Hello everyone. We just purchased a home and it has a decent covered patio off the living room. We live in Savannah and in reality you just cannot enjoy an open outdoor area without getting eaten up by no-see-ums (gnats). So I need to screen the porch in.
I don't want to have the screens go all the way to the floor, because they will inevitably get damaged by all sorts of things, so I want to build probably a 2-3 foot high pony wall around the patio first and then install screens above these walls to the existing roof line.
The problem I am having is that when they built this patio they poured the concrete slab too short on 2 sides, such that the columns holding up the roof of the patio sit off the slab and into the ground. It would be preferable and easiest to build the walls in between the columns. So my question is what would be the best approach?
One thought was to build the walls floating off the ground and just attached to the columns, which would probably be best in terms of limiting the exposure to moisture from the ground But that that would mean somehow sealing the bottom of the walls so that insects and animals could not get in there and build nests, etc.
2nd option would be to somehow extend the concrete slab on those 2 sides and build the wall on top of the new portion of the slab. But I only need like 12" of extra slab and that just seems too small of a pour to be worth it. And I would probably have to worry about the newly poured slabs separating from the main slab over time. Could I just extend the patio slab by using pavers?
I would love to hear any comments and suggestions.
Thank you.
