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What wood to use for pergola?

jasonlin
Finding My Feet

What wood to use for pergola?

I'm building a pergola attached to a existing house. The area is around 40sqm (4m x 10m).

I'm planning to have 3 timber pots on the fence side and lvl attach to the existing house, 60cm space between joists, 60cm between battens and colorbond to cover the pergola. please let me know if it works.

Can you please also suggest what kind of post, beam, ceiling joists, batten and ect... I should use?

thanks very much

20231124.jpg

Dave-1
Home Improvement Guru

Re: What wood to use for pergola?

Afternoon @jasonlin 

Welcome to the Bunnings community :smile: A good place to get some ideas and solve questions for sure. Looking through the projects has really helpe dme out with my own projects.

Looking at your sketch I see a couple of things that could be an issue and one that I would definently suggest to change.

The three posts supporting 10m of flooring plus roofing is too far between posts. I would suggest to have at least 5 posts at 2.5m intervals if not 6 at 1.7m intervals to share the load. I do like the 600mm spacing for the joists and the battens you suggested.

With the roof attached to the house at 2400mm high side down to 2200mm low side is that to the decks surface or to the ground?

 

Are you going to support the 4m width of the deck with with posts/piers?

 

The last question that come sto mind is do you know of your local councils ruling for pergola/deck that is attache dto your house and not stand alone?

 

Dave

EricL
Bunnings Team Member
Bunnings Team Member

Re: What wood to use for pergola?

Hello @jasonlin 

 

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community. It's splendid to have you join us, and thanks for sharing your question about building a pergola.

 

I suggest having a quick look at our Top Ideas - Top 10 most popular pergola projects. Your project appears to be very similar to Pergola for outdoor entertaining by @Shay

 

I agree with @Dave-1's recommendation to check your local council's rules and regulations regarding attaching a pergola frame to your home. Because you are attaching roof sheeting to it, odds are it will be necessary to install a roof gutter to the structure as well.

 

Because it is a fairly large pergola, I also recommend engaging the services of a draft's person. They can draw up framing plans that will be compliant to the local council's rules and regulations.  

 

Here are some handy links that should help with your project:

 

 

If you need further assistance, please let us know.

 

Eric

 

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Re: What wood to use for pergola?

thanks Eric

I have concrete floor. So can I use the U shape post anchor to support the timber post 130m x 130m? I'm taking the Dave's advice to put the post every 2 meter.

u shape.jpeg

 

about the beam, the span is around 4m, do you have any suggestion?

 

thanks

 

MitchellMc
Bunnings Team Member
Bunnings Team Member

Re: What wood to use for pergola?

Hi @jasonlin,

 

I'm unaware of full stirrup post anchors designed for 130mm posts. On the Pryda product page, you'll see that they go up to 115mm. You might need to go with an adjustable post anchor, which it states in the design guide, has a max post size of 150mm.

 

For your rafters (which I presume you're referencing), you'd need something that can span 4000mm and be suitable for carrying the roof's weight. The beam is the timber on the 10000mm side that the rafters sit on. As my colleague @EricL mentioned earlier, due to the size of this structure, you'll likely need council approval and engineered plans for the submission. The engineer will be able to provide details on the appropriately sized rafters. For a 4000mm span at 600mm centres, you'd be looking at around a 140 x 45mm MGP10 rafter.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

Mitchell

 

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