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Pallet Building A Cheap Way To Go
Steve Hoolsema combined pallets with fence panels and greenhouse plastic to make a simple waterproof shed for less than $100. The 8 by 12-ft. building is only one of several pallet-based structures Hoolsema made after finding that a purchased 12 by 12-ft. shed could cost him as much as $2,000.
    “Pallets are fun to work with and make sturdy walls,” he says. “I built the one with fence panels for temporary storage, but it turned into overflow of garden stuff for my wife.”
    Hoolsema says connecting them is easy. He lays panels flat, and splices them with deck screws and a 2-ft. long 2 by 4. Hoolsema usually starts by laying down plastic as a moisture barrier with the ground. For this building, he overlaid the plastic with 6 pallets for a floor. He set 3 pallets to a side and 2 on one end, attaching them to the floor pallets and tying them together with scrap 1-in. boards.
    “I attached 3 cattle panels to the pallet walls, framed in one end wall and attached greenhouse plastic over the panels,” says Hoolsema. “I’ve had greenhouse plastic last 5 to 6 years, but I also put a tarp over this one to protect the plastic and secured it with more 1-in. boards.”
    He used leftover cedar siding to cover the floor and added a door at the framed end of the building. Eventually, he plans to cover the pallet walls with metal siding as he has done with other larger pallet structures.
    “Metal siding unbelievably firms up the walls, which are already much sturdier than regular construction,” says Hoolsema. “Once I put metal on the outside, the building is impervious to weather and will likely outlast me.”
    Hoolsema has also built a 12 by 12-ft. pallet shed for $900 and a 12 by 16-ft. pallet barn for $1,200.
    Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Steve Hoolsema, P.O. Box 78, Rudyard, Mich. 49780 (ph 906 478-5800; peacefulacresfarm@yahoo.com).



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2015 - Volume #39, Issue #2