Installing DIY Carports on Sloping Driveways
Can You Installing a Carport on a Sloping Driveway?
In a few cases, people have a sloping driveway and are not sure how they can build a diy carport kit over it. Well the solution is a simple one and very achievable. As long as you adhere to a couple of requirements, use the right design and prepare well, you will succeed.
1. Design the carport to the highest point from the ground level
– in the case of a carport, this entails desiging the carport to the greatest height from the ground leve, so that the posts will be long enough to use and the engineering will be satisfied. The reason the engineering needs to be satified is the higher the carport, the greater the amount of force is on the posts. The higher the carport, the stronger the posts have to be.
eg. if the carport is 2.4m high at one end and the driveway slopes away so that it is 3m high at the other end, the carport will need to be engineered to support a 3m height.
2. You must concrete the posts directly into the ground
– yes I know it would be handy sometimes if you could just fix some footing plates to the existing concrete/footings, but as the footing plates are designed and engineered for a 90 degree connection for their strength, they just won’t work.
3. Working With existing concrete
In a lot of situations, there is existing concrete or an existing driveway. There are a couple of solutions to use here.
1. Either straddle the existing driveway so that the posts go into the ground either side of the concrete. For example, if your driveway is 6 metres wide, design the carport so that the posts are slightly wider than 6m apart. You can simply then concrete the posts into the ground and won’t need to cut holes out of the driveway.
2. Simply cut some squares out of the concrete, drill the holes, and then concrete the posts in. This is done with a concrete cutter and is a more common occurance than you might think. You can either get someone to do it for you, or hire a concrete cutter. Doing it this way, the result is cleaner to look at, strong in terms of the structure (because you done footings), and you won’t be kicking your toes on any footing plates.
Handy Tip: Dowel into the existing concrete slab as well, so that the footings and slab will not move independently, causing high spots and trip factors.
So if you have a sloping driveway and need a carport, click on the quote link below and we’ll find a solution for your needs.