St. Leo School – Lexington, KY
St. Leo School is a recently constructed school accommodating K-8 grades and is primarily a Catholic faith based school for the surrounding counties. Students are dropped off and picked up by both school buses and parents.
The challenge for this situation is to provide a large protective canopy that can accommodate groups of students arriving by both busses and lines of cars at the same time.
Fortunately the school was built in a newly developing area with adequate land surrounding the building site and traffic approaches. This not only allowed for a good school building design but also the logistical approaches to the student drop off lanes, both entry and exit. The potential problems occur as many students arrive or depart simultaneously from both modes of transportation. The solution lies in creating a long and deep projecting canopy that can “reach out” unobstructed to the arriving students. Canopies of all sorts are often used for this purpose with varying degrees of success and convenience. The biggest hindrance is that most canopies typically require support on both sides of the covered areas. Thus one side of support is, by default, near the arriving busses and cars. This may present a problem with getting to close to the supports and possible collision with them. The most typical response is simply not get too close to the canopies. But this leaves students and or parents exposed to the rain or snow elements during the unloading and loading process. And the younger the student or the more involved the unloading/ loading situation might be.
St. Leo School and their designing architect, Brandstetter Carroll A & E out of Lexington, KY, set out to address this problem situation. Knowing the crux of the problem was in having posts too close to arrival lanes to allow adequate unloading protection, they set out to design a single sided post supported canopy with overhead hanger rod supports for the canopy decking itself. They also knew that a canopy needed to be deep enough to truly offer weather protection for rain and snow and for shading while some students waited for pick up after school. Also a deep canopy would be good for the groups of kids waiting for the buses to pick them up. The concept is simple enough, the basic design details are simple enough. It is in the choice of methods and materials to properly design and engineer a like this that requires some thought and true engineering. Understandably, design aesthetics is also a valid consideration. Brandstetter Carroll A&E was the ideal firm to design and engineer just such a canopy. They chose and specified Mapes Canopies to supply the all extruded aluminum decking and supports to complete their design. Mapes Canopies was also well suited to provide this canopy for St Leo School.
The architect chose to design an elegantly simple canopy style. The canopy would be supported on the one side only with 12 inch diameter steel tubes on 12 foot spacings. The canopy deck itself would provide a gently curved forward arc to reach out to incoming students along the 60 foot canopy length. In order to be truly useful and practical, the depth of the forward curve would reach out with a 13 foot projection completely forward of the steel support tubes. This canopy coverage would be totally unobstructed by support posts anywhere within the foot print of the canopy. The clearance is enough to allow school buses to come in close for drop off and to allow parents to feel comfortable in pulling in close to drop off or pick up their kids. A very inviting and approachable covered entry walkway for the students does just the job.
This canopy design and fabrication carries stamped calcs for the specific location of Versailles, KY.
St. leo School– Custom Canopy Solutions
Mapes Super Lumideck Style – Forward Curved Design
13′ projection @ canopy center, 6’6″ projection @ ends
• Project Location: Versailles, Kentucky – Lexington, KY area
• Architect: Brandstetter Carroll, A & E – Lexington, KY
• Canopy Materials: Rustproof extruded aluminum
• Structural Canopy Support: Custom 12″ diameter steel tubes
• Hanger rod supports: Specially engineered multiple
coverging hanger rods attached to steel uprights
• Deck Style: Mapes standard 2 ¾”
• Fascia: Mapes standard 8″ J fascia with
integral guttering on all sides
• Drainage: Downpouts
• Finish: Mapes standard bronze baked enamel
• Project type: School bus loading area
Engineering: With stamped calcs for specific
project location, Versailles, KY.
NOTE: 12″ diameter steel tubes were supplied by others.
Mapes can provide them if requested prior to canopy shipment.
