Get porch support columns for your porch project in Chicago IL fabricated and installed by Structural Beam professionals, call 773-917-8998 today!

Porch Support Columns for Your Home in Chicago, by Structural Beam

Porch support columns, structural, decorative, or both, grace our front porches and hold porch roofs in place. Have your porch support columns designed, fabricated, and erected by qualified professionals, for lasting structural stability and aesthetic benefits, call Structural Beam today, for a free price quote!

3 types of porch support columns

Porch support columns, or porch posts, as they are often referred to, can serve two functions, structural and decorative. The main difference will be that decorative porch support columns don’t have the load-bearing function, and as such don’t need a structural engineer designing them. The materials for the porch support columns project can be of several types:

• Structural steel beams (L, T, S-section beams, made of hot-rolled ASTM A-36 steel)
• HSS (hollow structural sections) of a square, rectangular, or round profile
• Polished stainless steel pipe, can serve both structural and decorative purposes
• Wrought iron
• Cast iron

1. Structural porch support columns

Front porch columns are structural, if they have a structural function, supporting the porch’s roof’s structural load, in full, or a part of it. You can easily check it out on the building plans, the structural columns would be usually marked on the plan with the letter “S”.

Structural Beam offers miscellaneous steel fabrication services for projects in Chicago IL and can fabricate and erect structural porch support columns, as a separate project. However, we suggest you make use of our comprehensive, one-stop structural and miscellaneous steel solutions package.

2. Integrated porch/columns/roof solution

Whether you are building a new home or looking to get a new metal porch for the existing one, it makes total sense to save both time and money and get it all fabricated in one go, with the same company:

3. Porch support columns for pre-existent porch

Structural Beam’s steel estimators will do the estimation, based on the blueprints you’ve got from your architect and structural engineer/designer. The steps will be the same as described above, plus, should the work require brick or concrete masonry, we offer that as a part of our comprehensive service package. You can just sit back and relax, while our specialists do all the work, swiftly and professionally.

1. Decorative porch columns

For aesthetic appeal

If your porch posts are only decorative, it means they are there for aesthetic reasons only and don’t serve any structural, or load-bearing, function. The primary objective of decorative porch columns is aesthetic appeal, the style of the columns must be blending well with the overall porch design.

The column ideas for your project are best worked out with your architect. Our miscellaneous steel fabricators will work alongside our steel designer and fabricators, to produce the steel porch columns, that later will be installed by our miscellaneous steel erection team.

Material choices

The choice of polygonal, square, or round columns is yours, but the metal elements of the columns can be produced from:

• Polished stainless steel pipes
• Structural steel beams (L, T, S-section beams), or
• HSS, that later can be wrapped in boards, and painted

Some choose cast iron and wrought iron when these materials match the front porch style. Both look great and can be painted into different colors, too. All of this leaves a lot of room for creativity and a free flow of imagination, enjoy!

For your steel porch support columns project in Chicago IL, Structural Beam is happy to be of help, call us today at 773-917-8998 and tell us about your project, we will take it from there!

• Our experienced steel designers and engineers, alongside our miscellaneous and structural steel fabricators, will work with your architect to produce a set of detailed shop drawings. Our miscellaneous steel erectors will be engaged, to produce exact placing plans, so the erection can go seamlessly
• Structural Beam’s knowledgeable steel estimators and steel detailers will perform estimation for your metal porch project, and come up with an exact estimation, so you can make informed decisions and plan to finance accordingly

Fabrication and erection

• Our miscellaneous and structural steel fabricators will fabricate the new metal porch, along with structural steel porch support columns, and porch roof
• Our professional miscellaneous and structural steel erectors will erect the whole metal porch/porch support columns/porch roof construction, in a truly seamless manner, according to the exact placing drawings, worked out beforehand in conjunction with structural steel engineers and steel fabricators

Regulatory compliance

Structural Beam’s legal and regulatory compliance team will make sure, that local building codes and IRC codes are followed strictly, and will assist with getting the permission for construction project

How do I know if my porch column is load-bearing?

To check whether your porch column is structural, it’s best to consult the building plan. If a column is structural, it has an “S” marking on the plan. If the building plan is not available, the best is to consult with a professional builder.

What is the difference between a post and a column?

As such, a post and a column are synonymous words. Both can refer to a structural column, or to a decorative column. In structural steel design and engineering, a vertical structural load-bearing member is called a structural column. In architecture, columns can be both structural and decorative.

Are porch columns structural?

The porch columns can be structural if they have a function to bear the load of the porch roof. If they don’t have this function, they can be decorative. In some cases, there can be both decorative and structural porch support columns involved in one project, e.g. two of the structural, load-bearing, and two purely decorative columns, done in the same style.