Screened in Porch

[David.DiPietro]

We are building a 1 1/2 story cabin in Slatyfork, WV. We are extending it to 40 ft. and building it on concrete piers. We would like to build a screened in porch the full length (40 ft long x 8 ft deep). Does anyone have any design ideas or suggestions to accomplish this? The property slopes away from the house and the porch could be as high as 10 ft off the ground. Thanks so much.

Dave

[Redoverfarm]

Dave there are some commercial screen kits available.  In as much as the metal frame work with the spline groove for the screen to fit into held by a wedge shaped spline.  You could also go with a little old fashion design with a header and footing boards with an occassional frame stiffner then stretch the screen between the two and cover with either screen bead or door stop molding.  Thats a lot of porch to screen in.  If you go with a decking material don't forget the screen on the floor joist.  If you go with T&G it won't be needed.

How's the progress.  I guess you got your well drilled.  Need to post a pix or two. 

[David.DiPietro]

Hi John, I will be doing the screen the old fashioned way and on the floor I plan to use tongue and groove.  I am not sure how to do the framing on the porch.  Do you have a recommendations on how to frame the porch?  BTW, I emailed you on your personal email earlier.  Thanks  

Dave

[FrankInWI]

I'm very interested in this post... want to do the same thing at my place.... near the river and lots of misquetos... they  make company run!  ... which isn't allways bad

[MountainDon]

I see this as a question in two parts.

1. the porch structure, supports, roof...  This is much the same as adding on a deck plus the roof. Do you have specific questions on some portion of this, like how to attach the deck part or the roof?

2. How to screen it in...  The quick and dirty solution would be to purchase large rolls o screen material and do like we did on our gazebo. There we built the "walls" with 2x4 studs spaced approx 3 feet apart. We then stretched the aluminum screen material over the openings (on the exterior). We used screws to attach the 1x2 material we used to secure the screening at each 2x4 or corner 4x4.

The alternate would be to build or buy screen panels that could be inserted/removed from each screen bay. This could have some advantage when time comes to do a torn screen repair. So far in three years we've had no perforations or tears in the screening.  We used black aluminum screening. (Black screen is easier to see out through than gray or silver.)