Car park shade structures · Sydney & NSWCarpark cover, engineered to code.
Carpark cover is engineered for the wind at your address and built in stages, because a carpark rarely gets to close. T-post sails, hip roofs and barrel-vault arches, whichever one suits the bay layout.
Car park shade structures
It starts with the parking plan.
A carpark structure is steel and fabric doing one job: putting cover over bays that bake all day. Posts sit on the bay lines or outside the aisle entirely, so nothing new stands where a car has to turn.
The membrane for your carpark is cut and sewn on our own factory floor at Rydalmere. We've been making shade in Sydney for more than 40 years, over 3,000 jobs.
A carpark job is staged so the rest of the site keeps working around it. Tell us which section can go first, because you know your busy hours better than we do.
- Fabric that blocks up to 99% of UV, so dashboards stop cracking and duco keeps its colour.
- Steel and footings sized to your site, not to a standard detail.
- Low corners aimed away from doors and accessible bays.
- Australian made, with a 10 to 15 year warranty on the sail.
Selected work
Carparks and forecourts.
A rooftop carpark at Mascot, a replacement sail at Campsie, and sails over a carwash forecourt.
How it goes together
What decides a carpark structure.
T-post, hip roof or arch
Run a spine of posts down a centre line and a T-post sail throws fabric out both ways, so a double bay run is covered without a post standing in an aisle. A hip roof gives you a real roofline in fabric, tidy from the street. The Arch is a curved barrel vault on posts, and it sheds water and hail off a long span better than anything else we make.
Wind loads and what's under the footings
Wind is the load that decides a big span, and an open western lot loads a structure differently to a rooftop deck. Every structure is wind-load engineered to NSW codes, with certification available on request, and the footings are sized to what's under the surface, since a suspended slab is a different problem to open ground. That work happens before anything is cut, and you get drawings you can hand to anyone who asks.
Built over a carpark that stays open
A carpark that has to stay open is staged: footings poured in one section while the next keeps working, then the membrane goes up section by section. Where a crane can stand shapes the drawing too, since it needs room clear of the aisles that have to keep running.
Where the water goes
People forget the water until the first big storm. We look at what your ground already does with it, and where the site needs it the discharge goes into existing drainage and stays off the pavement. Water landing in the wrong spot swaps a sun problem for a puddle.
A new skin on good steel
A tired carpark structure is usually a tired membrane. The cloth has gone chalky and slack while the steel and the footings under it are still sound. We fit a new skin to the frame you have and replace the fittings that have had enough, which is a lot less work than starting again. Sails we didn't build get the same treatment.
Good to know
Carpark shade, answered.
Will it protect the cars from hail?+
It takes the sting out of it. A tensioned membrane flexes under an impact and spreads the load across the sheet. Fabric is not a concrete deck, and a freak storm can still mark a bonnet. For an ordinary Sydney hailstorm, covered bays mostly come out with a wash.
What height clearance can we get?+
We set the low point above the tallest thing that has to pass underneath, then add room on top of that. Tell us when we measure whether a delivery van, an ambulance, a garbage truck or a caravan needs to come through, because that number drives the post heights and the steel. Every structure carries fall, so clearance is measured from the low side.
Do you offer a maintenance program?+
Not a contract you sign up to, no. Ring us when it needs looking at. We'll re-tension it and wash it down, and check the fittings while we're up there. A sail kept tight and clean lasts longer, and after a big blow is a sensible time to have someone look at it.
Do you need a site plan before you come out?+
Send one through if you have it, and if you don't, we'll measure the carpark and draw it up either way. The written quote comes the same day as the measure.
NSW builder licence 294924C · ABN 54 631 910 168 · family-owned, 40+ years · our own factory at 40 Bridge Street, Rydalmere NSW 2116.
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