One of our friends has their old Pergola wrecked by Storm Eunice and requested us to build a new replacement one. So over a week or so, We ordered a collection of timber, four square 75mm super treated by 3metres tall, and eight 100mm by 50mm regularised fully treated planks three of them slightly longer at 3.6metres and the other five 3metres.
We also bought four bitumen impregnated plastic sleeves that are slipped onto the lowest part of the square timber to provide doubly extra protection from ground rot and everything. These are heat shrunk tight to the wood by using a hot air gun, to seal the bitumen right into the timber fibre.
We installed the four posts first into the same location as the old posts were and then took more detailed measurements of exactly where they are located so we could cut and get the upper framework constructed in our workshop before returning to install it.
Posts-Installed
We cut notches in both the three cross rails and the tie struts so that they all interlocked together and then cut angled ends to make them look more like the classic designs we have seen on the web.
Top-Frame-fabricated
Each connection is screwed together using heavy duty stainless steel coach screws with stainless steel washers too. The clearance holes were sprayed with timber treatment solution to ensure that the wood is protected for the long term.
We then took the eight pieces around and had the fun of installing them up on the four posts, getting it all level and everything. We did have to make one adjustment because we hadn’t spotted an air vent coming out of the wall so we had to trim one of the structs a bit shorter and one of the cross rails that goes on the brick wall also a bit shorter too.
But everything slotted together nicely and we glued all the joints with PU glue, tightened up all the coach screws and left it to dry and cure overnight. We were very lucky with the weather!
Half-laped-with-Stainless-caoch-screw
We finished up by scraping the excess glue away from the joints to make it all neat and tidy, and then fixed up several new stainless steel hooks that our friend bought for her hanging baskets and butterfly houses. We also reinstalled her outside camera again and got that connected back into her network so she can enjoy watching her hedgehogs playing and eating during the night.
Pergola-complete