Flat Roof Heavy Snow

Of course you don t need to live in a modern house to deal with a flat roof.

Flat roof heavy snow.

Flat roofs aren t architecturally logical as rain and snow will shed much more quickly off a sloped roof. Unlike pitched roofs low slope buildings don t have the benefit of gravity working in their favor to remove precipitation off the surface. Even in these arid regions so called flat roofs are still installed with a slight pitch to keep water from pooling on top of the structure. Another is that they cannot handle as much snow weight as pitched roofs because the snow sits directly on the roof.

The very notion of shelter is linked to the image of a roof above. Flat roofs can t possibly support all the extra weight a totally valid concern but rest assured your architect and engineer have this in mind when designing the roof structure. If your roof is flat it is more likely to have snow load problems than if it is pitched. You need to use a snow load formula for flat roofs.

Flat roofs are common with industrial buildings boasting wide roof spans and are also popular in dry climates for houses where there is no need for the roof to help disperse rain and snow. As standard practice places with heavy rainfall or snow storms will have higher roof pitches compared to places that experience less rain and snow. Snow is actually one of the easiest to design for and all. Certainly the weight of snow can add up but your home must support a variety of loads.

It also helps if the roof is in a sheltered area. There are a few common misconceptions regarding flat roofs that are stubbornly persistent. Wind seismic building weight furniture occupants etc. The easiest way is to push a yardstick into the snow on the roof selecting an area that looks typical of the overall snow depth.

In this video i dispel 5 common myths surrounding the use of flat roofs in snowy climates. First figure out how deep the snow is piled up there. For safety reasons we recommend letting a professional remove snow from your roof for cases when a rake won t cut it. The snow settles on it evenly rather than being blown into large drifts which can cause a roof to fail.

Excessive rain heavy snow and built up ice all pose extra challenges for flat roofed homes. Yet for historic modern style buildings like this old house s cambridge tv project flat roofs are at the core of the architecture meant to reflect the broad horizontal lines of the natural landscape. This is especially critical if you have a flat roof that requires shoveling or heavy snowfall that needs a snowblower. Call in the professionals to remove snow from your roof.