Pergola and Trusses

Now the terrace is shaping up it's time for a pergola, for shadow. You can build pergolas in one hundred and a half way. It seems that we are going to do something with aluminum trusses. You know trusses, pop concerts, and so on. Aluminum alloy beams made of tubes with zigzag joints, like:

Those who likes it can check out the GlobalTruss website. A delicious meccano system with liggers, corner pieces, etc, in all sizes and shapes. And even arches, ideally suited for romantic bowers.

The intention is now to fidge a construction in front of the house, where at the top a piece of fabric is positioned for shadow. Here's a simple impression of a 12 meter long pergola with the "deco" truss variant F14, 10x10cm, and also with the larger (and more expensive) variant F24, measuring 29x29cm.

Dont forget to imagine some climbing flowering plants.

This is 18 meters, 3 sections of 6 meters:

Shade

The average air temperature here varies between 25° to 30°, with blue skies, cool breezes, Campari, etc. Also at night. Nevertheless the sun is rather fierce and hot when your directly exposed, and not in the shade. It is much better in the shade.

There are various options. You can stay inside, the house is nice and cool, and has shade, but that is not our preference. You can build a pergola, out of stone, wood, pipes, or a combination of materials. Or, you can install a shadesail, as we know them from Australia. There are triangles, squares, rectangles, made of an elastic but strong material, so you can give them an interesting shape when tensioned with cables..

The real ones are available here, end they are not expensive. Montage though, is.

Or you can opt for a pergola. Freestanding, attached to your house, wood, stone, pipes...

Or the "mi casa system", that a nice restaurant here has.

After asking some quotes we know now that shade is expensive. We have at least 8x8 meter to shadow, so we chose ready made shadesail fro the Lope. For less than 100 euro there is a 5x5 meters sail made of strong materials, and decent attachments. We'll manage this season, and then decide if we want/agree to/can afford something else.

Next to the house shade is desired too. We use factor 50 sun cream, but cars don't like that.