Thread: Joist hangers for pergola/verandah

Hello all,

I am about to start building a pergola/verandah, and have a question about using joist hangers for the rafters. The design is a gable roof, 20 degree pitch. This means the rafters will be on a 20 degree angle - is a joist hanger still the right thing to use? I ask because they are of course a 90 degree setup, so the 20 degree cut on the rafter will meet nicely with the face of the beam, but only the very tip would be sitting in the hanger at the bottom, with a similar small facing area where the rafter sits in the hanger at the top - is this normal or is there some special bracket I should use?

The finished product will look very similar to this design;