I have a sail shade on my deck. You’ll need to build posts at the edge of your deck to attach it to, either anchored deep or with guy wires to take some tension.
The upside is that it’s a lot less work than building a pergola and while it’s not as easily adjustable as a retractable awning, you can put it up or take it down in < 10 minutes. I leave it up all summer and take it down for the winter. The shade itself is pretty cheap, so this is probably the cheapest option. And as long as the posts are well anchored it’s stable even with pretty high wind.
We had a cantilever umbrella and it was no good in the wind.
The posts (one is pictured) are 4x4s, anchored to the deck with large bolts through 4x8 blocking that’s attached to the joists on both sides.
The cantilever umbrella was bolted to the deck. So it didn’t fall over. The problem is that the umbrella part itself is somewhat flexible and only so strong, and the wind would just throw it around.
My brother has a retractable awning from Sunsetter (which seems to advertise widely in the US) on his deck. He bought some kind of extended warranty with it, so when it was destroyed or damaged in a windstorm, they replaced it.
I see a lot of sail shades around here. We have very high winds as well as bright SUN at least 97 hours a day and the ones in my neighborhood seem to be holding up pretty well.
As we took our walk we spotted a sail shade. It looked pretty good. My wife might go for that and it seems both fairly simple and inexpensive. But at the same time don’t have to worry about it in every windstorm.
I just installed a Sunsetter on my house this past weekend. So far, so good. 15’ wide and goes out 11’-8" or so. Motorized with a remote control, and a wind sensor so it retracts automatically if it starts bouncing.
There were four brackets to mount to the house with the provided hardware. A bit of math to find solid structure to mount to, and make sure they are all level and on the same plane, but nothing insurmountable.
It weighs 125 pounds or so. The instructions say in more than a few spots to make sure you don’t try to put it in the brackets alone. They mean it. Despite my stubbornness and amazing rigging work, it can’t be done alone. Call your neighbor before you lift the thing. And make sure you have two adequate ladders. To the manufacturer’s credit, they warned me.
I’m looking to do the same - a retractable awning by part of the patio next to my future pool. @KCB615 can you comment on how much “drop” the awning has as it goes away from the houseline? Mine will want to be mounted at around 8’7", and I’m concerned about the height at the far end. I can play with the distance from the house a bit if I need to - I have an overhang of around 4’, and another 10’ would put me about parallel with the water line, so ideally I’m looking at around the 11’ distance as well. I’m wondering if the fact that you can have it retract automatically means you also don’t need quite as much of an angle for rain drainage.
Fully extended, 7 feet 4 inches from the deck to the outer track (we have the 3-foot crank down curtain at the far end) and it’s mounted 9 feet 6 inches above the deck.
Thanks. I might end up going a little less than the 10’ I was thinking, to keep the height acceptable. A roughly 2’ drop would put me at 6’7, which is about a foot of headroom, but might feel tight. Then again, I think we’d be sitting at a table and not be right at the edge, so that may not be much of an issue.
In any case, we’re in the right general range. I think I’ll start making some calls to get estimates and see what options are presented.
