Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that the porch of a private country house should be functional and fit into the overall exterior of the building. At the same time, the stylish and original porch is the hallmark of the house. There are several different options for the implementation of this final stage of construction, depending on the choice of the basic building material and budget framework. At the same time, we can confidently say that the task to make a solid, durable and beautiful porch to the house with your own hands is completely solvable: projects, photos and descriptions of all phases of work can easily be found on the Internet.
The main types and design of the porch
Structurally, a porch in a private house, the photos of which are presented not only in this article, is an open area, as a rule, with a ladder, which is made directly in front of the house. It can have the most different forms and be with a canopy or without it, and also from the most various materials.
Conventionally, the design that defines the design of the porch of a private house (the photo creates a visual representation) can be divided into three basic types: simple, built-in or attached:
- a simple type porch is a platform with steps and a shed above it. When assembling such a porch, the most difficult operation will be to fill the foundation, which will be required even for a light wooden structure;
- built-in porch is designed together with the house and is under construction thorough;
- The attached type porch does not look different from the built-in one, but it can be easily modified and rebuilt. At the same time the attached porch can be arranged by alteration or minor finishing touch of a simple porch;
Important! The foundation under the porch is necessary to prevent deformation of the steps associated with seasonal temperature changes.
The depth of the foundation for the porch should coincide with the depth of the foundation of the entire house. Otherwise, due to the precipitation of the soil associated with its seasonal freezing and thawing, the whole structure of the porch can be deformed. If, as a result of the precipitation of the soil, there is a shift of the structure towards the house, then it will be the foundation of the porch that will collapse, as if less massive. Minor repairs in this case will not work: everything will have to be redone.
Since even a closed porch for a private house (photos can be viewed on specialized resources), although completely glazed, is not intended for living and there will not be massive furniture and constant presence of people, then for all types of porches you can use a simple concrete pillow as a basement. .
But if concrete, red or white brick or stone is chosen as the material for deciding how to make a porch in a private house (the photo of the necessary steps will help to cope with the work) – the foundation must be reinforced. Such a construction will have a greater load on the base than wood.
The foundation for a porch begins with marking a rectangular area of appropriate size: a porch of any shape must fit into this rectangle. Piles are driven into the corners of the rectangle, and then a pit is dug along the marked contour. The depth of the pit should not be less than the depth of the main foundation.
Helpful advice! Laying the foundation of the porch to a greater depth is also not recommended. In this case, the power load at the displacement of the foundations of the house and the porch with shrinkage of the soil and temperature drops will be less, but the destruction is still inevitable – not in 2-3 seasons, so in 5-7.
A large visor above the porch (the photo will give an idea of this design better than a verbal description), which will require the installation of supports, the rectangle for the pit will be increased by an additional 20-30 cm on each side. In this case, the pile support for the visor may be clogged after the porch itself has been made.
For this, small rectangles (20×20 or 30×30 cm) should be left at the points of the future installation of supports. In the future, it will be possible to quickly drill in these areas of the well, install and drive in a support, pour concrete.
Formwork is very desirable, although it is possible to do without it on stony ground. You can use almost anything for formwork – boards left over from the main construction, thin plywood and even chipboard. It is only necessary to remember that thick plywood and chipboard are hygroscopic, will swell due to rain and groundwater and creep away, therefore, after the concrete hardens, the formwork must be removed.
Trims of conifer boards can be left. Timber from coniferous wood has a very significant positive feature: completely soaked with water (and at the same time even being deep frozen), they are made very strong, while maintaining elasticity.
Helpful advice! With a strong deformation of the soil, for example, if the house is built on a slope, conifer formwork boards will work as a damper.
Waterproofing the foundation of the porch is mandatory – for its device, it is enough to cover with roofing material the bottom of the excavation and the inner surface of the formwork. For reinforcement, you can get by with a few bricks, on which a grid is placed or a grid of reinforcement bars is attached.
Thus, the pit is filled with the necessary number of layers of bricks and mesh, and then proceed to pouring the structure with concrete. In order not to create voids in the thickness of the concrete, after each layer of casting it is necessary to thoroughly ram the solution with a spade.
Helpful advice! For compacting concrete it is better to use a compactor, which can be rented.
Since the concrete sets and dries out for about a week, it is necessary to immediately level the surface of the foundation and cover with roofing material or construction film with an overlap at the edges at least 50 cm. Otherwise, in case of rain, excess water in the surface layer of concrete will make it brittle in the future the foundation would be meaningless.
Found in the Internet made their own projects, photos of the porch to the house will help determine the choice of materials for construction. In general, they are traditional:
- tree;
- metal;
- concrete;
- brick or stone.
