Patio Awning provide perfect shade from the sun and can also be used as shelter from light showers. Awnings can provide excellent room shade, keeping your room cool and protecting your furnishings from the rays of the sun, or even provide a sheltered area to sit under outside.
Often it can appear that an Awning would not be able to be fitted to your home due to not having an obvious flat wall to fit to. Luckily there are some solutions for several of these types of problems.
Low roofed homes such as bungalows can appear the most difficult property to install a Sun Awning to. It is important that you never fix your awning into the top courses of bricks as there is no strength there. If you do, the chances are the bricks will pull away causing the awning to collapse as well as damaging your property.
Spreader plates are the ideal solution to this problem. As the name suggests, they spread the load of the awning down the wall. Usually they are flat plates that are around 50cm in length. They have three or more fixing points down them allowing to spread the load and take the fixing points away from the top courses.
Low roof lines can also cause an issue with the awning height. If you have a low roof then the awning will be installed low. This means that the front plate will be extremely low and cause a hazard for bumping your head on! Generally there is no scope for putting a decent angle on it to let water roll off adequately if it rains. This will lead to water pooling on the fabric and will damage the awning very quickly.
Brackets can be used here that bring the awning out from under the soffit and up to or slight above the line of the guttering. This will allow for a much better pitch and still keeping it above head height. Again, the bracket spreads the load down the wall.
This type of step out bracket is ideal for many other situations. For example, tile hung walls are very popular but usually the tiles start right when you want your awning. A small step out bracket will solve this problem.
If you have a solid wall you may still hit another problem. What if you have a down pipe in the way? Pipe brackets are the ideal solution here. These compact brackets extend the awning away from the wall to clear these types of obstructions.
There are some instances where no bracket will allow installation. Perhaps the brickwork is old and crumbling or perhaps you want an awning for your static caravan or mobile home. In these instances the best solution is to use support posts.
Support posts are generally made out of 80mm box section and they are sunk into the ground by around 600mm. They are coloured to blend with any environment. The posts are installed as close to the wall as you like. They are totally freestanding so there is no strain on the building itself.
There is rarely an instance where a sun awning can not be installed at all. Often these methods do cost a little bit more than a straight on the wall installation but the benefits that a sun awning can bring to your life is well worth the extra investment.