Siting and securing a greenhouse

[sandy_v]

After years of growing, I'm at last going to get a greenhouse
We live in an exposed spot with strong south and south westerlies. I am planning to site it 3-4 feet to the north of an existing shed, which will give it some protection from the wind and also from the mid-day summer sun. Is this a good idea?

I want it on hard standing, not on soil as I will grow things in containers. I don't have an area of concrete to site it on, but I think it needs to be well secured. Can I bolt it to paving-slabs placed on the ground, or is there another way of keeping it down?

[peter]

To secure a shed this weekend I used a posthole borer.
Drilled two to three foot down and used a rusty old bit of angle-iron dexion in each plus half a 25Kg bag of ready mix postcrete.
The dexion was then screwed to the wooden sub-frame/base.

I would suggest you try and get some strong bits of aluminum alloy and spare greenhouse nuts/bolts and try the same technique.

Alternatively, look in my blog for how I fixed my secondhand house down using sleepers.

[richard p]

siting it north of a shed will probably not give shade in summer cos the sun is high in the sky and will shine over the top of the shed, it will shade it in the winter when the sun is low in the sky. ive just demolished a 20 foot cherry tree south of our conservatory, it was keeping out the suns warmth from sept to april and not giving cooling in the summer months.

we have a 6x8 greenhouse which is screwed to a 3 course brick wall built upon row of concete blocks layed on their sides flush with the ground ie sat on the underlying limestone

[arthur e]

You might think your protecting the g/h with the shed but you could actually be making the situation worse by the wind eddy's whipping round the side of the shed,the buffeting could destroy the g/h in no time.
As richard said the time you need the sun the most is early spring and late summer so try to arrange the g/h site accordingly.
I can only vouch for an 8*6 g/h myself this was screwed to a layer of concrete blocks with extra internal bracing to stop the swaying of it in really strong winds, this was the result of the first years experience of lost glass panels.
We get strong winds from all directions up here.

[sandy_v]

Maybe I need to think again about where to site it.