Building a Stable Pergola for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXIV

stakes to keep posts plumb

In the bad old days of content farms, just about anyone who was even marginally literate could hang out a shingle and pretend to know enough about a topic to write instructions for sites like DIY.com and, especially, eHow.com. We wouldn't be the first to tell you this, but an awful lot of the content on such sites isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. We regularly point out some of the worst dross here, often drawn from the niche sites into which the owner of eHow (Leaf Group) dumps their old content. That includes content like today's nominee, a GargdenGuides. com post entitled "How to Stabilize a Pergola" by one Mary Lougee. 

Mary's been featured here before a couple of times, in general demonstrating that her business degrees didn't teach her jack shit about home repair and maintenance. Well, she's back again, once more trying desperately to explain something else that she doesn't understand. Although Mary claimed to extracted her instructions from a rather detailed source, we looked and most of what she said simply isn't in there. Apparently, she tried to modify instructions for setting fence posts...

...except that she did a remarkably bad job. We've collected some of her more inane – or are they insane? – claims about how to perform this simple feat. Try these on for size:

• "Stretch a string line to mark the exterior outline on the ground." – Duh, shouldn't you, we dunno, mark the corners somehow; like with stakes?
• "Dig holes with posthole diggers to one-third the depth of the vertical support posts... Dig a hole for each corner post to the correct depth and 12 inches in diameter." – A) Dig the holes to "one-third the depth"? That's gonna be hard. Another thing that's gonna be hard is digging a 12-inch diameter hole with posthole diggers, not to mention that you don't need a 12-inch hole for the 4-by-4s Mary specifies later. Six inches will suffice. 
• "Pour 3 inches of gravel into the bottom of each posthole. Tamp it down with a shovel or hoe handle." – Most instructions say to tamp with a 2-by-4, since a shovel handle isn't gonna work.
• "Level the pole horizontally and vertically..." – We're at a loss as to how one levels a "pole" horizontally.
• "Lean a 2-inch-by-4-inch board up against the post at a 45-degree angle with the other end on the ground. Nail the board to the post to support the post in its level position." – You probably don't need a 2-by-4, but hey. On the other hand, you do need to stake the "support" on the other end, not to mention that geometry requires that you have not one but two support stakes (at right angles).

We also liked Mary's "Tip," which claimed that, "Placing gravel in the bottom of a posthole allows drainage so the hole does not hold water." – That's not actually why you put the gravel there; you put the gravel there so the end of the post is not in direct contact with wet soil.

So what have we learned, class? Well, we've learned that someone who's never built a pergola shouldn't be telling us how to build one, for that way lies a Dumbass of the Day award. 

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