Hmmm....

I just bought 10, 1/2" x 10', PVC pipes last night from Lowes to make some condos out of. I got on here this morning to get some ideas and I saw how ya'll are talking about how PVC doesn't work as well as wood and about how expensive PVC is and so on :o. Each pipe ran me $1.47. Is that a lot? I don't have a lot of experience building structure, but paying $1.47 for anything that is 10 feet long doesn't seem that much. I also recently did some tree pruning so now I'm thinking I would make some condos out of PVC and wood and see how they turn out. I am planning to drop all 4 of my condos in a line along a creek channel that is 25' deep. I'm going to try to put them together this weekend and I'll post some pictures to get some feedback from the experts.

I'd say do 4 PVC condos and 4 wood condos and conduct your own test. But I bet the wood will outproduce the PVC -- that's my experience anyway. Good luck!

Why not mix the PVC and wood? then you would have the best of both worlds.

"Rough Up" the pvc with some coarse sandpaper or anything that will scratch it up and get rid of the slick finish.. The algae can get a better grip that way.. It helps,,,, trust me.

I thought about mixing wood and pvc using Earnest Paty design that he posted pics of on down the way in this section using half bucket, short pieces pvc and 45 degree el's. But in the center put a small hardwood tree. I have a 100 or so black plastic 1 & 3 gal flower pots and I think they would make good 'leaves' off the pvc. Think this would work ? Jim

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Originally Posted by JimA

I thought about mixing wood and pvc using Earnest Paty design that he posted pics of on down the way in this section using half bucket, short pieces pvc and 45 degree el's. But in the center put a small hardwood tree. I have a 100 or so black plastic 1 & 3 gal flower pots and I think they would make good 'leaves' off the pvc. Think this would work ? Jim

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No reason why it should not work.. go for it

Black Crow, I personally believe you cannot beat pvc. Especially when you have sandpapered the limbs. Just be sure and place several trees to each location because they are sometimes difficult to find in 25 ft water even with WAAS enabled on your GPS. I get my scrap pvc free from rural water coops. It just keeps them from having to haul it off.

i have made bamboo condos 7 to 10 ft tall for around $5 each. the boo is free if you can find it and the only cost was the quickcret to set it in. you can't get off that cheap with pvc, unless you get it for free. i have tried

If you have to buy pvc, get the grey electrical, it is a little cheaper. PVC is very expensive if you buy it and put out many condos.

I keep my eye out for free stuff.

I'm gonna try to get to these condos this week. I was looking at all of my materials (tree limbs, PVC, and cinder blocks) yesterday and trying to get creative with them.

I just got new tires put on my truck, so now I have 4 tires I can incorporate somehow. I'm thinking of nailing them to a 10' - 12' 4x4, creating some sort of weighted base to make it stand up straight, attaching milk jugs to the top end to make sure it doesn't fall over, and setting it out there with my PVC. I'm thinking of also buying some more PVC to attach to my tire tree so it will have even more mass. We'll see. I'll get some pictures up here when I get it all together. Like I said, I'm shooting for this week.