writ­ten 8/5/2024, updat­ed 9/6/2025

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Overview

This is what start­ed it all. My beau­ti­ful can­taloupe brazen­ly stolen and eat­en right in front of my eyes by a crafty yet cute squir­rel

Materials and Cost

All mate­ri­als bought from Ama­zon and Home Depot

Owned Sup­plies:

Note: Draw­ings not to scale

Dimen­sions (L x W x H)

Fit­ting Dimen­sions

Pipe Lengths

Remem­ber that the ends of the pipes will fit into the fit­tings. All mea­sure­ments are approx­i­mate. Actu­al item dimen­sions may vary

Over­all Weight

1 in, 4 ft PVC pipe = 1.4lbs

Over­all Weight of Enclo­sure: ~37lbs

Author’s Note

From start to fin­ish, con­cep­tion to assem­bly, this took a total of 3 days of time. Not count­ing wait­ing for parts, choos­ing parts, etc. The idea start­ed way back in 2022 when I was hav­ing issues with squir­rels steal­ing my toma­toes. I dreamed up and drew up plans, even going as far as to buy­ing much of the mate­ri­als to do it (orig­i­nal­ly out of wood and com­pos­ite wood). How­ev­er, the squir­rels quit steal­ing my stuff until this year when my veg­eta­bles and fruit dis­ap­peared one by one. The final straw was the baby can­taloupe! WARTIME. Since it would be placed on the deck instead of the ground like the orig­i­nal plans intend­ed, I need­ed a less weighty option and there­fore chose PVC pipe. Armed with the orig­i­nal plans, I altered them. You can plan all you’d like, but doing is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent! So start­ed the 3 day-total-time jour­ney (real­ly, it took about a week wait­ing for all the pieces). Many, many cal­cu­la­tions, mis­cal­cu­la­tions, frus­tra­tions, and even blood shed­ding lat­er, I’ve — at this writ­ing — most­ly com­plet­ed the project. Just a few minor tweaks and a test run before final­iz­ing the hard­ware.

Over­ar­ch­ing Ques­tion: Does it actu­al­ly work???

As of August 2025: YES, IT WORKS suc­cess­ful­ly against thiev­ing squir­rels! They tried, hard with no suc­cess! (see Notes sec­tion for more)

Process

Gathering Supplies and Equipment

Need­ed: Han­dles, PVC pipe, Ratch­et­ing pipe cut­ter, PVC fit­tings, hinges

Calculating, Measuring, Cutting, Assembling the Frame

Eas­i­ly the most time-con­sum­ing part. Using the spe­cial­ized PVC cut­ter and also a dig­i­tal caliper saved a lot of time. Just set­ting up the frame is easy. The hard part is fit­ting the doors prop­er­ly with­out cre­at­ing too much of a gap (try­ing to pre­vent crit­ter entry after all) around the door and frame while remem­ber­ing that the fit­tings add more length to each side (cal­cu­la­tions are done for you already in the schemat­ics above). On top of that, there’s the con­sid­er­a­tion of hard­ware cloth size to make as the hard­ware cloth is best wrap­ping around the pipe. If this was wood, it would be eas­i­er to just cre­ate a remov­able frame around the out­side of the cloth. Lots of re-mea­sur­ing and re-cut­ting until I got it right (or close enough).

Use a rub­ber mal­let to make sure the pieces are snug in the fit­tings

Hinges and Handles

This was more com­pli­cat­ed than it need­ed to be. Hard­ware includ­ed with the (unthread­ed) cheapo Han­dles are just too short to span the 1 in width of the PVC pipe. With­out buy­ing more or hav­ing to run out to a store, I delved into my giant box of ran­dom screws. Thank­ful­ly, I man­aged to find 4 that were both long enough and the right size (screw and thread gauges are use­ful). The Hinges snapped eas­i­ly onto the PVC and most­ly stay in place. And no won­der they stay in, because it gouges the plas­tic like no oth­er if you remove and slide them around, so make sure you’ve mea­sured where you want them first.

WARNING: Fas­ten any hinges before fas­ten­ing han­dles so that the han­dles are ori­ent­ed prop­er­ly, or at least mark loca­tions well. Because I wait­ed a year, my han­dles are now in a wonky ori­en­ta­tion

May 2025 — Hinge Per­ma­nence

Final­ly decid­ed to screw in the hinges. I was way too lazy to take the entire cab­i­net apart for the win­ter, but it end­ed up endur­ing the win­ter just fine

Used an ¹¹⁄₆₄″ bit, lined up the hinges on the pipe, and went for it. End­ed up using ran­dom screws that I hap­pened to have, so they’re all mis­matched and end­ed up rust­ing over the sum­mer

Attaching the Hardware Cloth

This is 16-gauge hard­ware cloth which is hard to find in stores (at least where I am). It’s big enough to allow pol­li­na­tors, water, and air into the enclo­sure, but small enough to thwart rodent and avian rob­bers. This was the lim­it­ing fac­tor for size of the enclo­sure as the cloth I used was only 2ft wide (they sell them larg­er). And no, chick­en wire is not rec­om­mend­ed. Not only are the holes too large, but the wire is weak. Also, to note, because this enclo­sure sits on the deck, there is no need for bot­tom cov­er­age. If I were to use the wood­en schemat­ics made to sit on the ground, then it would be ful­ly enclosed by wood, or extra cloth would need to be sunk into the ground (1–2 ft deep) to deter dig­gers.

