Patio cover installation in Anaheim CA - shade you'll actually sit under

Most people who call us have a patio that gets full sun all afternoon, so it sits empty from spring into fall. What you pay turns on the size of the cover, whether it's attached or freestanding, the material and what the slab under it needs for posts. The schedule turns mostly on design, paperwork and getting materials made, since the build itself is the short part. If you think you'll want walls someday, tell me up front, because a cover can be planned as the start of a patio enclosure. When I come out, I measure, look at the slab and talk it through, and the estimate gives you the figure for your own patio.

I start with the ground. Before anyone cuts into your patio, we find out what kind of slab is under it, because that decides where the posts can go and how they're anchored. Then we work through attached or freestanding and the material that suits your home. I usually lean toward attached when the roofline allows it, since it shades the doorway and needs fewer posts, but a freestanding cover makes more sense out in the yard or where the roof won't take it, and the choice stays yours. Most of the waiting happens before we build, during design and paperwork, so I keep you posted through that stretch and you always know what's next. Once the materials are in, our lead installer and our own installers set the posts, put up the frame and roof, and clean up before they leave.

A cover is often the first piece of a bigger plan. If walls and windows might follow, it pays to work through sunroom design now so the posts and roof suit the room later, and if you'd rather have a closed room than shade, we also build vinyl sunrooms.

Permit questions for a patio cover here start with the city's building office, which puts out bulletins on permit, code and plan requirements, including one just for patio covers. I don't guess at what your job needs. We find out what the building office asks for on your project, take care of the permit paperwork when the job needs it, and check with the city before we build if anything is unclear. On a single-family lot, the city's zoning code doesn't count a patio cover toward lot coverage or area limits, but the Building Code and the city's rules on what may extend into a yard still apply, so placement still matters. In multiple-family zones, a cover up to ten feet high may be allowed over an existing, permitted ground-floor private patio. If you're in east Anaheim, the city says the wildfire threat there is real, and the state has Cal Fire sort land into moderate, high and very high fire hazard zones, so we ask the city whether your lot's zone changes anything before we pick materials. For questions about your own lot, the city is the place to ask.

We're based in Anaheim and work here and in the cities around it. A lot of the patios we see are concrete slabs poured off a back slider, some patched or added onto over the years, and we see the same mix on jobs in Fullerton and Orange, so every slab gets the same look before we plan posts.