Transparent canopy of polycarbonate with your own hands - drawings
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How to make a canopy of polycarbonate - Architect's advice
Now more and more popular are coatings made of lightweight material, polycarbonate, due to its lightness, flexibility, translucence and a large color gamut. Lightweight buildings made of this material look elegant, do not overload the landscape, successfully blend in with the surrounding nature, and are also easy to install.
Difference between types of polycarbonate
This modern polymer material is available in two types: monolithic (sheet) and honeycomb. They differ significantly from each other, but, perhaps, it is more interesting to consider honeycomb polycarbonate, which makes it possible to create modern light-transparent roofs, with which it is unlikely that the materials of previous years will be compared.
Properties of polycarbonate directly depend on the structure: honeycomb panels are hollow and have a smaller specific weight than monolithic ones.
Accordingly, the cost of the sheets is different: the first will be much cheaper. Cellular polycarbonate is a product of two layers, joined together by stiffening ribbons in the form of honeycombs. The thickness of the sheets varies from 4 to 36 mm. The thinnest, 4 mm, is used for advertising structures, greenhouses, and polycarbonate with thickness of 6-8-10 mm has proved itself well in the suburban areas in the form of a cover for canopies.
Panels made of cellular polycarbonate do not break, unlike glass, they are frost-resistant, they withstand extreme frosts, considerable heating, snow and wind loads. The air layer is an excellent heat insulator.
From polycarbonate, you can create a variety of structures on the country side (Figure 2, 3, 4), complex and interesting in form, easily built in kind. It can be a carport (Fig. 6), a gazebo, a greenhouse or any dacha structure, including the entrance to the house (Figure 5) and the construction of the attic floor.
Light-colored roofing as an element of the interior gives the room lightness and airiness, but due to the fact that polycarbonate is a very light material, it is necessary to pay special attention to fixing it on supporting structures.
See also: Canopy at the bath of cellular polycarbonate own hands
Supports for polycarbonate awnings
Particular attention should be paid to the choice of supporting structure for the "light" roof. A gust of wind at all, it would seem, not a hurricane force creates a pressure drop, which can tear off the roof of an area of ten, or even twenty square meters. Lightweight materials usually do not have very high strength.
Accordingly, such materials require a serious attitude to attaching them to the supports. It is very important to consider at what distance the supporting structures of the roof are installed, as well as how this coating is fixed. Unfortunately, standard "press washers" - these are plastic linings for conventional self-tapping screws - not always
can ensure the reliability of the roof. In our climatic conditions, it is necessary to ensure more reliable fastening of the coating. For example, you can do this with an aluminum profile (Figure 1, 5). Do not also forget about the standard for polycarbonate elements, such as start-finish profiles, docking "H" and corner joints. These elements ensure the tightness of both the material itself and the horizontal and inclined roof as a whole.
But we also need to remember that cellular polycarbonate can have different strength characteristics and different thicknesses, as it was said above. Accordingly, the strength and price of such materials vary greatly. If you do not use the start-finish profile or perforated tape, the polycarbonate can be filled with water, and even worse, this liquid can bloom that will ruin the beauty of the translucent roof.
In addition, it must be borne in mind that when installing polycarbonate structures a special sealant is used, which has an increased adhesion to this material and does no harm to it.
Note that cellular polycarbonate structures can be of almost any shape — domed, flat — and of virtually any kind, because this material is easy to machine and bends, which makes it possible to construct original structures from it. Thus, the form and type of the building that is being built depends only on imagination and the ability to place it on the site, receiving almost complete freedom for creativity.
What color to choose?
Equally important is the choice of the color of the material, which is related to the degree of light and heat transmitted to the room covered by this material.
The most popular and demanded are transparent and smoky colors. The color material has a light transmission capacity within 30-60%. Darker colors of the polymer let in less light than light colors. This makes it possible to adjust the level of illumination in the room, creating comfortable conditions for rest.
If the design is a small visor with a small bending radius, then a strong pressure of precipitation on the surface of the visor is excluded. Therefore, it is sufficient to use a polycarbonate sheet with a thickness of 4-6 mm. Such a building material is better used for protective roof-visors above the porch, above the gate wicket, using a framework of metal trusses (Figure 5).
Sheets of polycarbonate with a thickness of 6-8 mm withstand snow cover up to 10-12, see, but snow should be scraped off the roof as needed. Polycarbonate of this thickness is used for greenhouses, arched passages and canopies (Fig. 7, 8). For a country with a harsh climate, the use of a more durable material is preferable: a thin sheet of polycarbonate, under the influence of low temperatures, gusts of wind and pressure, accumulated on the surface of atmospheric precipitation, can deform (cave in) until the formation of cracks, which can be observed over the past few years using the example of greenhouses in the suburban areas. In the cover of greenhouses 4-millimeter polycarbonate is used, and snow is not cleaned in winter.
Polycarbonate with a thickness of more than 10 mm has high strength and shockproof properties. For example, polycarbonate sheets with a thickness of 16 mm can already be used in industrial buildings - for the manufacture of lightweight roofs of large areas that are subject to heavy loads. In winter, roofs made of such material must also be periodically cleaned so that the snow cover does not exceed 50 cm.
For each metal structure, the sheets are selected taking into account the available area of the structure and possible loads. The pitch of the longitudinal bearing supports of the frame must be no more than 700 mm. As for the step between the transverse elements, it must be calculated depending on the angle of inclination of the structure and the thickness of the selected material. When the thickness of polycarbonate 8-16 mm, the pitch should be no more than 1 m, if the thickness is less than 8 mm, then the step is less than 70 cm.
And the last point, which is important to know: when attaching sheets of cellular polycarbonate, the hole under the mounting screw must be several millimeters (2-4 mm) larger than the diameter of the self-tapping screw. In this case, the ability to control the thermal change of the material is provided. The hole should be from the edge of the panel at a distance of at least 40 mm (Figure 5).
See also: Transparent canopy over the terrace in the dacha with their own hands
DIY polycarbonate canopies - options, designs and drawings
Polycarbonate shelter with your hands: video
© Author: V.Strashnov. architect
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