OK, I finaly have the pictures downloaded to post. Now that the
hydroponic system support structure is finished, I have been working on building the hydroponic systems. To do that I need to laminate a lot of wood with the 6ml plastic before I can put it together. In total I need to laminate 24-2x4's (8 foot), 60- 1/2 pieces of 2x4's (the cull wood) I'll cut them to size later, 12-3 feet by 8 feet sheets of OSB, and 9 more sheets of OSB (about one square yard each). As of tonight, all I still need to laminate is 36-1/2 pieces of 2x4's (the cull wood), and 6 of the small one square yard sheets of OSB. The rest is laminated. So most of the pictures are of the process of laminating the wood. I hope to be able to get the rest of the wood lamination done tomorrow (baring weather problems, and/or needing to run back out to Lowe's for more contact cement which is almost a certainty).
By the way, the alternative I came up with for laminating the plastic sheets to the OSB is working very well. I decided to use "vinyl tile adhesive" But you've got to be sure not to get the stuff for feltback vinyl tile, and get the stuff for vinyl composition tile (VCT). This is the exact stuff I'm using:
HENRY 430, 4-Gallon Vinyl Tile Adhesive. It's very sticky with the consistency of something like a thick elmer's wood glue. I'm using the smallest notched trowel I could find for spreading/applying it to the OSB. Once it's applied to the OSB, I just roll out a pre-cut piece of the 6ml plastic sheet and just use a dry rag to push out any air bubbles for a clean/even lamination. It will take a good 24 hours for the tile adhesive to cure/dry, but I'll give it a minimum of 48 anyway. It does seem to want to make the OSB bend/bow as it drys, so I've placed them face down on the garage floor, and placed a lot of weight on top to press it down (the 5 gal buckets you see are full of water). I got 2 boxes of the 4 gal size of the adhesive ($27 ea), but in total I will probably only need about 6 gallons total to laminate all the OSB I need to.
Not sure if I mentioned this earlier or not, but I'm using contact cement for laminating the 2x4's. It's a simple process, but kind of boring. I first cut one foot wide pieces of the 6ml plastic from the 20 foot wide roll, then cut them into 10 foot long pieces (I pre-cut about 50 of them). To laminate them I just roll them out the table, wash them off with a wet rag and let dry. Then I roll on a coat of contact cement to one side of the 2x4's, and then to the plastic sheets. Wait 10 min, and apply the two sides together on the table. Then I apply contact cement to the rest of the surface of the 2x4's and wait another 10 min before rolling it over the plastic sheet and pressing it on using a dry rag as I go. To make the seem, once all the sides are done I apply a more contact cement to the bottom edge and cut the plastic edge so it overlaps the bottom edge, but the seem stays on the bottom edge and wont wrap around (sorry I forgot to take pictures of that part, but will try to remember later). When I construct the hydroponic system, that will be on the bottom edge and wont come in contact with water, so water cant get inside the seem.
In case anyone is wondering why I don't just use the contact cement on the OSB as well, there are two reasons. First it would simply be to expensive, the contact cement is $30 a gallon, and I would need about 8-9 gallons for the about 450 square feet of OSB I need to laminate (costing in excess of $250, verses the $60 for the vinyl tile adhesive). The second is it would take at least 3 people to apply the plastic to the OSB once they were coated. If it's not attached perfect the first time, I' screwed. Simply because you cant redo it (once it touches it's stuck), and for the same reason you cant just roll up the plastic sheet to roll over the OSB once you apply the contact cement, or it will stick to itself.
P.S.
Notice the borders I made to keep dirt from falling into the sub "T" system. I just used a flexible flower bed boarder, and screwed the end's together, placed them around the sub "T" system lids, and back-filled around it. I couldn't stake them down because of the high likelihood of the stakes going through the tubing. Also if my beard looks funny, it's because I tucked it inside my shirt so it wont get stuck to the contact cement.