It's just the beginning of winter and we've already had a couple of significant snowfalls. There's somewhere around a foot and a half, maybe a bit more, of snow on the ground here. The first snow was wet and heavy and that got covered up by more "fluffy" snow. I had not given much thought to the weight of the snow, the greenhouse roof is strong enough to handle a lot of weight of snow.
I had left my shop vacuum out in the camper trailer last fall when I quit working on the trailer for the winter. I decided that I wanted to use it in the basement, so I went out to the trailer on Sunday to get it. When I went into the trailer, I realized that I had not braced the roof from the inside nearly enough, I only had a couple of braces inside for the roof. The roof was sagging pretty badly from the weight of the snow on the trailer. I knew that I had to do something right away to brace up the roof before it caved in.
I didn't think to take any pictures until I already had a couple of braces put up in the trailer, I was busy thinking about saving the roof.
This is the trailer after I pulled some of the snow load off the back of the trailer.
Because the skin of the trailer is just thin aluminum, it provides no resistance to the weight of the snow. Also, the boards that hold up the roof skin are only about 3/4s inch thick, mostly 1X2s, they have no real strength either. After looking at the inside of the trailer, I knew that I had to brace up the roof somehow. The first thing I thought of for a temporary brace was my stepladder. I figured that putting the ladder in the trailer with a couple of 2X4s on top of it would hold the roof up while I was putting better braces in for the rest of the roof. You can see some of the sag that was still in the back part of the roof in this picture. The brace next to the ladder in the picture is one of only 2 that I had put in before winter. I probably meant to brace it better but forgot about it.
After I got the ladder in place, I decided to get my little hydraulic jack and a piece of landscape timber to jack up the worst of the sag to hold it up until I could find something to brace the roof more securely.
I used a piece of landscape timber that had been a fence post for the garden fence. I had to cut the rotten end off to use it, but it turned out to be a pretty good length for the job. You can see a bit of sag in the front half of the roof in this picture. Each one of the roof cross boards had significant sag. I had pushed the piece of 2X3 up under the one other roof cross board before I remembered to take pictures. This spot is where the worst of the sag had been, it had been sagging at least 5-6 inches before I jacked it up. I'm lucky that board didn't break before I discovered the problem.
I got a bit more done, but not much, before I ran out of daylight.
Yesterday, I went back out to the trailer and put more braces under the roof cross boards to help hold up more of the roof. I replaced the jack and post with landscape timbers cut to fit the space. That allowed me to use the jack to set more bracing.
I only had a couple of landscape timbers available to use for this, so I made a brace for where I had put the ladder temporarily, using a couple of 2X4s. I screwed a couple of cross braces onto the 2X4s so that they wouldn't bow out or in due to the weight of the snow.
I still need to get another brace put in on the front part of the roof, I just have the jack and post holding that up right now. We're not supposed to get any snow for the rest of this week, and it's supposed to warm up a bit after tomorrow, so I'll get out there later in the week to finish the job. It's good for now. I have a couple of other things to do toward the end of the week outside, so I'll do it at that time.
Here's a picture of the snow on the roof of the camper from the front.
You wouldn't think that much snow would be so heavy, but it's all ice under the snow. I'll probably pull the snow off the roof soon, but I have to get my pickup truck out of the way before I can do that. I'll get that done later in the week when it's not so cold.
That's all I have for this post. Thanks for stopping by to check it out!
