Hi Everyone, I would like your opinions. I plan to put a shade cover over my deck. I have the shade cloth which will attach to the house on hooks at the grommets. The deck is only 9 foot wide so I don't expect sagging in the middle to be a problem but we'll see if I need to add some wire later if necessary. On the front side of the deck, I want to put 12' supports in concrete and attach hooks for the grommets at top of the poles. The support posts will be in the ground in front of the deck, not on or attached to the deck except maybe a stabilizing strap to existing deck posts/railing if necessary. I like the way pt wood 4x4 fence posts look and it would be easy to screw in hooks and hanging plant holders but they are heavy. I was considering some kind of metal/alum/galvanized poles instead because they might be lighter and easier to work with But I don't know if pipe would give me the flexibility to add hooks, flower pot holders or lights, etc. Thanks for any advice.

We have the walk up from hell. My buddy always joked that I should line it and make a swimming pool. Approximately half the walkup is covered by the deck coming out of the dining room. This is the bad part. The concrete slab is covered with mildew from water/rain dripping down from the deck. Water collects in the 18" space between the retaining wall and the slab during a big rain. Drain pipes apparently are able to carry most of it away from the house. Fortunately we've never had rain come in through the sliding glass door. The other half isn't so bad it's landscaped and is decent to look at most of the year. The whole damn thing though is a waste of space for the most part. I'd like to ask the construction company what in the world they were thinking when they built this thing. The bigger concern is of the retaining wall failing to retain. The house was built in the early 70's. But that's a different discussion topic. Any ideas how to turn this space into something usable, and get the water off the slab thus stop the mildew? We go down there now and think what a disgusting mess. Apologies for the attached pictures. **** your head to the left. You apparently can't email iphone pictures to a PC and have them come out correctly. :wall:[ATTACH]69378[/ATTACH][ATTACH]69379[/ATTACH][ATTACH]69380[/ATTACH][ATTACH]69381[/ATTACH]