Simple Carport Plans - Building a Carport is Anything But Simple
Today building anything seems a lot more complicated than they did in the good old days.
Even building a simple carport is much more complicated that putting up a simple structure attached to the side of your house.
You need to consider such things your local building codes, getting permission from your neighbors even the weather where you live.
Here is why I need to build a simple carport, the problems I have found in the planning process and a few hints of the things you need to take into consideration.
My teenage son is not very happy and has started nagging me about building a simple carport.
He was thrifty enough, unlike most teenagers, to save up and buy his own car.
Unfortunately we do not have enough garage space to garage his car so he parks it on the driveway.
However my son is concerned about his pride and joy being left outside in the elements so has drawn up some simple carport plans which he believes are so easy that his Dad, being a handy do it yourself guy, should have built in no time.
His plans are for a structure that has a simple frame for the roof which attaches to the side of the house just under the gutter line and is held up by two hardwood posts nine foot high.
These posts are to be attached to a metal fitting concreted into the ground because if a wooden post is exposed to the ground it will rot out very quickly.
Roofing iron of a color that matches the house will be attached to the roof frame with roofing screws.
One problem that I immediately saw in his plans was that he had planned the carport size to fit his current small sports car.
What happens when he decides he wants to trade it in on a large four wheel drive.
I therefore need to know what size carport I need to build to fit most cars so that I do not have to rebuild it in the future for a larger sized car.
One neighbors caught me checking out his carport and showed me the stays he had to put in place because his carport nearly blew down in the big wind storm last year.
He told me that the roof acted like a parachute lifting the whole carport off the ground.
Now I never thought of that happening.
I have also heard that if you live in areas where there is a lot of snow you need to slope the roof of a simple carport enough so that the snow falls off and the roof does not collapse under all the weight of the snow.
My son has no idea how difficult it is to get something level so that it looks good to the eye but with the right instructions and a bit of practice this is no longer an issue.
The area where I plan to build the carport is thankfully level as I checked it with a technique I learnt from a book but is a grassed area.
Once I build the structure the grass will die and only the hardy weeds will survive.
Therefore I need to consider what sort of foundation I need to lay.
Do I concrete a slab or do I dump a load of gravel and rake it out after I build the carport? So to summarize I need a simple carport that will be big enough for a large four wheel drive, that will withstand storms and heavy winds not to mention a decent dump of snow as well.
Will a load of gravel be enough to keep the weeds and moisture at bay or do I need to concrete a slab?
Even building a simple carport is much more complicated that putting up a simple structure attached to the side of your house.
You need to consider such things your local building codes, getting permission from your neighbors even the weather where you live.
Here is why I need to build a simple carport, the problems I have found in the planning process and a few hints of the things you need to take into consideration.
My teenage son is not very happy and has started nagging me about building a simple carport.
He was thrifty enough, unlike most teenagers, to save up and buy his own car.
Unfortunately we do not have enough garage space to garage his car so he parks it on the driveway.
However my son is concerned about his pride and joy being left outside in the elements so has drawn up some simple carport plans which he believes are so easy that his Dad, being a handy do it yourself guy, should have built in no time.
His plans are for a structure that has a simple frame for the roof which attaches to the side of the house just under the gutter line and is held up by two hardwood posts nine foot high.
These posts are to be attached to a metal fitting concreted into the ground because if a wooden post is exposed to the ground it will rot out very quickly.
Roofing iron of a color that matches the house will be attached to the roof frame with roofing screws.
One problem that I immediately saw in his plans was that he had planned the carport size to fit his current small sports car.
What happens when he decides he wants to trade it in on a large four wheel drive.
I therefore need to know what size carport I need to build to fit most cars so that I do not have to rebuild it in the future for a larger sized car.
One neighbors caught me checking out his carport and showed me the stays he had to put in place because his carport nearly blew down in the big wind storm last year.
He told me that the roof acted like a parachute lifting the whole carport off the ground.
Now I never thought of that happening.
I have also heard that if you live in areas where there is a lot of snow you need to slope the roof of a simple carport enough so that the snow falls off and the roof does not collapse under all the weight of the snow.
My son has no idea how difficult it is to get something level so that it looks good to the eye but with the right instructions and a bit of practice this is no longer an issue.
The area where I plan to build the carport is thankfully level as I checked it with a technique I learnt from a book but is a grassed area.
Once I build the structure the grass will die and only the hardy weeds will survive.
Therefore I need to consider what sort of foundation I need to lay.
Do I concrete a slab or do I dump a load of gravel and rake it out after I build the carport? So to summarize I need a simple carport that will be big enough for a large four wheel drive, that will withstand storms and heavy winds not to mention a decent dump of snow as well.
Will a load of gravel be enough to keep the weeds and moisture at bay or do I need to concrete a slab?
