Carports: A Practical Solution for Protecting Your Valued Possessions
Installing a dedicated carport adjacent to your home provides sheltered parking while shielding vehicles from weather, debris, and other exposures that can prematurely deteriorate their condition.
Beyond covering prized car investments worth safeguarding, carports supply handy storage, accommodating everything from yard tools to seasonal recreational gear conveniently centralized, minimizing garage clutter.
What is a Carport?
Carports function as basic covered structures built over paved driving surfaces, offering roof coverage shielding vehicles parked underneath from rain, snow, UV rays, and other outdoor elements that deteriorate finishes, interiors, and ultimately mechanical components faster over time.
Unlike enclosed garages, carports typically utilize roofing atop supportive posts without full perimeter walls obstructing drive-through accessibility from multiple angles. This allows easy vehicular access maneuvering wider trailered recreational toys like boats without tight cornering challenges doors and walls present.
Open architecture also permits better airflow circulation, minimizing humidity and interior moisture, promoting corrosion and mold growth plaguing fully sealed garages with poor ventilation.
Benefits of Owning a Carport
Key advantages carports deliver to homeowners include:
Vehicle Protection
Mitigating exposure to UV rays, tree sap, heavy rains, hail, and snow pays dividends, slowing exterior paint fading and clearcoat damage. Thanks to shelter, ice scraping risks substantially decrease.
Additional Storage
With a freed-up garage room from relocating vehicles outside, interior square footage opens, and capacities for storing motorcycles, bicycles, off-season sports equipment, tools, and everything else crowding most garages are liberalized.
Multi-Purpose Functionality
Depending on poured pad sizes and side accessibilities, carports accommodate family automobiles and RVs, trailered watercraft, golf carts, etc. Their versatility beats garages with constrained doorway heights or widths.
Cost-Effective Alternative
Attached are the carport's sidestep expenses associated with poured concrete foundations and framed wall construction needed for detached garages. These budget-friendly structures defend assets from elements at a fraction of the cost.
Increased Curb Appeal
Unlike unsightly tarped contraptions rigged trying to shelter vehicles in driveway gaps, permanent carports integrate into overall home aesthetics cleanly, boosting visual appeals for visitors without detracting from the architectural flow.
Easy Maintenance
With no garage doors and wiring needing servicing, sealed wall penetrations to monitor, or light fixtures requiring changes, basic carports simply stay functional with little attention beyond occasionally tightening stabilizer hardware.
Making relatively inexpensive carport additions and maintaining the integrity of major household investments pays owners back over years of prolonged vehicle lifespans and equipment function.
Types of Carports
Carport structures employ several characteristic construction approaches:
Freestanding Carports
These most common iterations utilize multiple vertical posts concreted into the ground across prescribed shelter dimensions, suspending roofing panels atop without connecting to existing buildings. This arrangement is ideal for flexibility in locating optimal placement suiting property.
Lean-To Carports
As the name suggests, lean-to carports physically adjoin exterior walls of homes, garages, or sheds using that framing to mount one sloped roof side flush against to conserve space on the property. Positioning limitations near structures constraints size options but saves material costs melding into buildings.
Metal Carports
Utilizing formed steel roofing and beams yields the strongest shelters, lasting for decades with minimal maintenance requirements, thanks to their inherent corrosion resistance and durability.
Roof sheeting offers an alternative to asphalt or natural wood shingle options, which need continual replacement every couple of decades as weathering prematurely degrades their water protection capabilities. These metal structures stand up to heavy snow loads.
Custom Carports
For applications requiring specialized dimensions due to atypically long trucks, oversized RVs, or custom structures better incorporating architectural aesthetics blending into existing homes, customized carports fabricated precisely to suit unique needs make sense despite the higher initial price than standardized sizing options picked from traditional supplier inventories. Your investment stays tailored, optimizing functionality over years of ownership.
Factors To Consider When Choosing Carports
Key considerations influencing carport decisions include:
Size
Measure vehicles needing coverage to ensure adequate clearance distances all around, allowing open door accesses without abutting roof supports, facilitating easy ingress/egress. Factor maintenance workspace needs, too.
