advice for poor weather

[mememe72]

 Well Monday night was very windy here in good old Derby, other half went to the allotment yesterday afternoon to find :- The felt blown off the shed roof, The burning bin 3 plots down along with the fleece covering from the garlic and the cloches over the carrots all ripped beyond repair, question is what can we do to help stop this happening again.  The cloches were all well buried in the soil and the fleece was just layed on top of the garlic with rocks holding it down at the corner so, unsure what else we could do.

[mememe72]

[lewic]

I put polycarbonate sheeting on my roof, this might stand up to the weather better than felt.

Could the cloches be attached to long tent pegs? Or the metal posts sunk into a lump of concrete to weigh it down?

[Robert_Brenchley]

The answer is often weight. When I rebuilt a shed in Cornwall I put breezeblocks on the roof to weigh it down. Plastic is always at risk in a really windy spot; I don't know how bad yours is.

Felt should be OK - how many nails did you use? You may need to replace it and just use more next time, so there's nowhere the wind can get under it. If necessary, battens round the edges, nailed over it, would seal it down. Leave gaps for rainwater to drain off. A breeze block in the burning bin would keep it in one place in anything short of a hurricane. I have seen a big caravan blown clean over a six-foot wall, but that was an exceptional nght!

If plastic and fleece are being torn to shreds, then find out whether this is a regular event. Lots of bricks round the edges would help, but you may simply need something stronger.

[Mr Smith]

What you want to do with a felt roof is make sure that the felt comes under the edges of the roof use felt nails to fix in place do this, also use 1"x1" battens under the edge of the roof and nailed to the felt, and finally on the roof of the shed fix in place battens again on the seams of the overlapping felt, this should keep your felt in place :),

[saddad]

Morning Debbie,

It blew a panel out of the back of a shed on our site...

If you can find any old greenhouse heating pipe it is great for holding down fleece...

;D

[SPUDLY]

Not sure what you site looks like or where it is, but ours is sheltered from the wind in one direction by houses and the other by trees, this way the wind only gets rough in two directions so i tend to plant my crops to grow along the path of the wind and not across it.

[mememe72]

thanks all for your advice, nel going down to see what he can do but dread to think what he will find!!! Think we need to get some new felt as it barely fit the roof when we brought it.  Will hunt around for a breeze block for the bin which is at present in my back garden. As for the cloches the wire supports are still in place but the plastic sheets was ripped off the supports so i guess we just need to invest in stronger ones :P