Replacing Greenhouse Panels With Polycarbonate

Hi All, I’m back again with my second post on my attempts at DIY. This post is going to be a bit more chatty and informal, but I hope you find it of use. We’re staying outside in the garden, but this time I’m going to focus on my greenhouse.

I’ve had a greenhouse for a couple of years now, growing some vegetables and keeping a few plants in there. It’s mainly my wife who enjoys that aspect, but I’ve become more and more interested as things have started to grow. Unfortunately, like most people, my greenhouse took a bit of a battering this winter and some of the panels got destroyed, as well as ruining many of my plants.

Therefore, it was a bit of a write off and we decided to let the weather calm down before bothering to repair it. Seen as the weather has been quite good for the past few weeks and we had a bank holiday, we decided to see if we could repair it ourselves. After visiting the local garden centre and speaking to a couple of friends, we decided not to replace the panels with glass, but plastic.

We’d been told that plastics such as acrylic or polycarbonate, which we weren’t too familiar with, would be a good alternative as they’re less susceptible to breaking – so off we went in search of something suitable. We searched around on the internet and discovered there is plenty available but in the end we decided to go with simple polycarbonate greenhouse panels that were cut exactly to the size we required.

For those who aren’t sure (like we were!), polycarbonate is a form of plastic that is around 200 times stronger than glass but lighter – making it perfect for greenhouses. It also lets the light through and keeps the heat in, and because it was cut to the size we required, all we needed to do was fit it.

It’s only been a short amount of time so far, but they seem to be holding up incredibly well and the greenhouse is maintaining its heat level. So on that basis, I would recommend it to anyone who is in a similar situation.