Style
Freestanding, lean-to, and metal types supply different aesthetic profiles, from industrial warehouse appearances to quaint architectural styling that assimilates respective homes. Overall, property ambiance steering determines the best option.
Materials
Contemplate longevity expectations weighing metal constructions against naturally vulnerable wood/shingle assemblies requiring periodic replacement as weathering degrades protective laminates over years of exposure plus regional climate challenges accelerating life cycle durations before needing full replacements.
Local Building Codes
Verify proposed structures meet property line setbacks while inspecting base soil conditions and determining needs (if any) for grading, concrete pads, or permissible gravel footing applications in the jurisdiction to comply with permits.
Permits
Know specific detached accessory structure size thresholds requiring submission of permit applications and onsite inspections in local building departments before proceeding with installations. Budget permit fees into project costs.
Budget
Contrast pricing structural components constructed from wood vs. metal assemblies purchased as complete kits or prefab packages, estimating total spend for respective shelter sizes capable of adequately covering owned vehicle groups.
Account for perpendicular bays supporting additional functions like golf cart parking, expanding values beyond core car coverage.
Carport Construction Materials
Common building materials used in creating carports include:
Metals
Utilizing formed sheet steel roofing and structural beam components yields the strongest structures lasting 30 years plus, requiring very minimal routine maintenance without the continual upkeep vulnerable wood-based assemblies demand.
Painted metal carport exterior sheeting shrugs off intense UV exposures, deteriorating alternative coverings prematurely through inherent material ruggedness.
Wood
For cost tradeoffs accepting higher maintenance expectations from periodic painting, staining, and full replacements as climate exposures chip away at protective laminates over years of service, wood-based carports affix easily incorporating traditional construction techniques on post frames roofed in asphalt shingles matching many homes' aesthetics.
Cedar and redwood naturally withstand rot better than basic pine studs.
Fabrics
Temporary fabric canopy carports stretched across tall aluminum pole frames erect speedily when unexpected additional vehicle coverages become necessary during family visits. They block impending storms or mid-construction phases needing worker truck protections until more permanent structures are finalized later.
These convenient materials make movable, flexible shelters, lowering risks. Although sacrificing longevity and durability, steel and wood carports endure decades through intense environmental exposures.
Features to Consider
Optimizing carport functionality and values requires evaluating the following:
Roof Pitch
Comparing installer options balancing sufficient rainwater, snow, and debris shedding capacity from gently angled designs promoting drainage against roof load weight tolerances, much steeper A-frame pitched appearances allow before requiring additional truss supports.
Anchoring Systems
Mounting carport vertical posts either into concrete piers, securing footings against seasonal frost upheavals in colder climates, or relying on simplified side connections, bolting perimeter beams into anchor sleeves, and digging narrow holes simplifies installations later.
Gable Ends
Open-air exposed construction provides the easiest drive-through maneuverability approaching vehicles parked within carport bays.
Optional vertical gable ends spanning the front and back tent rooflines to close off-sided exposure adds weather protection security in harsher environments, shielding contents from wind-swept moisture better than fully opened facades risk during aggressive storms.
Skylights
Incorporating transparent skylights running lengths of carport roof peaks allows extra overhead illumination, brightening daytime visibility, detailing cleaning tasks, or working underneath noticeably more than dim shadowing solid overhead sheeting otherwise creates except at outer fringes. The aesthetic dynamic visually lightens covered areas, too.
Storage Lofts
Where overhead clearance space allows, consider adding side lofts including upper floors across portions of covered carport squares. These can be accessed through installed ladders or stairways.
This option opens valuable storage areas off garage floor spaces for infrequently accessed equipment or seasonal recreational gear consolidation reclaiming main interior square footages better dedicated serving vehicles and daily needs.
Conclusion
Installing sturdy carports next to your property or existing buildings provides a welcome convenience when transporting goods during bad weather all while primarily protecting your vehicle.
Evaluating respective location planning with suppliers, streamlining permanent solutions, and supporting future expansion flexibility secures lasting rewards homeowners relish through prime asset coverage exactly when needed most.
Jenny Kakoudakis likes to blog about interiors. She launched award-winning Seasons in Colour in 2014. When she is not chasing criminals out of the financial system (her day job), she gets creative by redecorating her own home.
Download her free bathroom renovation guide here.
