| jils wrote: the posts are timber, and will be fixed to stirrup supports set in concrete. the carport projects from the side of the house. theres a flat roof, corrugated iron, so not much weight. ill take photos when its done. well find a way! The weight isnt much of an issue. Wind will be your largest load. If you dont know what the load will be than its rather difficult to design the modification. |
| Check with your Municipality to see what their bylaw requirements are for constructing a carport. Des Thanks! Good thought, but I wont be constructing it myself. Our contractor will do all the checking. He was asking what size we want, but didnt want to offer his own opinion about size. Go figure. |
| i did a really poor job of explaining. if anyones interested, ive put photos here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jils/ pictures, thousand words, etc. OK, it looks like the carport is an extension of your house roof. Not what I had pictured. |
| What way is the sun oriented? How will the sun shine on the carport at different times of the day. A carport might have to be much bigger than the car to keep it in the shade all day. The overhanging portions will have to be positioned to provide shade at particular times of the day. A standard carport space at an apartment project is about nine feet wide by 18 feet deep. But with them strung together, it shades a car more than if it were just one nine by eighteen cover. |
| BP wrote: Oh Ive seen them. The problem with a post being required to handle a lateral load is that all of the force is acting to pull it over sideways, rather than trying to crush it straight down which posts are very good at resisting. Not so good at staying vertical. So it becomes a more complicated engineering chore to design posts that can act more like shear walls than posts. The base must be designed to keep the bottom of the post from kicking out and it must be installed deep enough to get the levers fulcrum nearest to the mid point as practical. That fulcrum point in the earth must also be solid and stable. The rest of the post would then act as a cantilevered beam, handling the same forces it would if it were laid horizontal and the carport were balanced on its end. But because it is a carport (light construction, not much mass is the assumption) and you dont have snow loads to worry about, you could probably use stock concrete filled steel posts . |
