When building a house or a summer house on your own, it is very important to correctly design and build a roof that will reliably protect our house from rain and wind. Of the large selection of roofs, a shed roof is the simplest. And because of the simplicity of the design, it is quite possible to build shed roofs with your own hands without the involvement of lifting equipment.
More often shed roof made of corrugated board is used in the construction of a garage, gazebo, bathhouse or various outbuildings, although projects of residential buildings with a shed roof are not uncommon.
The most justified construction of buildings with a single-pitched roof is where scaffolding is an excessively expensive or scarce material, as well as where constant lingering winds blow with a predominance of one direction.
What are the advantages of such a roof?
- Low design complexity.
- Half the amount of timber compared to gable roofs.
- Ease of roof installation.
- Relative cheapness of construction.
- Resistance to lingering winds with the correct orientation of the slope to the prevailing wind direction.
- High maintainability.
- The construction of a shed roof is faster than the construction of any other type of roof.
Roof slope calculation
What do you need to start building a roof?
First you need to decide on the materials, since the angle of inclination of the roof itself depends on this.
The construction of a shed roof with your own hands can be carried out from:
- laying slate on the roof with your own hands;
- from tiles;
- from a metal profile;
- from metal tiles;
- from ondulin;
- from ruberoid.
Now that you have decided on the material of the coating, you can begin to design the roof. The basis of such a project is the calculation of the slope angle. How to calculate a shed roof?
This calculation is tied to the ability of the roofing material to cope with precipitation, that is, to remove snow and water from the roof surface.
It is clear that on a tile or on a slate, water and snow do not linger in the same way as on a metal profile.And the basis for the safety of the structure under construction will be the ability of the roof to quickly clear itself of precipitation.
A thick layer of snow can easily break through the surface of the roof or damage it.
To your attention! In particular, for roofing felt or other rolled roofing material, the angle of inclination of a shed roof is taken as the smallest and ranges from 5º to 10º. A 20º slope is sufficient for a slate roof, while a 25º-35º angle is required for shingles.
Obviously, the smoother the roof surface, the smaller the angle required for normal operation.
Also, when calculating the angle of inclination of the slope, it is necessary to take into account the location of the structure under construction.
If the building stands in the steppe on a windy area, the angle of inclination can be made a little less. And vice versa, in the forest, where the snow from the roofs is practically not blown away by the wind, the roof slope should have a greater slope.
Materials and tools
We list what materials are needed for the construction of a slate shed roof:
- wooden bars (15, 12);
- unedged boards;
- slate nails;
- slate;
- nails (for 80);
- hydrobarrier.
Now let's prepare the tools that we will need when do-it-yourself shed roof construction. There is no need to run to the store and buy professional tools.
Everything we need is in every home:
- hammer;
- axe;
- sharp knife;
- construction stapler with staples;
- hacksaw.
The design of the shed roof provides for the presence of wooden beams. For ceiling beams, take a beam of 12, rafters can be made from a beam of 10, and for the crate, a 50x50 mm rail should be prepared.
If you have made a project, prepared materials and tools, you can proceed directly to the construction of the roof itself.
roof construction
Let's try, using a specific example, to consider how to make a pitched roof with your own hands. Let's calculate the project for the roof of the courtyard garage.
We will make the roof slope with a side slope. As a rule, slate roofing is most often used for the roof of a garage and outbuildings. So, let's take the value of the slope for the roof as 20 degrees.
So, we take a calculator and consider - for a garage with a width of three and a half meters, the excess of one wall over the other in height will be 1.27 m.
So we lay out the walls - we place the low one on the side from which stronger winds blow during the year. We install a Mauerlat beam on the walls from above, on which the roof rafters will already be attached. Do not forget to lay the ceiling beams (or slabs).
We lay out the front and rear walls with an oblique top - the Mauerlat beam will also rest on them (we fasten the Mauerlat to the wall with anchor bots or fasten it to long bolts cemented into the masonry in advance).
Tip! If you are in a seismically disturbed zone, be sure to make a seismic belt on top of the masonry. In this case, if the seismic belt is sufficiently even, you can do without the Mauerlat by laying the beams directly on the concrete.
