Pergolas in Highland Heights, KY

Highland Heights (ZIP 41076) houses sit with the first floor four or five feet up. That puts the roof a long way above a deck at the back. A pergola standing under that roof stands in the line of everything the roof drops. So we place it against the roof as well as against the deck.

What a pergola gives a deck this high off the ground is a ceiling at a human height. From up there the yard is a long way down and the sky is wide open. An open frame overhead brings the top of the space back within reach. You get shade at the table, and a deck that reads as a place.

A roof gathers a large area of rain and delivers it all to its edge. Where a valley runs out above the deck, or a gutter overflows, the water arrives as one stream from a good height. Snow is the bigger one. A roof lets go of snow in sheets, and a mass of wet snow from twenty feet is a real impact. An open pergola carries no snow of its own, because snow falls through it. A slab off a roof does not fall through.

So the frame gets positioned against the roof above it. Out beyond the drip line is the simple answer, and it usually costs a foot or two of footprint. Where it has to sit closer, we double the rafters under the fall line and let the beam carry that load. We look at the gutter above before we set the posts, so the structure is standing where the water is not.