The arbor shown above is 26 feet along the outside rail and tops out at 9 feet. The radial canopy is 5 feet wide all along its length.

The arbor provides night-time lighting with four 100 watt halogen flood lamps, one mounted on the interior side of each post between each stub-beam pair. The lighting control is a dimmer-switch mounted on the nearby end-post.

What makes this arbor so different is the use of solid polyethylene-plastic for the entire canopy. Every component, starting with the top 2½ inches of the double stub-beams up through the laminated double rails to the fan-joists on top, is constructed from white, solid polyethylene-plastic (see our PrimoPlank). Consequently, this is a zero-maintenance arbor. You can plant any vine to climb on this canopy and it will not blemish nor otherwise adversely affect the canopy over time one iota.

A landscaper acquaintance of mine built a similar style arbor out in Santa Cruz from all painted wood. I was hired by him just two months afterwards to salvage it -- why? -- because in that short period of time the sun had caused the canopy's 2x6 joists to warp and split and the laminated wooden rails to splinter and crack apart at stress-points along the bend. That can't happen to this all-solid-plastic canopy, ever.