running backwards and 

 forwards to a shed at the end, carry 

 ing often heavy flats of plants, and I 

 think 150 feet is long enough, and 125 

 feet is better. 



The soil or site on which green 

 houses are built differs widely. I have 

 some covering a light loam and the 

 subsoil is gravel and shale. If a hose 

 were left running a whole night on 

 the floor of these houses the water 

 would have entirely disappeared a few r 

 minutes after the faucet was shut off. 

 I have other houses where if the faucet 

 only leaks a trifle there is a pool of 

 water for hours. For several reasons 

 I think it very injurious to have the 

 surface of the greenhouse a wet, damp 

 soil, retentive of moisture. This may 

 be all right for orchids, but for the 

 great majority of our plants, especially 

 roses, carnations, violets, and the great 

 bulk of the others, a stagnant mois 

 ture is just what we don t want. 



If your soil is a retentive clay, there 

 should be provision for draining it be 

 fore you put up any structure. Dig a 

 trench two feet deep and at its bottom 

 put in a 3-inch drain tile, and instead 

 of filling in the trench again with the 

 clay, as you would in draining a field, 

 fill up to the surface if possible with 

 stones, clinkers and coarse gravel. You 

 will find this money well spent. You 

 can always find some outlet for the 

 pipes at one end, running them all into 

 one cross drain and dropping into the 

 stoke hole if you have no other system. 



Just a word here about houses that 

 are connected and form what are known 

 by builders as valleys. Some may say 

 they are bad for the snows. Now, the 

 writer certainly lives in a district where 



the supply of &quot;the beautiful&quot; is most 

 bountiful, and we have noticed year 

 after year that we are no more troubled 

 with snow in the valleys than we are on 

 the outside roofs. It seems to melt 

 quicker in the valleys and the gutter 

 than it does on the outside plates, and 

 runs and melts as quickly off the glass 

 unless it be on the almost perpendicular 

 face of the short span to the south, 

 which, of course, is always clear. Or 

 dinary snows (a fall of five or six 

 inches) don t bother any houses on any 

 kind of roof, but when we get four feet 

 in twenty-four hours, as we did last 

 December, or the visitation to the east 

 ern cities in February last, that upsets 

 all calculations, and it is a case of dig 

 out, front, back and middle. 



The worst condition is where one of 

 the avalanche-like falls has come sud 

 denly. The heat of the glass will melt 

 the snow some five or six inches from the 

 glass and then its power is lost and there 

 hangs a covering of snow a foot deep. 

 This we found as troublesome on the 

 outside slope of the roofs as in the val 

 leys, and with our modern wooden gut 

 ters it is easily broken up, and when 

 once disturbed soon goes. 



I never could see any use in outside 

 gutters unless you wanted to save the 

 water from the roofs. If made of 

 metal they are continually breaking 

 down with the ice and had better be 

 made of wood. The ground surround 

 ing houses should always be so graded 

 that surface water will flow off where 

 it will do no harm. If the water of 

 the gutters is saved be sure to tap 

 your gutter plate two feet from the 

 farther end, if the houses grade that 

 way. A conductor of any sort on the 

 end and outside of a house is a big 

 failure and is the winter long a fantas 

 tic and ornamental miniature iceberg. 



Where the water is not used the 

 houses will of course drop two or three 

 inches from the shed to the farther 

 end. We let the gutter plate project 

 six inches beyond the house, and mak 

 ing a saw groove an inch or two deep 

 in it insert a piece of tin a few inches 

 broad. This throws the water clear 

 of the house and provision is made by 

 the outside grade to carry it away from 

 the buildings. 



Under the head of painting we 

 meant to say a word about painting 

 the ironwork. We have just had 

 some experience with some l^-inch 

 pipe supporting the roof that ran 

 through the benches on which we have 

 frequently used coal ashes to stand 

 the plants on. They have only been 

 up six years. The pipes began to cor 

 rode and scale off and this summer are 

 rusted clear through, not in holes but 

 an inch or two of the pipes are clear 

 gone. We have often used coal ashes 

 on the floor and believe they should be 

 kept clear of all wrought iron pipes. 

 We also believe that all our iron sup 

 ports, ventilating shafts, heating pipes, 

 and all pipes except cast iron should be 

 well painted with white lead and oil. 



As for any porousness of our pipes, 

 that is perfect nonsense. A friend re 

 marked on seeing 2-inch heating pipes 



