Porch of the house - the business card of the owner

Porch is an architectural element that completes the construction of the house. It is already being built at the final stage of construction. But the way it will be determined at the design stage

The porch of the house is better to build from the same material as the house. For brick and concrete - from brick and concrete, for a log or frame - from wood or chipboard. There are no strict rules on this matter, but there are experience and recommendations of professional builders.

Before you build a porch, you should determine its dimensions (height, area), view (open, closed), type (cold, insulated). From the functional requirements that you impose on it, its design features also depend. Two steps, a small playground and a visor - the porch of the house can be so unpretentious. Or maybe a roomy room connected to a terrace.

No porch can do without steps. Their number depends on how high the foundation of the house. The porch of a typical wooden or frame house on a flat plot, as a rule, has one or three steps. The porch of a house with a high base, by definition, will have from five to ten steps. If the building is built on a plot with a slope, then sometimes a ladder is made in two spans.

Reflecting on the question of how to make a porch for your home, you should understand that when building it, you need the same skills as when building a house. Porch consists of the same parts as the house: the foundation, beams, logs, flooring, roof rafters or cornice brackets, roofing, stairs. In the walls of the closed porch, small windows are sometimes provided.

Like any building object, the porch of the house begins with a foundation. Most often it is made of pile wood, brick or concrete. In the northern regions, the role of piles is sometimes performed by huge stones - boulders. This choice is determined by several significant advantages of the pile foundation: relatively low cost, availability of materials, no need for special construction equipment, the possibility of erecting piles independently, even alone. The number of piles depends on the area of the porch and its type. Under a light roof on the posts does not need a powerful foundation, but a closed insulated porch requires a more serious relationship.

According to the old method, the ends of powerful logs or bars designed for piles are treated with tar, tar, and now there are special means for this. The log should be covered with a protective composition to a height of at least 90 centimeters, so that the protected part towered above the ground level by 15-20 centimeters.

The pits under the piles must be at least 60 centimeters deep, the gap between them is 2 meters. Thus, under the average porch area of 2x4 m you will need 6 piles.

At the bottom of the pits large crushed stone is poured (you can use broken brick), then gravel, sand. This "pillow" should be about 25 cm thick. It is installed on a beam or log, filled with earth, compacted very tightly. Wooden piles can be poured and cement.

Pits for concrete or brick piles are prepared in a similar way, piles are constructed using the formwork technology of concrete pouring.

The higher the porch is planned, the higher the piles should be. A low porch can be made on a flat concrete foundation. On the perimeter of the future porch formwork is made (height 7 -10 cm), concrete is poured. On top of the stacked brick (in one row). On the brick we put roofing material for waterproofing. Then you need to calculate so that the brickwork, logs, floorboards in height in the final version were on par with the floor of the house.

What will be the porch of the house, depends on the foundation - in a literal and figurative sense. The installation of the roof, stairs, walls and handrails is done according to generally accepted technologies.