High Wind & Heavy Snow Load Greenhouse

[Downeast Thunder]

FREE PLANS AVAILABLE - Instructions below:



We live in Downeast Maine: That's along the seacoast, way up near the Canadian border.

Strong "Nor'easters" and heavy snowfall during the winter (most of the year) necessitate a heavy-duty design for any sort of greenhouse. Standard designs work to various degrees, but seem to ultimately fail when we get our most powerful storms.

I searched for stronger greenhouse design ideas on the internet and discovered a Youtube contributor; "LDSPrepper." He had been influenced by someone else and shared a heavy duty greenhouse design he modified to fit his needs. I simply did the same. My design uses many of the concepts from LDSPrepper's design, but modified to match our unique weather conditions.

Our greenhouse is 10' x 20' and has doors at each end. There is a walkway straight down the middle with beds on each side. The roof ribs are 3/4" PVC electrical conduit, spaced 12" apart on center.

The garden beds are not typical beds, but are actually "Hugelkulturs" (You can "Google" this to see what they are all about). We discovered the combination of greenhouse and hugelkultur here in Downeast Maine where there is a very short growing season, made our vegetables grow like they were on steroids!

We've had this greenhouse up now for the past couple of growing seasons and it has exceeded our expectations; in standing up to weather, and in it's performance of growing veggies & extending our growing season. The drawing I used as a guide while building our greenhouse is now available as a free download in pdf format on my web site. You can also visit my wife's blog Downeast Thunder Farm | Our Little Patch of Woods in Downeast Maine to see more pictures of this greenhouse, and of some veggies she's grown in it.

At the Downeast Thunder Creations web site, you will find a number of free downloadable plans/drawings in pdf format for a variety of DIY projects, including FREE PLANS for the framework of this greenhouse! Just go to "Projects" and then "Farm & Homestead" or "Building Projects" and you'll find the link to the drawing.

Since the first video was created, I recently made an update video to the greenhouse:

The Video I posted in January of 2017 was a slideshow depicting the build sequence of our high wind and heavy snow load greenhouse here at Downeast Thunder farm in Downeast, Maine. Several folks liked this design and requested a little more information. This “walk around” video with commentary will hopefully fill in some of the blanks: