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I’d make sure to have a quick release system for really windy days.
At least a breakaway system. My wife’s school installed some industrial sized sails like this. Big steel cleats bolted to buildings. When the right storm came, the storm ripped the cleats from the walls and the sails were whipping around slamming those cleats into whatever they touched. Had to wait for the storm to stop, until then just had to watch the damage.
So either go so big that nothing can touch it, or so small that it breaks free when needed.
No such thing. At a place I used to work we used to hang these big ass banners on the building. A clever dude in marketing decided to save a buck by not getting the wind slits cut into it.
Ops had done such a good job with the rigging that:
the banner didn't tear
the screws and bolts didn't shear
the bolds didn't even get cleanly ripped out of the building
The fucking masonry failed and ripped our (real) brick wall apart. Many fell 2 stories onto the sidewalk and thankfully hit nobody.
Every system as a failure point :)
Mason, looking at his finished wall fifty years ago:
"Look at this beauty, you'd need more than 1000lb of lateral force concentrated in a small area to knock this thing apart, which is impossible! I've built a wall that will last hundreds of years!"
Building may be a full hundred years old. Brick is awesome. My home is 1916 and while it has many, many, many issues -- the fucking walls are not one of them.
Make something idiot-proof and the world will present a bigger idiot.
How'd you know his name?
"Do you see that stone wall out there? I built that wall with my own bare hands. I found every stone and placed them just right through the rain and the mud, but do they call me McGreggor the wall builder? No."
"But ya fuck one goat.."
If you don't provide your own failure point, one will be assigned to you.
My brain read this as though it were full Miranda warning for DIY crimes
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When the Crimson Permanent Assurance sets sail, no one is safe
Yeah you can drag around 2000 tons of boat and cargo using this application correctly, and it's so effective it lasted from at least the bronze age to the industrial age.
Was staying in a hotel un Japan un the '80s. Cyclone came thru and ripped banners attached to building broke loose and started breaking windows. Not cool.
I hate being the "well actually" person, but the efficacy of wind slits isn't actually that great unless you have something ridiculous like 20% of the surface area as slits. It can also increase wind load when wind speeds are low.
https://theconversation.com/do-wind-vent-holes-in-banners-make-a-difference-we-used-a-wind-tunnel-to-find-out-53220
Yeah if you think you need wind slits just have it printed on mesh, which will also reduce the weight.
I knew an artist who had permission to hang a projection screen from a football goalpost at a high school for an artist in residency type project (for anyone not in the US/familiar with American football, goalposts are those enormous yellow Y shapes at the ends of the field to kick the ball through). Well the wind caught the screen like a sail and took the entire thing down. 🫣 I never got a chance to ask them how that resolved.
"mission accomplished?"
The big bad wolf is taking notes
Mother nature will always win.
Damnnnnnnn
I had a trampoline weighed down with buckets of rocks. A good gusty day and that trampoline, along with a bunch of Homer buckets worth of rocks, ended up on my roof.
I have no idea what a Homer bucket is but I'm picturing a 5-gallon bucket that's yellow and has two big white eyes..
So... You're advocating against slate and tile for roofing? In case of rocks?
Where was your sense of adventure? In these situations you have to ask yourself, what would Hal do on Malcolm in the Middle? Put a colander on your head, use a garbage can lid as a shield, and dash into battle!
I have hooks on one side just for wind. There have been a few times I’ve had the sail come off the hooks. Of course it also managed to break part of my railing loose last year. Still need to fix that.
All to familiar. I pass by a school on way to work that has these huge sails over parts of playground. For a few weeks we were getting random strong storms with hail. One night we got hit hard with hail and winds gusting to hurricane strength. Stop signs are down, fences, home and shed roofs, gas station ports toppled over, car ports and these sails were anchored to thick pipes. The pipes bent a bit on some and sails were long gone. Prob wound up in someone’s yard. I had roof shingles from someone hit my door. My door felt like it was breathing from the wind gusts. I’m glad I reinforced the thing.
I just take mine down when i’m not using it. Takes like 20 minutes to set it up.
We installed an awning on one side of our gazebo to manage sunset light that would hit us right in the eyes.
We accidentally left it unrolled just a "bit" once and when a big storm came through it was enough surface area to rip one side of the awning out of our gazebo posts (same style as yours).
Take the sail down before any wind or storms. Otherwise you'll probably be ok, actually. Otherwise our awning held up for years and we were able to repair it, eventually.
I use carabiner and springs that came with an IKEA sail.
And a shade with tension spring connectors on the shade hooks to allow some movement without damaging the hooking points on your property.
Maybe also consider a shade that's perforated as opposed to a sheet? They can provide the same but also take a lot more wind flowing through them.
Otherwise, good jobi
I've had one up for 3-4 years. They can take a damn beating. Wind, rain, snow etc....
They can, but can the anchor points?
I bought mine from a company in BC, they recommend steel posts with 1/4” wall, I have 3 steel posts and one 8x8 wood pergola corner post. Either make it strong or as others have said make it removable.
Yeah, I'd rather go find my canvas than replace a chunk of my wall
I’d only put it up when using it. Aluminum poles, tiny screw hooks, this will not make it through any real wind.
Which is a good thing because if the sail doesn't fail, then the screws will.
If the screws don't fail, the poles will.
If the poles don't fail the deck will.
Wind can be a right bastard with sails, so I definitely agree with you. Only out when in use and never left out.
What do you mean by this? Somethat that would unhook on its own under great tension?
Have a way to quickly/easily take it down so when you know a big storm is coming you can take it down so it does not get damaged.
Okay thanks.
Get a Pelican Hook, it can be released under tension just by pulling a string. Boating places (or Amazon I'm sure) will have them, they use them on sails for this exact situation.
Only issue is a giant storm when you're not home. We were a few miles from home when a hail storm destroyed a car in our driveway, 8 house windows, our roof and deck, etc. When we drove home, our street looked like someone took a giant salad-shooter to it, the hail shredded trees and there were still baseball-sized pieces of ice on the ground. My daughter's car had both side mirrors hammered off, windshield, sunroof and hatchback gone. Total trip, how much destruction happened in minutes, without needing a tornado.
Quick disconnects are a great idea, but i would also look into something that has a breakaway tensile strength that would release itself if you are away during a big storm. You could get zip-ties, synthetic twine, or something similar. This would be cheap to replace and the mild inconvenience of replacing them every once in a while would be way less than the damage caused by a wind gust ripping a pole off the porch.
Think about strapping yourself to a parachute and then all of a sudden the big wind comes along, you would want to weigh for you to quickly disconnect the parachute, but you definitely don't want to wait for the parachute to disconnect itself.
That might not be a bad idea too in case you forgot to take it down, if you can find something.
Shear bolts.
Sailing hardware is meant for some shit.
https://tylaska.com/product/t20-snap-shackle/
Something like a Carabiner
I personally added trampoline springs to each corner of mine to help give tension and flex on a windy day.
Plus now you have a trampoline
Very clever
That’s a great idea
Oh, that's very smart.
Why have I never thought of that.
This guy sail shades
Having had multiple DIY sunshades fail on me, this looks like it won't hold, especially that hook at the house. The uprights don’t look robust enough without cross members either. It will probably be fine until it isn’t.
What would be the way to solve this? New uprights in the ground and something more substantial on the house?
On the house you want them to be screwed in horizontally in-line with the load. Your hooks are going to bend and the tension is perpendicular to the threads.
I see so they need to facing out, not down?
Correct. Hooks are meant to hold loads with the force in line with the threaded end.
Load~~ S-/-/-/>
Lol that's terrible but best I can do for you. Looks like the load is shooting a load at idk what.
