Thank goodness for code compliance and the permit process. Yes, you require a footing for an overhead patio shade structure. Most likely you will need to submit a plan to your building department to receive a permit to build the structure, so someone with experience with this is required. A contractor or landscape architect or even yourself can do this if you have the knowledge . The dimensions of the planter depend on a variety of elements such as your climate (freeze/thaw/heat) and the variety of vine that you choose.

If you want a patio cover a landscape architect, structural engineer or general or landscape contractor can design, do the calculations of load for you and may even submit the plans to your building department for permit for you. They will also do all the necessary code research for you before laying pencil to paper. The above mentioned professionals are those who normally get involved with the design of an overhead patio structure. A licensed building contractor is the professional who builds the structure. Your designer may also be involved in project management. Depending on the materials that you choose you may have two different types of tradesmen working on the overhead structure, - as an example you may have wood posts but a metal roof , or you may have the arbor outfitted with solar panels which involves another type of tradesman. You can trust the type of professionals mentioned above once thoroughly interviewed and vetted to do a quality job. Putting the plans out to bid to 2 or 3 licensed building contractors is the norm for competitive pricing. An architect / landscape architect can determine the most desirable architectural style that will marry well with your architecture and installation budget. Below are some samples of overhead structures from our office: Basic plain jane: From Smith Project with solar panels added From Smith Project with a little more detail on the rafter wings From Oranje project Cast concrete columns and metal overhead structure. From portfolioMay08.jpg All metal: From portfolioMay08.jpg

Bonnie, The Pergola is lovely. I'd like to do one about that size in my side yard "Some Day". My thought is that unless you are REALLY patient, you might want to reconsider the seedless grapes in favor of something faster and bigger. I'm in Fort Collins on the warm side of zone 5. 6 years ago along my back chain link fence, I planted 2 seedless pink reliance, 2 seedless concord, and 2 of some kind of white seedless, that I ordered from Gurneys. I've taken pretty good care of them (I think), but both the white seedless have never been cane hardy. They keep coming back up from the roots year after year but everything more than a few inches above the ground is totally dead every spring. One of the concord seedless sputtered out after a few years. 1 concord is still going and very gradually getting a little bigger each year, but the main stalk is 4 feet tall, and it only spreads about 3 feet along the fence in each direction, and still seems too puny to even call a grape vine, and no grapes yet. 1 of the Reliance is doing quite well, and after 6 years, it's getting decent sized. It spreads about 10 feet along the fence in each direction and I've gotten at least a modest amount of grapes each of the last 3 years. Last year it had quite a bunch, but this year only a few, and this spring it pretty much died back to the main stalk which is about 6 feet now. Not sure why it died back. It hasn't done that before. The other Reliance is also gradually getting bigger but at a slower rate. It's about half the size of the good one. My best grape vine of the original 6 might cover 1/4 of your big Pergola at this point after 6 years growth. Even so, I'm doubtful I would have been able to get it to train up those big logs unless you put up some kind of wire mesh or something the vine tendrils can grab to enable it to climb. I get the feeling the tendrils are not going to be very happy trying to grab anything much bigger around than my finger, or maybe my thumb. From my own experience, I've started to think of growing grape Vines a little more like growing an oak shade tree. It's definitely a long term investment. There was some old Cary Grant movie about the California wine country, where a big wild fire sweeps through the family Vineyards, and all that's left is these blackened stumps through the field, and the family is decimated by the loss. My impression of the movie was that it was going to take a decade to recover, and I remember thinking at the time I watched it, that I didn't understand, because surely they could grow new vines in a year or two. Now I understand. I think it must be more like starting over to grow an orchard after such a fire. I'm not an expert on vines. But I'm thinking unless you're very patient you might want to consider something more like some trumpet flower vine, or may be honeysuckle. I'm trying a couple of each of those on a different fence. After 2nd summer the trumpet vines are 6 feet tall and starting to spread, and one of the Honey suckle is a good 9 feet tall and spreading quite a bit. I recently saw a honeysuckle vine that had to be 20 feet tall and 30 feet wide, so I know sometimes these can get real big. They smell nice too. I probably shouldn't say it, because someone is bound to cry foul, but if I was in the foothills or mountain country, and if I didn't want to wait 8 or 10 years to cover that trellis, I think I would plant one Virginia Creeper right at the base of each of those two big outer logs. I think it will climb up the log pretty well, and I bet it will cover the Pergola in 3 to 5 years rather than a decade. ( I better duck because the rotten tomatoes are probably headed my way) By the way, where did you get those massive steel things the posts are sitting on? If "Someday" ever arrives, I like the idea of doing something like that rather than putting the post in the ground where eventually it will rot no matter how many chemicals they pump into it. Good luck, Bruce

Yes, you can and probably should sandwich the posts. Don't know where you live but snow load and wind are the factors your structure must withstand. Check your local building codes. I'm linking an album of our pergola which contains plans. It is constructed of 2 x 12 cedar but the joists run both directions and are rabbeted, then bolted at the joints. This, in effect, makes each piece structurally a 2 x 6. Here is a link that might be useful: Pergola