CARPORT SAGA

(back to home remolding)

The carport had to be moved to put the shop where I wanted to put it at the end of the driveway. 

The plan was for it to stay upright while this was being done, but the wind had other ideas. Fortunately the carport was okay, and with some great helpers this was fixed with no problem.

Skip ahead 5 years and it is time to finally put the carport on to permanent posts. 
It had been standing on temporary posts with some "X" bracing this whole time. The big problem with this is we could not open our car doors all the way with out hitting the bracing and scratching the doors.
First my brother and I found where I wanted to place the carport and cut 4 18" square holes in the concrete with a borrowed gas powered saw. We (Steve) busted up the concrete in the hole and dug 4 holes 42" deep. I have to give full credit to the hole digging to my brother Steve, all  I did is cart off the dirt that was flying out of the hole. A couple of week ends later Dad, Steve, me and good friend Bob mixed up 30 80lb bags of concrete and placed the 6" x 6" posts in position. I took out my cheap laser level and marked all the posts level. I then measured up from the mark to the top of the posts. I then dropped the back by 1-1/4" to send the rainwater back, the dropped one back post 3/8" to tilt the carport to one corner to where the water spout is.

Now for the big day! I got 6 people plus me together to move the carport onto the new posts. We had to move the carport closer to the new posts, then unbolt the old posts from one side lift off the carport and drop it back down onto  the new posts. We then put some temporary post near the other posts and then removed them too. We had to lift off the temporary posts and slide the carport over and down to the new posts. It all went very smoothly. The carport is fairly light with out the posts attached. we aligned the carport centered on the new posts and I drove a lag bolt down into the post to hold the carport in position. I had made some metal plates the night before to firmly affix the carport to the new posts. We lag bolted the plates to the wood posts and nut and bolted the plate to the carport. This also went very well as I got lucky  the 6" x6" posts are 5-1/2" square and the carport was also 5-1/2" wide. A perfect fit!

Well enough words here are the pictures.

Now I will run power up one pole, put an outlet first then a switch to run a pair of 4' dual fluorescent lights. I am also going to add a motion controlled light so we will have light when we pull up at night. Last but not least I will paint the posts white.