The endwall poles were some extra heavy duty 4” pipe with a ¼” wall thickness. This was reclaimed from an abandon in place job but rather than leave in place I brought the pipe home. These poles were concreted in over 1’ diameter and 4’ deep footings to anchor the endwalls and the wall farming is strapped to the end bows to add addition anchoring for the entire structure.
The poles are set 10’ apart from each other with the initial intent of a barn door style sliding door but we have since decided there wont be any need to get a truck or tractor back in these because of how we laid out the beds (more on that in a later post). The top 2x8s on the scaffold were removed to fit through the doors, it was still quite handy in building the endwalls.
Endwalls are screwed to the steel poles with Tek Screws and anchored into concrete footing using rebar pounded in to ½” holes drilled through baseplate and footing. I used 2x4s built up into a C for the cross beams. They are overbuilt but very stout and I think look great carrying the substantial look that fits the size of these structures well while still allowing in morning and evening light. Scaffold completely gone now from pickup, it served its purpose well.
This shot shows the header 2×8, we used treated for the foot board but just kiln dried for the header. The wiggle wire track for holding the top plastic mounts on this along with all of the pulley and hooks for the cable that operates the raising and lowering of the sidewalls. Also shown is the way the track was bent over the curve of the bow, this is the sharpest bend and I had no problems in fitting it to the bows without have to cut reliefs in it. Relief cuts would be sharp edges and that’s not good around the plastic is my thinking. The quick clamps were indispensable throughout the build, be sure to have several pairs of different sizes especially if building as a one man crew.
