Relieving some sleet-induced stress

After our recent day of ice and sleet, of course everything was covered in it and I've posted plenty of photos of the plants that were iced. I don't suppose I need to post a photo of a snow and ice-packed driveway, as pretty much everybody either knows what that's like, or lives somewhere where they never have to care. What I didn't post about is my temporary greenhouse. You know, the one that's built from PVC pipes and plastic sheeting.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "PVC and plastic sheeting -- that sounds strong!" Then of course you start laughing. Well I'm happy to report that the greenhouse was stronger than expected, and the other day I removed the 2" of ice and sleet from its roof.

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From a distance it doesn't look bad, which is the reason that I didn't come out here sooner after the storm, or even while the sleet was falling.

Up close you can see the roof is sagging quite a bit though, and the plastic was pulled very tight:

Normally pretty flat.

Once I started pulling off chunks of ice, it was easy to see why:

This stuff may not look super thick, but it is very dense and quite heavy. How heavy? It would have been nice to be able to cut a one square foot piece of this and weigh it inside, but I'll have to settle with an estimate...

I picked up some big chunks that were maybe 2' x 2', and they weighed at least 10 lbs. I'll just call it 10, which makes it 2.5 lbs per square foot (10 / 4 = 2.5). Since the roof is about 8' x 10' (or is it larger? I can't remember) that means that there was at least 200 lbs of weight on this plastic structure. It could have been more than this, as I think my estimate was on the low side. That's still a lot more weight than I suspected it would hold!

With the ice removed, the roof looks fine -- except for the center metal pole, which now has a nice curve to it.

Inside the greenhouse things look normal:

Not surprisingly, some of the magnets that I'm using to clamp a roof flap closed fell off when I slid off the ice. (I used one magnet outside and another stuck to it inside.) A couple of them were easy to find inside as they were out in the open on the ground, but a couple others are "gone".

I'll probably find them in the spring when I drag the pots outside again. I'm guessing they're gone for good though.

Now that I've seen how the roof behaves under load, I'm going to keep a closer eye on it during the next snowfall. I may have to clean it off before the snow stops falling, and will definitely have to make some "adjustments" when it starts warming up and we get more rain -- mainly in the form of drainage holes where the water starts pooling.

But now I'm really thinking about how nice it will be when it's warm enough to pull these plants out of here... but that's at least 4 weeks away from now... wait, 4 weeks? Wow, only 4 weeks! I just felt my spring fever click up a notch or two.
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