Gazebo Screen & Clear Vinyl in Granby

Gazebos in Granby

In Granby the gazebo changes character from one sector to the next. On the streets of early-20th-century workers' houses and duplexes near the centre, yards are short and often shared: the gazebo is rarely original, and where there is one it is a small retail model on a wooden deck, or a pergola added by an owner who wanted one more room in summer. In the broad sectors of 1960s-to-1980s bungalows and cottages, it is high season for the boxed gazebo: a good-sized yard, a deck, an aluminum or steel frame in a standard format, whose original film has usually outlived its usefulness.

The recent developments, the ones that went up with PVC casement windows, produce a third case. Lots are narrower, houses taller and closer together, and the gazebo is a compact model that takes wind funnelled between neighbouring houses rather than wind off an open field. What ties the three sectors together is the Eastern Townships climate rather than the island's: harder winters, snow that loads gazebo roofs left up, and springs when film stiffened by frost gives way in the first windy thaw. Here, a gazebo that spends the winter outdoors untouched has a good chance of showing a split film in April.

Screens and vinyl: what gives out in Granby

On these gazebos, the first thing to go is almost always the clear vinyl (MICA film): yellowed on the sunny side, brittle after a few winters, split at the corner of a pane or along the door zipper. The screen mesh follows, more slowly — a corner that lets go, mesh that slackens and hums, a spline that works out of its groove after a winter of freeze and thaw. The work is done in your yard: each panel comes down off the structure, the worn film or mesh comes out, and new material is cut to the pane's dimensions and stretched in the original frame. On a wooden pergola added behind a downtown duplex, it is battens rather than a spline, and every opening is measured separately.

Structure and access in Granby

Granby's challenge is the variety of structures rather than their number: between the wooden pergola behind a downtown duplex, the boxed gazebo of a 1970s bungalow and the compact model of a recent development, three different ways of holding the material meet in one town. Before we drive out, it helps to count the panels, photograph the gazebo so we can recognize the type of structure and the state of the film, and say whether it is a boxed gazebo or a wooden structure. On site, the retail gazebo comes apart panel by panel at ground level; the wooden pergola against an older house takes more measuring and sometimes a ladder, because its tall panels are not standard formats.

Wind, sun, insects: choosing in Granby

Exposure varies more than in the city. If your lot backs onto open space, wind hits the gazebo with nothing in the way and the film splits sooner; in the newer neighbourhoods, it is the corridor wind between houses that sets the exposed side beating. The Townships sun yellows film at the same pace as anywhere, but the harsher winters stiffen it more. So it goes on early, pulled tight, and comes off in spring if the gazebo stays up for summer. For the screen, the choice is decided sector by sector: on a compact gazebo squeezed between two houses in a recent development, it is the face in the wind corridor that needs the stiffer mesh, while a pergola against a duplex wall has only one exposed face.