Then we work in the following order:
- we lay transverse inclined beams-rafters every 70-80 centimeters (the rafters are nailed to the Mauerlat board with weaving nails or attached to concrete with anchors). In order to make it more convenient to carry out work, boards are often laid on the rafters and move along them. Then, before laying the slate, the boards are removed;
- we nail the laths of the crate to the rafters at a right angle.For these rails, a fifty-fifty beam (50x50 mm) is taken. The distance between them is chosen so that the slate sheet protrudes from both sides of adjacent rails by 15-20 centimeters. The crate performs two functions - firstly, it gives rigidity to the roof structure, and secondly, it serves as the basis for laying slate;
- a hybrobarrier is laid on the laths of the crate. It spreads from the bottom up with an overlap to avoid water flowing under the film. As a rule, a polyethylene film is taken for a hydro-barrier - it does not let water through at all, is quite durable in the absence of mechanical damage and has the lowest cost compared to other waterproofing agents. The film is attached to the slats of the crate with staples of a construction stapler;
- we lay the slate on the crate. We start from the bottom in rows with an overlap of the top sheet to the bottom. At the intersection of four adjacent sheets, we nail the slate to the crate with slate nails. We nail each sheet along the edges of the roof with two nails at regular intervals;
- on the logs of the rafters in the upper and lower parts of the roof we nail a wind board to avoid the wind breaking the slate and blowing precipitation under the slate sheets.
Everything, our roof is ready.
As you can see, the installation of a shed roof with your own hands is quite simple and implies a scope of work that one person can easily handle without the use of special construction equipment.
Since it has a simple non-resource-intensive design, a shed roof on a small structure is installed in one working day.
1 - frame of the floor panel;
2 - bottom cladding from boards;
3 - vapor barrier;
4 - top skin;
5 - waterproofing;
6 - insulation;
7 - heat-insulating gasket;
8 - wall panel;
9 - connecting boards;
10 - cornice;
If you have already erected the walls of the building, then after that it is quite possible to build a shed roof without building up one of the walls of the building.
To do this, vertical rafters are nailed to the ceiling beams from the side where the high side of the roof will be.
Inclined rafters are then attached to them, to which the crate is nailed. This whole structure forms the frame of a pitched roof.
Garden buildings with shed roofs
Very often, gazebos with a shed roof are installed on personal plots. They are simple, aesthetic, very easy to build and perfectly cover from precipitation.
To build a covered gazebo with a shed roof, you just need to install higher support pillars on one side.
Since the garden gazebo does not imply complete waterproofing, when installing the roof, as a rule, the hydro-barrier is neglected, but often sheathed from below for decorative purposes. Otherwise, everything is the same as described above, only taking into account the selected roofing material.
Tip! If you still don’t understand how to build a pitched roof with your own hands, video explanations for each stage of construction can be easily found on the Internet. With their help, it is much easier to figure out how to make a pitched roof with your own hands.
Disadvantages of pitched roofs
Now, I think, we should discuss the disadvantages of the design of shed roofs. Before you start to figure out how to make a shed roof, keep in mind that:
- The first and most serious drawback is the small roof space.Under a shed roof with a not too large width of the building, it will not be possible to make an attic or attic.
- The second follows from the first - a small space provides less thermal insulation.
- A shed roof effectively fights strong winds when it blows from the low part of the roof. If the wind changes direction to the opposite, the reliability of the roof is significantly reduced.
Prevention of damage to pitched roofs
The main problem that may arise during the operation of buildings with pitched roofs occurs when the amount of precipitation (especially snow) exceeds the design norm for which you designed the roof.
Thaw snowfalls, when sticking wet snow does not come off sloped surfaces, can cause damage to the roof.
Tip! Prevention of damage in this case is simple - remove excess snow from the roof.
Also, for the purpose of prevention, it is recommended to do an annual inspection of the roof frame to detect weakening of structures due to rotting wood or damage to it by rodents.
We hope this article helped you deal with the question of how to build a pitched roof with your own hands and you made sure that such construction does not present excessive difficulties.
Shed roofs, for all their simplicity of construction, are a very reliable covering for small buildings and, due to their simplicity and cheapness, are very common in our garden plots and in our yards.
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