A pergola can be a great addition to any home.
It can give you a nice, shady space that adds real character
to your backyard.
Putting one up isn't much of a drama.
If you're interested in having a go,
I'm going to take you through the job step by step.
Now, generally, any structure over 1 meter
high needs a building consent, so best check
with your local council about the applicable building
regulations.
Another tip-- some environments in New Zealand
are quite corrosive to metals.
So metal fixings need to be protected against the elements,
either by hot-dip galvanizing, or, in more aggressive
environments, you'll want to go with stainless steel.
This pergola's going to be 3.5 by 3 meters.
We'll start by marking out where our post holes will go.
We're now going to build our profiles.
Profiles and stringlines are essential to establish a square
and level area.
We build profiles to fix stringlines to.
Place your profile at least 1/2 a meter back
from your outside corners.
Lay two bits of 4x1 down, peg them in place,
and make sure they're level.
Put two nails into the profiles in line with the corner marks
and run your stringlines.
Finally, we measure the diagonals
to ensure the area is square.
All right, you see this corner?
This is the outside line of our posts.
Our post holes are going to be 400 square by 500 deep.
Before you start digging, contact your local utility
companies to make sure you don't hit anything you shouldn't.
I've put my stringlines back on.
And in the bottom, we'll toss a concrete block for the posts
to sit on, so the posts sit off the ground.
Then we put in the posts, line them up
against the stringlines, then brace them,
make sure they're plumb, and then pour in your concrete.
Use a stick to vibrate the concrete
to make sure there's no air bubbles in it.
I've let our concrete sit for 24 hours.
I can now take down our stringlines, profiles,
and braces.
Right.
Time to mark the posts for length
and where the rebates for our bearers to sit on will be.
We're making our pergola 2 meters high
to the underside of the bearers.
I'm just going to use an off-cut of the bearer
to mark out our rebate.
I now want to transfer our rebate mark
onto our other three posts.
To do this, I'm just going to knock
in a nail on our rebate mark.
I'm taking a nice, straight piece of timber,
put that on our nail, throw our level on there,
and transfer that mark onto our other posts.
We're now going to chop the top of our posts off.
Next thing we need to do is chop out our rebate.
Now I just want to set our blade of our circular saw
to the depth of our cut.
Right.
Now it's time to cut our bearers.
My pergola is 3.5 meters wide.
I'm going to overhang our bearer 300 millimeters
past the sides of the posts.
So that means our bearer needs to be 4.1 meters long.
Now I'm going to shape our bearers.
To do that, I'm going to cut them
in 300 millimeters and then down 35.
The next thing to do is to mark the position of the rafters
on the bearers.
I'm going to use eight rafters, so I'm
going to mark out the bearers to make
sure they're evenly spaced.
We come back to our 300-millimeter mark,
square that up, do that on either end,
and then we can evenly mark out our rafters.
I'm using an off-cut of a rafter to get the width right.
Our pergola is 3 meters deep.
We're making the rafters 3.6 meters long.
This includes an overhang of 300 millimeters on each side.
Now I'm going to cut the battens that go on top of the rafters.
The pergola is 3.5 meters wide, so I'm
going to make the battens 3.6 meters long.
That includes a 50-millimeter overhang on either side.
The battens go onto the rafters.
A quick way to mark the positions
is to line all the rafters up and mark them at the same time.
I'm going to put my battens at 300 millimeters apart.
But you can do whatever you want.
Right.
Just throw your bearer in your rebates.
And just clamp them to the post so you can
drill the holes for the bolts.
And just remember, when you're up a ladder, be careful.
Lay the rafters on the bearers.
And because we've already marked where they go, laying them out
is easy.
Just one skewed nail on either side should do it.
If you want to speed things up, you can use one of these.
And finally, we just lay our battens on top of our rafters
and just fix straight through.
Here's another tip.
Pre-drill the holes at the end of each batten
to stop the timber splitting.
Now, let's just make sure we've got our 50-millimeter overhang
and then just nail them on.
Job done.
And now you're the proud owner of your own pergola.
Easy as.
For all the help and advice you need to get the job done, just
head down to Mitre 10.