Yes, that is what was meant by the previous comment. If you screw into the fascia boar like that, you will want some heavier duty hooks and make sure to seal the hole around it with some appropriate caulk so water doesn't seep in behind and start to rot the wood, weakening the tensile strength of the hook on the wood.
Above my pay grade. You need thicker posts embedded in concrete. Hire a pro. For your footprint here, I’d go retractable awning.
I started looking at putting up this kind of thing over my skate ramp and quickly lost interest. It’s a much bigger job than many of us would really imagine. Anything short of super deep sunk metal poles will bow in sooner rather than later. I thought I could lob some 4x4s in. Apparently not.
If you ever get the desire to again the steel needed isnt crazy thick or heavy. But it isnt just a run to Lowe’s job for sure
Those uprights are doomed. Imagine how hard they'd be pulled if you were standing in the middle of that sail. That's about what you want to plan for.
There's like 6 inches between those bolts at the bottom of that pole and it's over 6 feet high. Whatever lateral force is on the top of that post is amplified over 12x on those bolts. 100lbs of pull at the top turns into 1200 lbs pulling those bolts out and they fail. You want to be able to handle a few hundred pounds inward force. Something to hold the corners apart would work great. That's what I ended up doing, but to do it I built a huge custom structure so.. maybe go a bit simpler. One option would be to run a rope over that post and down to a ground anchor. If the anchor pulls out the sail collapses but the posts are fine.
I think that it's fine as-is. People like to catastrophize. If there is a big storm coming, take it down.
The posts sure, the little hooks that look like they wouldn’t even hold up a hanging flower basket for more than 6 months? Yeah gravity and tension will break those, let alone wind.
Those hooks are the best thing about this because they'll fail before any real damage is done to something else.
Sometimes you don't get to them in time.
I've had my sun sail tethers break loose a few too many times due to a surprise wind gust, due to screw, qnvhor, and rope failures. If I want to leave them up typically rather than just putting them up for an event, each tether should be rated to around 1200lbs (including everything in the system). That sounds like a lot but it's not hard to find hardware, rope, and building mount points that meets the rating requirements. My largest is a 22x24 triangle for reference.
Posts, however, need an anchor line to the ground to keep them in compression rather than bending, or they have to be huge and very well anchored to the ground (think 6x6 in 3 feet of cement).
I don't use any posts for this reason - my weakest link is a strap around an 8" diameter oak.
4*4 should be fine for wind loads from normal storms. I have a similar setup and only with 9 inches of snow load did it start to get angry.
Terrible? No, it will work until it doesn't and hopefully doesn't cause too much damage when it fails.
Good? Not at all. Hooks are too small and probably only hitting the fascia board. Posts are also too tall for that size to have adequate support with high winds.
If you plan to take it down whenever it's windy or stormy, then it's probably fine. If you want it to be up all the time then the outside posts will need better support, probably tied to the home and each other.
Thanks!
Based on the comments this is a setup that is only viable on pleasant days. I will leave it up as a temporary solution before our next windy or stormy day then remove it. After that I’ll have to do this right, new steel poles installed into the ground, and new hooks on the house that are properly installed and penetrates the house.
If you have it up when you are actually using that spot and take down when you are not you are fine. Much like an outdoor umbrella.
I would seriously consider not attaching this to your home.
A pergola would solve all your problems. Permanent installation for shade that doesn’t need to be taken down for a storm.
They’re also not difficult to build.
I've never seen a pergola that actually gave much shade. Is there some trick to this that most pergola builders don't know?
Climbing plants aged a few years.
Criss cross coverage, you need tall joists and then add 1x3 or 1x4 the opposite direction. And double the joists you think you need. Plants on lattice or similar also if you’re into that thing
If you want more shade, you can attach a retractable canopy, which in this case is likely exactly what OP needs.
And they look a lot classier when after 6-12 months of sitting in the sun, the shade starts to turn to an ugly faded color and look like trash