We have a small deck that needed a bit of sun coverage over the summer, and went shopping for an umbrella. We decided on this 10′ Patio Hanging Offset Umbrella with Solar LED Lights
Turns out the LEDs are a bit of a gimmick; they’re visibly lit and produce a little bit of extra light, but not so much that you wouldn’t need any other light source if you were, say, having a BBQ dinner under it at night. And that overhang design is pretty neat until you consider the mechanics of it – it requires a pretty large base that itself occupies a lot of deck space to prevent it from toppling over:
I tried relocating the umbrella to different areas of the deck, until I realized the obvious: I don’t need to use the feet at all if the umbrella base is properly supported. Specifically, those metal bars acting as the feet are attached to the vertical base with 4 bolts. Rather than bolting the base to the feet, I extended an OUTSIDE corner of the deck by a couple inches, painted that to match the rest of the deck, and bolted the base directly to the wood:
Now there was the issue of the corner of the railing being in the way for the umbrella shaft, but that was easily fixed with a 2.5″ drill bit from a drill set like this
The end result is a nice, clean umbrella installation where none of the floor space of the deck is consumed, and the umbrella can be removed from the mount for storage in winter months:
