Carport shade sails · SydneyPark in the shade, hail or shine.
A tensioned sail over the driveway keeps the sun and the hail off your car, without a bulky steel carport parked across the front of the house.
Carport shade sails
A roof for the car.
A carport shade sail is a tensioned membrane, held on slim posts or on brackets bolted back into the structure of the house. There's no frame overhead and no wall at the side, just fabric and steel where the load goes. The car sits under cover all day.
We've been building shade in Sydney for more than 40 years, with over 3,000 jobs behind us. On a driveway the design has to work around the car door that opens and the gate that swings, so we measure it on site before anything gets drawn.
Shade cloth is the usual choice over a driveway, and waterproof PVC is the one to look at if you want the rain handled too. We'll say which one suits your driveway, and say so if a sail is the wrong answer for your site.
- Blocks up to 99% of UV, so no more baked dashboards or faded paint.
- A tensioned skin flexes under hail and spreads the impact across the sail.
- Cut and sewn at our own factory in Rydalmere, Australian made.
- Engineered to the NSW wind codes, with certification on request.
- Backed by a 10 to 15 year warranty.
Selected work
Driveways and carparks.
Sails we've made and installed over vehicles, from a home driveway to rooftop carparks.
How it goes together
What decides the design.
Sail or cantilever?
A four-point sail wants an anchor at every corner, usually two posts on the open side and two fixings back to the house. Where there's nothing to fix to, or where a post would sit in the swing of a car door, we go cantilever: every upright on one side, the fabric reaching out over the driveway with nothing underneath it. Both are engineered structures. Which one you end up with depends on where there's room for a post.
Clearance, measured properly
We measure the tallest thing that has to pass underneath (a roof box, a bike rack, the aerial on the ute), then set the low corner above it with room to spare. Every sail is built with fall across it so water and leaves run off one corner, which means there's always a high side and a low side. Tell us about the caravan before we design, not after.
Brackets or posts
Brackets bolted through to the roof structure carry a sail off a tiled or metal roof cleanly. Where the roof can't take the load, or the driveway sits away from the house, we set posts in engineered footings. Either way the fixing detail is drawn on your blueprint before anything is cut.
Cloth or waterproof PVC
Shade cloth breathes, so the heat that builds under the sail lifts out through the weave. Waterproof PVC sheds rain and whatever the tree drops, and it gives you a dry walk from the car to the front door. PVC carries more load in a downpour, so the steel under it is heavier.
Picking a colour
A sail over the driveway is on show from the street, so the colour gets more attention than it would out the back. Look at samples against your brick and your roof tiles, in daylight, before you choose. Sand and charcoal blend into most houses. A deep red or a blue will stand out, which is fine if that's what you're after.
Good to know
Carport sails, answered.
Will a shade sail protect my car from hail?+
For the storms Sydney gets, a sail over the car takes the worst of it, because the fabric slows a stone down before it reaches the paint. A big enough hailstone can still split a sail, and that's a repair we can do to the skin.
How high can it go? I have an SUV with a roof rack.+
We run the high side of the sail back at the house and the low side out toward the street, so nothing on the roof rack clips the low corner on the way in. That also puts the most headroom at the house end, where the car sits.
Do I need council approval for a carport shade sail?+
Almost never. Most home shade sails are exempt development in NSW, so there's nothing to lodge. On the rare site that does need approval or an engineering certificate, we prepare the documentation as part of the job.
Can you cover a boat or a caravan?+
Yes, and it's one of the better uses for a sail. A caravan or a boat on a trailer is long and tall, won't fit in most garages and cooks in the open, so the span gets designed around the vehicle. That means more clearance and heavier posts, because the wind gets at the extra height.
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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Ready to get the car under cover?
Free measure, blueprint and written quote, seven days a week across Sydney and all of NSW.