Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tell me friends..am I nuts to buy this?, 0 by KRNYSGIRL

KRNYSGIRL wrote:
Hi, Susan -

Gee..I apologize in advance for chuckling while reading your story - believe me I empathize and have had stuff like that happen to me. And it has not gone all smoothly -even with mine. As you saw on the site they show a cute little video of a woman putting up the greenhouse all by herself - well I set mine up the weekend before last and could not, no way, no how - put it up by myself. I simply did not have the arm length or strength required to reach in the middle and pull the top straight up. I tried..but tripped on the lower layers and fell headlong on top of the whole thing. My husband who was working a short distance away found the sight of me sitting in the middle of billowing plastic quite funny. He did come over to help me, but even so, I had to hold one part down while he pulled the top up. It worked then and the rest of the set up was easy. The ground where I set mine up is all gravel and too many rocks to drive in the stakes, so John tied all the stake cords to large cinder blocks and a nearby stone bench and it seemed rock solid after that. Two days after setting it up, we had 3" of heavy wet snow - now 3" isn't much so I wasn't worried all day at work about whether it would collapse the greenhouse. When i got home that night, John met me at my car and told me to calm down before I went in the backyard. Oh, God..I dropped my purse on the driveway and sprinted past him to the greenhouse which was lying kinda twisted with the entire top half caved in - the entire top collapsed but the tie-downs held well, so the the top portion kinda twisted and fell sideways. The snow that accumulated in the middle was so heavy, John could barely lift it using a hoe to ever so gently scoop it out. Once it was out, I went inside and pushed the top back up. Then I turned around and saw the collapse had snapped one of the side support bars in half and broken the piece of the hub that the bar slips into. I didn't know whether to cry or laugh. This greenhouse was only up a couple days and was already badly damaged. At least I had not yet put my plants in it, ( only because my heater hadn't arrived yet). Now a week later, it is 3/4 full of plants, my heater is running every night and during the day if the temp drops below 50. The company is sending me a replacement bar and hub (which is nice cause there is no warranty against accidents and acts of nature). I really do like it, but if I had it to do over, I think I would go with the retangular shaped one, because it is hard to take advantage of the height space with the odd sloping walls on the Bloomhouse. Here is a pic of me inside it taken this past weekend.

Diane