..... my not so exciting ventures into gardening, self sufficiency, getting solar electricity & hot water & pretty much life in general in a small country town .....

Thursday, January 21, 2010

A Shade Sail Saga...


Above is the sail I purchased on ebay for $20.
Postage was about $80 so all up $100 for a 7m x 8m sail.

So far so good...

The posts were from a steel supplier



And I had help digging and cementing the holes from Les and Don...

The sail went up in 3 corners but we needed larger turnbuckles, so down it came.
Fast forward a few days to a massive windstorm which caught the sail & slammed it down on the tomato posts, creating quite a few holes in it.
Patched the sail, put it back up, only to have another gigantic windstorm turn up.
It was so rough that the posts started moving & the concrete cracked.
Down came the sail.
Many weeks later Les pulled out the posts, busted the old concrete away, then we re-dug the holes & put 4 bags of concrete in each.
We also braced the other 2 posts which couldn't come out since the had been used in the colourbond fence.
Last night the sail went up for the 3rd & final time.



This was taken at 1.15pm which is the start of the hottest part of our day.
The garden still receives all the morning sun & most of the afternoon, just not at midday & until about 3pm.





It should also provide a bit of protection from frost.



Phew!
Next project will be more fencing.




2 comments:

  1. Great post! You did a nice work indeed.
    sun shade sail

    ReplyDelete
  2. Though you had some setbacks, the end result looks terrific. Congrats!

    ReplyDelete