LESLIE: Dan in Florida, welcome to The Money Pit. What can we do for you today?
DAN: I want to put a cupola – a roof on a cupola on my shed and I want to put a weather vane in the center of it.
TOM: (overlapping voices) OK.
LESLIE: (overlapping voices) OK.
DAN: And I want to know how to set that up so that the weather vane will be adequately supported and not create a vibration through the building.
TOM: Well, how big is the shed?
DAN: Ten by sixteen.
TOM: Ten by – that should be plenty stable enough. You know, I put a cupola on our kitchen roof and it was a pretty easy project. We used one that was premade. You can order these online; you can buy one from a craftsman. And it was already pre-notched-out. We had to adjust the angle of the notch for the angle of the pitch of the roof. What we opted to do was, basically, put it on top of the solid roof and we left some space under it so water that got into the cupola could basically run through and out under the bottom of it. So it really wasn’t sort of part of the structure of the roof. It really was mounted on top of that. And then over above that, we mounted the weather vane. It never added any type of significant weight or wind pressure; has never been an issue. There’s never been any vibration. So I think with a 10×16 building, you ought to have plenty of stability to install that.
DAN: How did you mount the weather vane on the top?
TOM: There were brackets that mounted it right to the top of the cupola itself. It actually went down through the middle of the cupola roof and then there were a couple of brackets that supported it right in place. It was all sort of one kind of kit unit.
LESLIE: You know what, Dan? If you are going to build it yourself, there’s actually a website that sells all sorts of mounting hardware for weather vanes and it’s GIDesigns.Net. They’ve got everything for all situations.
DAN: Alright, that’s what I was looking for. I thought that I was on the right track and just wanted to back it up a little bit.
TOM: Alright, Dan. We’re happy to do that for you. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
Leave a Reply