My concern for your design would be the effect of wind billowing the shade cloth up and down. Just as an alternative idea, here it what I have for shade for my many one and 5 gal. pots. I bought two of the inexpensive 12 x 24 ft metal pole "carport canopies" available at the auto parts store. They were about $49 each. Because of the need for support of the shade cloth, especially during high wind and occasional snow, I made x's of wire across the canopy pipe roof sections. After adding the shade cloth, I added poly rope over the top to prevent billowing out and to help anchor the entire structure to the ground. The grommeted shade cloth is attached to the pipe with bungee-balls. When needed, I can also add a shade cloth panel on the west section to further reduce direct summer heat. It has worked well for 5 years.

Maybe as a contractor I am bias but.... you don't always need high dollar engineers to figure out most cracks when your local contractor will be just as capable of seeing the problem. I've seen so many things in fifteen years of swinging a hammer. I've repaired foundation that have blown in. I've seen new houses with missing stretches of footers. I've work on historical restorations where the houses are so old they have exceeded thier lives threefold. I've seen stickframed houses that are just poorly built. Sometimes it is the construction. Sometimes it is the land. Sometimes it is the materials. More often than not though it is something so simple. I recently went to a house to look into cracks in the drywall above a doorway to the kitchen and corresponding cracks in the tile on the kitchen side. The customer was upset because he had just had the kitchen remodeled and was sure it was the installers doing. The first thing I noticed was all the beautiful marble floors, top dollar stone countertops, stone wall tile and wall to wall woodwork. He had the biggest stainless fridge I had ever seen and an awesome 8 burner stove. There was a pantry cubboard with no doors on it yet and the entire thing was full of cans and other goods. All these things were on the interior wall of the kitchen(do you see where I am going with this). On the other side of the wall was of all things a baby gran piano. Upon going downstairs I noticed it was a 50's era home with a triple 2x10 main beam with lollies every 15 feet. Basically the cracks were caused by too much weight in to close a proximity. I was even more amazed to find a waterbed in the bedroom above the kitchen. Needless to say it was an easy fix and the Kitchen installer would have been fine in a better built home but should have atleast considered the increase in weight when updating from vinyl and formica to heavyweight materials. However ...waterbeds in a second story are a no-no and large pianos almost always require some reinforceing or location considerations. Another thing most folks don't consider is that wooden framed homes (even well built ones) do some racking when the wind gusts exceed normal levels.

All depends on the cause and if it's "done" or still moving. Our "middle" section is leaning about 1" to the north from the floor to the ceiling. The floor also had about a 1" drop in it from one end to the other. As to the lean, this part is built with square nails, and was moved to the property and attached the the existing structure some time around 1900. Don't know exactly how old it is, but it's older than the structure it was moved next to. From what I can tell, it was leaning when they brought it here, and the other parts are firmly attached to it the way it is. It is not going to go any farther, but it would mean tearing the house apart to straighten it back out. With the floor, that was just the foundation settling. Did not look like anything had moved near 100 years though. Sill and boards were solid, so we just built up the one end when we rebuilt the floor. Another part of the house, the sill and ends of the joists had rotten off. Looks like the water damage had happened about 50 years ago, and it has slowly been decaying. It had about a 3" slope to the floor, but the building was still relativly plumb. We expected settling, but we very surprised at just how much rot we found once we got down to the joists - good thing we never put our waterbed in that end of the room! Both these areas had so many layers of wallpaper, I don't know if a crack would have shown through anyway. On the second, we had to jack up the whole side of the house to rebuild the sill. If you can get under the house to check out the foundation, and if not pull off the siding and have a look see. In the first part, we could have ignored the problem for another 100 years - in the second, I'm amazed the house had not slipped off the foundation. I think if it weren't for the ballon framing holding the walls in place, they would have moved. Cathy

Hire an inspection from a structural engineer. Any water leak so significant as to cause significant subsidence is major. I’d want a plumber to inspect that repair too. Individual specialists. In addition to a standard home inspector. Is the home such a draw that it would be worth a couple of thousand in inspection reports?