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When the time comes to build a roof for your shed, there are a few options available to you. I am assuming in this article, that the shed which needs a roof is made out of wood. You can have the traditional shed roof which reaches its highest point down the centre of the construction, or you could have a sloping roof. One which slopes from a high point on one side of the shed.
Ours is by no means a small shed, and it has traditional pitched roof, made up of rafters and joists. I am no joinery expert, but I am a DIY enthusiast, and I know enough to recognize the importance of a properly built, and strong shed roof. Failure to build a shed roof correctly will likely result in damage to the structure at some point in time.
When we had ours built, I saw that it was made properly with rafters and joists, using the correct timber for the job. That is important. The shed is about ten feet long and six feet wide, so we only needed a roof with a fairly basic design. Bear in mind the size of the rafter timbers depends on their distance from the walls to the ridge, and the type of roof covering you want. The greater the distance from walls to the ridge, the bigger the timbers you will need. You will also need to allow for the weight of the roof covering you have chosen. It follows that a heavier roof needs strong support.
We chose the traditional and functional felt roof for the covering material. Although this is more widely used in flat roof constructions, it can be used in pitched roofs as well. The only reservation I have in using it is that it will need replacing anytime after ten years or so, depending on the climatic conditions where you live. The first signs of wear are usually cracking. You can buy branded materials which patch those areas which will start to leak, but in my opinion, at that stage it is better to replace the roof felt completely. By repairing small bits of the roof felt you are just delaying the day when it will need to be fully replaced anyway.
Do not underestimate the additional stress snow can place on a roof structure, and if the area where you live has yearly snowfall, you might want to allow for that in the roof construction. You could have a higher ridge so as to encourage the snow to fall of it more easily. I use the reverse side of an ordinary long handled sweeping brush to remove any snow from our shed roof, well before it freezes.
I hope this article has given you some idea of what it takes to build a shed roof.
Tags: rafter, Remodeling