10 July

The lovely thing about building with steel is that you can create beautifully open and lean structures, which are incredibly strong but mostly air. Like this carport we just had built. No need for any diagonal or other bracing at the joints, to stabilise the structure against shear forces, no need to tie the uprights together to avoid twisting, the steel is so strong it doesn’t need it. Which means the structure almost disappears when you look up the yard, it’s like open space, letting all the light through. The old carport had thick wooden uprights, with multiple bracing at the joints and ties between uprights, to stop the whole thing twisting out of shape in the wind. Wood and masonry structures share that weakness, against twisting (shear) forces.