What a difference covered parking shade structures make!
You know that good feeling you get when picking up your new purchase at the car dealership? You already bit that financial bullet. Now it’s time to sit behind the wheel for the first time. Aah… that familiar smell of new car!
Or, maybe you didn’t purchase anything yet. You just want to go for a test drive.
Except, it’s over 120 degrees in the vehicle because it baked in the parking lot before you arrived. Kinda dampens the enthusiasm, doesn’t it?
That’s why the folks at the Nissan dealership in Visalia, California wanted a cable-tensioned, fabric shade structure. It gets hot in this Central Valley city. They recognize the importance of first impressions. They know the impact that covered parking has on automotive dealerships. They now park cars and trucks under their new shade canopy before customers arrive.
Which means that vehicles continuously move in and out. Not good if drivers run into steel columns. So, we constructed a covered parking structure with cantilevered beams. Each of the (4) beams extends 18′ beyond its respective column. Clearance height is 9′. Only really bad drivers could hit anything with this configuration.
The structure is 91′ long and has (3) hip roofs of UV knitted shade cloth. Up to (9) vehicles park under it at a time. The (4) pier footings measure 36″ diameter and are 10′ deep.
Enough about the covered parking structure. How about me? Well, I experienced first-hand the amount of heat radiating off the parking lot asphalt. (We constructed this baby in July). I almost passed out twice while bending down to measure for only brief moments. As I think about it, though, these hot conditions keep food on our tables.
But, guess who won’t be taking any jobs soon in Bahrain!
P.S. That’s not me pictured in the photo above. I’m much too ugly for marketing purposes.
See other California shade structure projects.