Building question about Polycarbonate - Is it noisy?
 

Dear All,

I'm about to build a new car port to hide my 300D under for the winter. This bit will be on the side of the house - I then want to continue around the corner along the back of the house and I'm going to call this car port extension a veranda!

All in all I want to cover an area of about 50 square metres. Ideally if I could I would use hardened glass for the roof but from a building point of view (with difficult triangular shapes) it will be too difficult and expensive. So I thought why not use polycarbonate?

Polycarbonate is strong, light, quite cheap compared with toughened glass, and easy to work.

From reading stuff on the internet, however, the down side seems to be that it tends to creak in the wind and the thermal expansion can be pretty large - also causing creaking noises.

This is a bit subjective but does anyone know how noisy / irritating Polycarbonate sheeting is?
Has anyone ever sheltered under it in a rain storm?

For example - Is it as painful as trying to suck your left eye out with a vacuum cleaner - or is it like the dull throbbing complaining often heard on the end of a telephone? I don't know do you get what I'm getting at???

As usual any help or comments will be greatly appreciated.

There's lots of information about polycarbonate glazing on the net. Greenhouses use it, mostly multi-wall which is stronger and probably more quiet. I think noise from thermal stress can be eliminated by proper mounting of the panels.

Thanks Chas I've read that too - a stiffer structure however doesn't necessarily mean that things are quieter - and properly mounting also falls into the securing technique:- screws or clicking in place clamping systems...

The question I'm trying to ask is how bad is this creaking? I'm trying to get some subjective opinions...

Perhaps I'll have to start knocking on people's doors and ask if I can come round and listen to their green house when it is windy or when it is raining!

Just buy a 1x1 meter of the stuff, lay it at the angle you anticipate your structure will hold the material, then hook a hose and nozzle up and shoot some water into the air and replicate some rain down onto it...see what it sounds like with the water hitting it at different angles. What you really want to be sure of is that there's proper support in the middle of the pane of material and if you have to, that's the place where you "pad" the support so that the rain coming down will be "deadened" like a muff on a drum pad, but loose enough to allow expansion in any direction...

I used it for a garden shed- walls only- and it is fastened to wood studs spaced 16" on center with roofing screws and washers 12" o/c, so there are a lot of fastners. I have not heard it creak. Used Polygal in ice white, 3/4" thick. Lets lots of light in. Gets hot as hell in the summer inside, but good for starting plants in the spring.

Also used it (1/4" thick) as an interior wall finish on each side of a stud wall to let light into a hallway. Works great, except for when the 3 yr olds on the other side start beating on it. It makes a great drum. Used the H shaped splines to hold the panels together and put screws thru the middle of the H to attach to the studs. Getting the panels into the H shape was a challenge when working solo.

I'm building an octogon shaped gazebo for a client. He wanted the back three roof sections to be skylight. Since commercially available units didn't work well side to side like that, nor were any available shaped like a trapazoid, I fabricated them.

Plexiglass also expands and contracts a lot with temp. Everything I read indicated that it was important what material you used for gasketing around the edges. Anything with adhesive would soon be hanging in strips from being moved back and forth.

EPDM rubber was what was most commonly recommended. Stays flexible and retains a seal under changing conditions. I had some bronze sheeting strips, about 1/8th thick, 2 inches wide, bent slightly up the middle to screw down on redwood beneath that I had cut at the correct angle so the plexi would sit flat on both sides. They've been up 4 years so far - no leaks.

I may never finish the damn thing. The guy is an editor and pays me as I go. Can only afford me one day a week and he's always got other household maintenance issues for me to deal with. Oh well.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...2/PDR_0119.jpg

Wow Cmac - what a nice bit of work - it is a shame it isn't your own! (Also a shame you're not working in Europe)

Thanks mgburg for the practical tip - I might have to go down that route if I can't get a better impression from elsewhere.

I'm considering a corrugated version instead of the double walled stuff that is really rigid - and I guess a 1 X 1 meter bit will sound a bit different from a 1 X 4 meter length.

Thanks also to my83300cd - I can imagine that a wall of polycarbonate does indeed sound like a drum!

I'm off to a garden centre today to try and see what's what.

Thanks for your help everyone