Pergolas in Ross, OH

Ross (ZIP 45061) properties have room around them, so a covered structure here is usually covered for real, and it often stands near something else that already sheds rain. Two roofs beside each other is a question worth asking early.

A closed top gives the household a dry place outside. The table stays usable in a shower, cushions stay where they were left, and the space under it works from spring through fall. Meals move out there and stay out there. It becomes another room of the house that happens to sit outdoors.

An open pergola sheds nothing, so there is nothing to plan for. A closed one is a roof. It takes every drop that falls on its whole area and delivers it to one edge in a line. Two hundred square feet in a heavy shower is a lot of water arriving in one place.

Where that place is decides the design. Water running off at the foot of a post washes the ground out and keeps the base wet. So we choose the discharge point instead: a gutter along the low edge, a downspout, and that downspout taken clear of the frame to ground that already handles water. Where an existing roof stands alongside, we size the two together on paper. An old valley tipping onto a new plane puts a torrent across it in every storm, and we route that before either surface is built.