Pitch For Earthship Roof

How roof pitch determines suitable roofing systems.

Pitch for earthship roof.

In the video above i explain the importance of roof pitch when it comes to snow. Two most common methods 4 12 or 4 12 are used for marking the pitch of a roof. On blue prints architects engineers usually display the pitch of a roof in the format shown on the image where number 4 represents a rise and number 12 represents a length. Flat and nearly flat roofs a pitch of 1 in 12 or 2 in 12 cannot be covered with shingles or shakes of any material since there is not enough angle to combat the danger of blow off.

The picture below shows the pitch of a 7 12 roof slope meaning that for 12 of horizontal measurement roof run the vertical measurement roof rise is 7. Pitch is thus the ratio of the rise in inches to a 12 inch run and is often expressed using a semicolon for example 6 12. Since earthships were born out in the desert southwest i suspect the folks out there didn t give it much thought. I also share a little about why we did not build an earthship as we had planned because of the climate here.

For that reason flat roofs are limited to these types of covering materials. The graphic below helps flesh this out. The combination of two numbers are used to display or show the roof pitch. The earthship s roof perhaps one of the trickiest challenges we faced in this construction project was to build a roof that didn t leak.

If you sketch that out on paper you ll see that a roof angle of 60 degrees requires a very tall north wall or an altered plan for the greenhouse. Roof pitch or slope is a measure of vertical rise to horizontal run expressed in inches per foot. A a roof with a 6 rise for every 12 run has a 6 per foot or 6 in 12 pitch. In the video i also explain why the chimney and vent pipes should be located close to the roof s ridge.