How to Shade a Concrete Patio

LESLIE: Now we’ve got Don on the line who’s looking for some ideas for the patio. How can we help you?

DON: Hey, I’ve got a little 8×12 concrete patio. It comes off the back of my money pit and I’m looking at ways to shade that. I know I can put something on the house: one of those shades you can buy that will extend automatically. But I’m also looking for different options.

TOM: Do you care about keeping the weather off of it or you just want to shade it?

DON: I just want to shade it. I’m not so much interested in keeping the weather off of it. I’d like to shade it in the summertime and I’d like to let the sun in in the wintertime.

TOM: What about a pergola, Leslie?

LESLIE: Yeah. I mean a pergola could be a really great idea. It’s a simple-ish build, depending on the design that you go for. It’s basically sort of a shade structure that has some open bays sort of in the ceiling of it, if you will, for lack of a better word.

And what you could do with those open areas, a couple of different options. You can either plant or have beautiful, decorative pots with vining/climbing/flowering foliage that will grow up and sort of cover over in the arbor top of the pergola itself. Or you can even get – it’s a tracking system with sort of these ball rollers that go onto the tracking system on the sides. And you could put fabric in between, so you can pull the fabric closed or open, depending on how much shade you want to get to the space.

DON: OK.

LESLIE: So it really depends on the look that you want.

DON: Where do you get the tracking systems?

LESLIE: Now, Don, the company that sells the tracking system for pergolas – or they even sell the entire tracking plus fabric. And you can sort of do individual bays or do the full width. Depends on how much shade and how much fabric you want to see. It’s a company called ShadeTreeCanopies. All one word; that’s their website. And they have a retractable awning kit for pergolas.

DON: Wow. That sounds cool. That’s what I’ll try to do and I’ll see if I can’t go that route. I do appreciate your help.

TOM: You’re very welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.