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Well, some of you have seen this before, but I thought I'd share again my technique for building a hoop house. I use it more for Low Tunnels, as the taller houses tend to be sorta flimsy. They do a good job of getting things started in the cold season, but don't expect them to be permanent.

What follows is from two years ago this April. Ive refined it a bit since then, but this is a good starting point:

Size of mine is 10'x25', about 7' high at the peak.
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Materials list:
(10) 10' lengths of gray pvc conduit, 3/4" diameter. These are about $1.20 each.

(5) 10' lengths of galvanized EMT conduit, 1/2" diameter $1.70 each.

A little bit of 1" pvc. Gray conduit is better because it's uv stabilized, but I used white as I had some laying around. You probably only need a couple feet, but it's cheap enough to buy a section if you have to. Probably $1.50 or so.

Some duct tape

Plastic covering. I bought fancy clear stuff for the low tunnel from Farmtek, it was pretty expensive. For the hoop house I was on a budget and in a hurry so went to the hardware store and got plastic there. I got 4 mil, in a roll that was 25'x50'. I think 6 mil would be way better but my store didn't have it in wide enough rolls, and it was expensive. I spent about $25 on the plastic. It's not as clear as the expensive stuff, and next year I might spring for good stuff. On the other hand it sure was cheap, so if it gets wrecked in a season I won't mind.
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It's all pretty straightforward, the galvanized conduit I use for stakes. I was cutting it but found it's easier to just bend, crease, and break it. I break it in half, so each stake is 5' long. I use a t post driver to pound 'em in about half their length, you could use a hammer if you don't have a driver.

Two lengths of the 3/4" pvc will join to become on 20' hoop. I didn't use any glue, just stuck 'em together. They have a bell coupling on one end for this, easy peasy. Slide the hoops over the stakes. I guess I should talk about layout. I used one hoop every 5 feet, with a 10' width. You could adjust this as needed.

Then, I use pvc shears to cut the 1" pvc into 1" rings, then nip a section of that out to make a clip. The pics will explain what I mean here. I put a little gusset of tape over the plastic where I'm gonna clip it to reinforce it and just snap the plastic on. It's a good idea to experiment with the size of these little guys before you cut a bunch. Longer ones are stronger but harder to clip. The size of the "mouth" is really important. Doesn't need to be super hard to clip on, but needs to hold on fairly tightly to be able to hold up to wind.

I do the ends first, and leave a little extra in the middle so I can cut a slit for a door. Then the plastic goes over the hoops and I clip at all the bottoms of the hoops and around the hoops at the ends, but it's unfastened in the middle.

That's it. If it's really windy where you live this will maybe not work, but you could do more clips and supports if needed. A lot of photos show others using all kinds of cross bracing and stuff, but my metal stakes going up into the hoops a couple feet at least gives the whole thing a pretty rigid structure. It feels pretty dang stable.

It's really awesome hanging out in there, today was light overcast and kinda windy with a little rain, it was 75* or so in there.

Here's how I close the "door." Those are little spring alligator clamps, you could use those metal office supply clips just as well. I don't know what they're called, but you know what I mean...



Here's the clips...


Here I slid the hoop up to show the stake, but usually the hoop is all the way down to the ground...


Some greens I planted a week ago or so....


Eyesores....

Hi Matt. We have done something similar here (Philippines) for our seedbed. We had lots of problems with birds, animals and insects, so we built some seed beds on stilts, waist high, but with the ends extended to 6 feet or so. As it is made of bamboo, it is very light and easy to work with. We ran bamboo down the center from end to end, and then covered the entire structure (not the stilts) with mosquito netting. Each 6 foot length of netting was then cut to the lower roof bamboo and a small bamboo was placed at the bottom of that 6 foot section. That allows us to lift the section up and hinge it on the lower roof bamboo while we are working in the seed bed. With no back aches. It has worked so well that we are going to begin to do some terraces in the garden to see how that may work.
In the meantime, we need to build more seed beds as we tend to not transplant, just to help ourselves as the plants get larger.
As I get older, I am kinda thinking about raising all our terrace beds.

Thanks Matt for this hoophouse design. Probably the lowest cost build I've seen.

Definitely going to get building one over the winter and try to get a head start on the 2013 growing season.

Matt, how well has your hoop house held up over time? Specifically, how well does it do under high wind conditions?

Well George, the system has proven itself to me over the last 4 years, with a few caveats. One of those is high wind. Where I live it is rarely very windy during the growing season, but we have big wind storms typically from late November to around mid March. Due to that I have pretty much stopped fighting it and just take 'em down in late November. I no longer build the tall ones either, those ones are great when it's calm but need too much support engineering to keep up during the shoulder seasons. My technique now is low tunnels using the same system. 10' sections of the grey PVC conduit for the hoops which makes a tunnel about 4' h x 4' w. I have also started running a long string of the same sections along the bottom of the film clipped on with the same clips. In this way I can open the tunnel easily and it's much easier to weight down the covering as well.

All that said, I have a friend here who adopted the system and committed himself to shoring them up to withstand the wind. With some patience and 2x4s he's been able to keep them up all year round. I just am usually looking for the path of least resistance so don't mind using them when appropriate. We don't have much sun in the winter anyway, so it's not really important to fight trying to keep up a tunnel when nothing will grow except what grows easily anyway, such as kale, brussel sprouts, and so on.

I was talking with a Good Friend and Neighbor last night and he has found a used greenhouse locally for sale. It is 10' X 16 ' or so, I think plastic panels with a very decorative metal wrought iron work across the top. The price new was over $6000, the guy wants around $2000 for the unit used. He seemed very interested in buying the unit but was concerned about the cost and the pay back time for a unit like that. I got him on line to our site here and showed him this thread, he seemed very impressed with what you have build Matt. He will be stopping by as a guest to check out what we have here. I am sure he will be impressed with the site and our various topics. I am not sure which way he will go, both options have their advantages and their disadvantages.