Photos of wooden porches for a private house with their hands, made of wood – on the Internet, perhaps the most. After all, wood is the most traditional material and the porch of it is the simplest to manufacture. It is enough to have skillful hands, a circular saw (or a simple saw with a fine tooth for cutting accuracy) and a construction square.
The ideal material is larch, followed by spruce and other conifers: they are durable, easily processed even by hand. After special impregnation, the material from them is not inferior, for example, to the material from oak or from other hard rocks.
Important! Working with hardwoods requires not only skill and a suitable tool, but also specific knowledge. The quality of drying oak, for example, can be determined only by an experienced carpenter.
First you need to make a kosour (kosouugor). Since it is simply impractical to make the width of the porch for a wooden house (the photo of the most successful projects confirm) less than 120 cm, at least three such beams will be required. The optimal distance between kosoura – about half a meter, based on this you can calculate how many beams will be required.
This approach will ensure the strength and durability of the construction of the hand-made porch for a wooden house (photos and drawings in magazines and construction manuals prove this), even if the staircase is used very actively, with a large weight load.
Interesting! Kosour – carrier beam with sawn teeth, which plays the role of additional internal support. On the horizontal edges of the teeth lay the steps.
The bowstring (outer skiff, or just an inclined beam) should be 2-3 times thicker than the skirt. Both bowstrings are connected at the ends by transverse beams. Between them, the required number of kosurs is attached to the beams.
During the cutting of the ribs for the steps, the square is simply necessary. A slip between the teeth in parallel kosoura even 5-7 mm will provide easy subsidence steps in one place and swelling in another. Temperature differences will only increase the difference in levels of the step.
The width of the steps made by the hands of the porch made of wood (with or without a canopy) is calculated under the foot of an adult with a margin of 35-45 cm. The height of the risers (height difference between the steps) should not be made more than 20 cm. The steps should be an odd number (an additional stiffening rib is provided), and if there are more than three steps, then the porch should be secured with railings.
The overhang of the steps can be avoided if the porch is glazed and the stairs are securely covered from rain and snow. If the staircase goes outside, then the overhang is necessary so that water drips onto the plane of the lower step, and does not flow down the risers into the groove between them.
Helpful advice! The finished assembled ladder must be installed so that the plane of the steps lay with a slight inclination (approximately 1-2 cm per meter). Then the water itself will flow down the steps, and frost will not form on them.
The finished structure is installed on the prepared fortified site, that is, on the foundation. For the strength of the installation in the place of the foundation surface where the lower beam with cross-sections will be enclosed, it is possible to push a small depression with the help of this beam, while the concrete has not yet completely stiffened. The result is a very strong support for the porch stairs.
The flooring of the upper platform is made of the same material as the stairs. There is only one requirement: it is desirable to use boards of the maximum available width and length, and to adjust the joints as precisely as possible. Well-ground boards themselves ensure the absence of deformations, even if the tree begins to crack with time.
Depending on the size of the site and the stairs, with a ready foundation, it will take 3-7 days to work on the arrangement of the porch to the wooden house with your own hands. Projects, photo instructions and guidelines will help to break the process into stages. The time spent will most likely depend on the experience of working with wood, but the newcomer will cope without problems.
The advantages of a metal porch are that it is mounted literally within hours with the ability to work with electric welding. In addition, the metal structure will be relatively cheap if you do not use forged elements. Minus – everything will have to be assembled from standard elements. But if you want a really beautiful and stylish porch made of metal, then forged elements will have to be ordered and wait at least 2-4 weeks, depending on the volume of the order, despite the fact that forging is not cheap.
However, a primitive staircase design without frills can be made quite impressive with a metal porch in a private house (the photos confirm this). The easiest option is to assemble from channels, corners, and filling material: wood, thick chipboard, or porcelain stoneware. Projects, photos of the porch to the house of metal clearly show the popularity of such a decision.
For a simple metal porch you will need two identical channels the length of a future staircase. Both channels are arranged in parallel at a distance equal to the length of the future step, then they mark and cut the corner to the size of the step, adding a centimeter along the edges for the welding seam.
Similarly, a piece of length equal to the height between the steps is cut off from the corner. Both trimming are welded to each other L-shaped (it turns out the edge-frame steps in the cut). Make the right amount corresponding to the number of steps, such L-shaped parts and weld them to the channel. Thus it turns out a metal kosouugor. The second kosouugor from another channel is made in the same way.
So, no special skills are needed to solve the problem of how to build a porch to the house of wood, metal, concrete and other materials with your own hands. All operations are basic for construction and are quite capable for skillful hands.
