The wheels worked. I used 8 10″ hand truck wheels in groups of 2 at each corner. This was actually enough to allow me to push the shed around by hand without the winch, and turning was no problem because I can lift one end and then turn like that. The wheels are kind of pricey, 20CAD each, we’ll see how they hold up. I made a skirt to go all the way around the inside (4 walls now) and that works fine too, though the fiberglass rods that hold it vertical do seem to get caught a lot. I think I need to trim them so that they only go down 10”-11” even though the gap is theoretically 12″ from frame to ground.
In the future I think I would like somewhat larger wheels though.
The next step is putting wires for electrification of the skirt. I think the wires need to be only vertical so they don’t get tangled. But then they need to be very closely spaced so a chicken close to the skirt will get shocked and not try to poke under the edge of the skirt. I suppose another method might be to weight the skirt, but I think the scrub brush, will support more weight than it’s realistic to add to the skirt. I’m going to try 10″ vertical aluminum wires spaced at 3″ apart.
Those wire whiskers seemed to work, they rotate back and away don’t seem to tangle when I move it. I put some chickens in and they seemed to respect the electric skirt right away, I had only one escape and that was a miniature chicken that is more my wife’s pen than a real laying hen. I will leave it in place for 3 days so the chickens get used to it, I was keeping them in a portable electric fence and smaller coop. Once they are adjusted to the new area I will start moving. I also will put in a light and temperature logger today to make sure it’s not getting too hot, nor too dark. Hens need a certain level of light to continue egg production, otherwise they think it’s winter.
The growth chamber continues, but I’m waiting on a part to actually start it. It’s actually quite instructive to see what I need, as a large greenhouse will need all of the same pieces. The household humidifier (ultrasonic misting) that I had was not strong enough to really make a difference in the chamber humidity. So I got a cheap swamp cooler with a pad that water is pumped over and a fan pushes air through. There is a industrial analog in a pad wall. It cools and humidifies the air. This was a problem with my pilot greenhouse, I didn’t have a good way to humidify the air. I could cool with fans, but in the winter that causes very low humidity which causes the plants to transpire a lot. This can be bad for fruit production (see Godfried Dol). The swamp cooler works, and I made the fan exhaust the hottest air by the lamps out the window. I’m just waiting on the heaters, which I need because the humidifier lowers the air temperature.
Sun Aquasystems 