Again, another nice project the rustic pergula. Anything Harv does is going to be great. I have a question about these pergulas do the owners plant vines to make a shade roof? Most every home here has a covered porch for shade, we need it. Then there are pergulas everywhere and in the roof people add a sun blocking fabric like this
Custom size outdoor knitted shade fabric (shadecloth) and shade netting for sun screen, shade canopy, pergola patio cover, shade sail, lanai cover, arbors or paintball netting or else they plant grape vines. The theory on the grape vines is that in the winter you
cut them back to the stalk so the pergula is open and gets sun and in the summer the vines have grown and provide shade. If you plant grapes you choose virgin grapes which has something to do about not attracting wasps. I don't ahve the whole story about the virgin grapes I jsut remember my relatives telling me that. I am kind of puzzled by the American built pergulas I see that are jsut left open without any cover on top.
On our pergula I wanted water protection as well so I bought tarps and they are working really well. We originally thought we would remove the tarps during winter but we ended up leaving them on. The winter sun is lower in the sky and we get plenty of sun under the tarps.
I have literally spent 2 years figuring out how to attach the tarps to withstand the rain. But now I think I found the final solution. I foound these fastners, which you can see int he pictures. I jsut took a small kitchen paring knife,
cut into the canvas and used these fastners along with bungie cord and that is what has been working best.
The bungie cords give way a little bit in the extreemly high winds we get here and provide some give. If everything was jsut latched down the pergola builder and the neighbor both said the wind will catch the canvas and rip the whole pergola off the house. I used two canvasses to let the air be broken up. The bottom canvas stays tight but the top canvas attached with my bungie cords lifts up like a sail in high winds. So far so good. Trial and error. I do really like the fact that when I bring in groceries int he rain the canvas is waterproof and I can put things on the patio table while I open the door. You can also see int he first pic that even with the pergola we still get sun in, see the sun on the floor of the balcony. We do ahve plans to make our pergula longer, we built what we could afford and as we sell more olive oil eventually I'll have it completely cover the balcony which is on 2 sides of the house.
You can see in the pics I started out using the grommets in the canvas and steel cable with tenders but that did not work. You can see that the gromets got ripped out. Then as long as I was up on the roof to take pics for y'all I snapped of few pics of our olive farm.
Harv we need mroe sun protection here and we have no air conditioning so that dappled pergula is not ideal over here. I cna't figure out in Texas how it works. The only thing I can think of is everyone must have air conditioning over there and the pergulas are not used on really hot days as people are inside. That's the only thing I can come up with why there isn't more shade provided.