The exceed­ing­ly time-con­sum­ing and phys­i­cal­ly painful part of this was the issue of how to attach hard­ware cloth to PVC. With­out spend­ing a for­tune, I decid­ed on a roll of gen­er­al-pur­pose gal­va­nized steel wire and some pli­ers. How­ev­er, giv­en how long it took to secure every­thing (5 hours! In the bak­ing sun and even through a short down­pour), I’ve been think­ing of a bet­ter attach­ment method (See NOTES sec­tion)

Twisting the Galvanized Steel Wire with Pliers

After much tri­al and error, I found that this was the fastest way (at least by hand) to tie off the 16-gauge steel wire (per­haps I should have used some­thing small­er)

Fun fact: If you feel the met­al after twist­ing, it’ll feel real­ly hot

Keep Going Until Completion

What’s annoy­ing is that tying off the hard­ware cloth with wire will cause ran­dom pock­ets where it bows out. Just keep on until every­thing is secure. Be aware that the ends of the hard­ware cloth and the steel wire are very sharp!

Complete!

Most­ly. No lock­ing hard­ware yet. Com­ing back to this 2 years after the fact, I’m still hold­ing strong with just a ball bungee through the 2 han­dles.

Winter Cover

The aim was to have it decon­structable, but I was too lazy, so I decid­ed to use it as sort of a win­ter­ized green­hou­se­ish thing. My region is Zone 7B USDA har­di­ness. Two options (so far) for win­ter­i­za­tion.

Plastic Sheeting

Suit­able for mild win­ters with low dura­tion freez­ing peri­ods, about 20–40F.

Pic­tures!

Plastic Sheeting Winterizing Results

2 months: hard freeze ear­ly Decem­ber for 1–2 weeks, and it’s dipped as low as the teens. So far so good. The plants seem to be doing just fine in there. I have hard neck gar­lic, straw­ber­ry, my blue­ber­ry plant, and onions.

Post-Win­ter: For about 5ish years, the win­ter had been pret­ty mild. 2024–2025 win­ter was nor­mal for this area which trans­lates to peri­ods of very cold and snow. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that meant that my plas­tic lay­ers did NOT work well enough. If tem­per­a­tures stay around 20–40F, then the plas­tic is fine. If there are hard freezes for extend­ed peri­ods of time, this is not good enough. All of my plants died except the straw­ber­ry which did­n’t mind at all and looks amaz­ing (in a 10-gal­lon fab­ric pot). The blue­ber­ry most­ly died but final­ly start­ed sprout­ing new shoots from the root late June 2025. I was dis­ap­point­ed and will update again this fall when I set up the new ver­sion of this using hard plas­tic walls instead of the sheet­ing. Stay tuned!

Twin-Wall Polycarbonate Sheet

Stay-tuned! I will attempt to attach this to the struc­ture and report when I’m suc­cess­ful!

Notes

9/2025 — Added a snap-on door stop made with a 3D print­er to pre­vent the doors from swing­ing too hard inward. Easy to drill and per­ma­nent­ly attach to PVC pipe if desired. Through­out the grow­ing sea­son, had plants inside then enclo­sure that were able to be pol­li­nat­ed no prob­lem. Doors made it easy to access plants. End­ed up mov­ing the corn plants inside after squir­rel rob­bery. The enclo­sure was a tad too short for the corn, so tas­sels extend­ed out, but suc­cess­ful­ly thwart­ed squir­rels that tried hard to get into the corn (they oblit­er­at­ed the corn tas­sels try­ing to pull the entire plant out). Suc­cess!! Just bought the poly­car­bon­ate pan­els for a new attempt at cre­at­ing a cold frame for the win­ter. Still have yet to attach actu­al door latch­es and am still using a ball

August 2024 — It’s been almost a month since test phase start­ed, and squir­rels have left it com­plete­ly alone. No evi­dence of rot­ting, so good air­flow, pol­li­na­tors busi­ly doing their thing, vines climb­ing the cloth like a trel­lis… alto­geth­er very hap­py with its func­tion. Even the bungee cords per­form well and are easy to remove. Still have not secured hinges or installed latch­es… and I’m not sure I want to. It would make for a refined prod­uct, but the bungee cords work well.

August 2025 — Squir­rels robbed me of corn, so moved the pot into the enclo­sure. SUCCESS!!! First true test against the rodents. They des­per­ate­ly want­ed the corn, but could not get in. They even tried to pull the corn up through the top by yank­ing on the tas­sels. All that did was rip the tas­sels off the plant. They nev­er got inside! Yay!! It WORKS!!!

If I were to do it again, I would do sev­er­al things:

• Buy hard­ware cloth that’s wide enough to not need so much over­lap. Like, one that can span from one side, to the back, and to the oth­er side. The top can be sep­a­rate.
• If using the gal­va­nized steel wire method of attach­ment, then buy a Wire Twister Tool for Drill. Not only would that save tons of time, but phys­i­cal fatigue
• Mea­sure the place­ment of the hinges before snap­ping them on
• Paint it green or brown. White is so stark in the gar­den! Or if you have expend­able income, then buy For­mu­fit’s col­ored PVC
• Fig­ure out a dif­fer­ent way to attach the hard­ware cloth (Ideas are all expen­sive yet remove­able: 2in Rub­ber Cable Clamps, 2 in Binder Rings, 6in Steel Wire Twist Bar­rel Key­chains, etc.)

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