An older thread but worth resurrecting to show you the following.....
A car issue last Tuesday meant i had the day off work and was greeted with this nightmare.....
I couldn't believe it. It was windy the previous night but not horrendous and certainly no windier then some of the winter storm that it had made it through. Kind of my own fault though as the day previous mrs CA had pointed out to me that the rail that holds the cover in the recess was a touch loose. As it happened it didn't have any of my tools with me and it was on the sheltered side of the tunnel so i just said that i'd sort it in the week. BIG mistake. Massive mistake. You could see it had somehow come loose and had ripped the sheet vertically up towards the apex of the tunnel and then each of the recess rails had popped off down the full length of it. And this was despite double nailing it.
In no way do i blame the manufacturer but....there instructions were quite specific in using nails rather then screws but I'm 100% certain the if the rails were screwed in the wouldn't have just popped off. I've mentioned this to them and they said that they say that because it makes it much easier to remove the rail should you want to re skin them-I would counter that by saying that if you are planning on leaving your cover on over winter then the sheet should last 5 years give or take-after that time you would also need to replace the timber for the rail and thus screws wouldn't make any difference. Either way I've learned a lesson the hard way.
Anyway, despite the 40 knots winds we managed to raise the base rail from the ground up to about 5ft and managed to loosely trap the sheet it the recess (with screws!) so as not to do any more damage to the sheet and try and salvage it, in the hope of a reasonably calm day in the near future to see if we can make it right. That day came on Thursday. We managed to get the cover pretty much back to where it was and just about as tight as it was with the only visible damage being the tears at either end and a tear of about 2' in the middle.
I was happy that the sheet was secure but the tunnel (full of flowers that mrs CA had nursed through winter) was now open to the hoard of rabbits so as soon i could we had to finish it off. The plan was to make another base rail (£100 in timber and fixings) and attach wind proof netting between the 2. It went remarkably well and it looks pretty good now if i may say so myself
I wouldn't go as far as saying it's a blessing in disguise but it was far too hot in there in the summer with regular temps well over 40deg with both doors open.. In the heat of the hot days you couldn't stand being in the for more then a couple of minutes at a time, so maybe it might just be a better tunnel for better ventilation.