With the move to a new house and more importantly out into the country, our goal has been to be outdoors as much as possible. The patio that came with the house is huge and has great potential, but this beast gets direct sun ALL-DAY-LONG. This led us to the easy decision of installing shade sails, and I’m going to walk you through the process.
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Materials
4×4 pressure treated posts
Cement for post footings
Shade Sails
Eye Screws (one for each corner)
Rope
The Posts
Before installing shade sails, we needed to create something opposite our house to anchor them to. We opted to use wooden 4×4 posts set in cement footings along the edge of our patio. Because we were installing two sails, we needed three posts. Two post for the outer corners of the sails, and one in the center that both inner sail corners would hook to.
When setting your 4×4 posts, a good rule of thumb that we stick to is digging post holes that are 12 inches in diameter and 1/3 the height of the post that will be sticking out of the ground. We needed our posts to stick out at least 7.5 feet ( the height of our roof line), so we dug 2.5 foot deep holes.
We used 1 bag of cement in each hole which filled the hole about 3/4 of the way, and then filled the rest in with dirt after the footing was set.
Installing Shade Sails
Once the cement was completely dry, we got to tie up our sails. I love projects that are super simple. We placed eye screws into the fascia board and the posts. Using rope, we stretched and tied all four corners of our shade sails to the eye hooks. We kept all of our eye screws the same height, but some people opt for the angled look.
I used simple knots to tie up the ropes, and cut off the excess. I tied a few knots just to hold up some of the excess rope.
It is recommended to place your anchor hooks at least 2.5 feet away from the corners of your sail so you can give them a good stretch.
The Results
We absolutely love these shade sails. Installing shade sales is one of the easiest projects we’ve ever done! I had really wanted a big pergola over our patio, but because of the size of our patio, that just wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
I was a little skeptical about how the sails would look, but I really like them. We get several hours of good shade in the afternoon over our sitting and dining areas.
The kids have been loving eating outside in the shade. Installing shade sails has given the patio an overall cozy feeling, but they don’t block so much light to make it a cave.
We’ve got a few more projects to do for the full patio makeover so stay tuned!
