Heavy Snow On Roof

The roof deck collects the snow load and transfers the weight to the rafters.

Heavy snow on roof.

Another kind of best roofing material for heavy snow is metal roofing. Others allow a 1 4 inch slope. When the snow piled up on the roof melting occurred and ice dams resulted in water ponding 3 inches deep. 1 foot of snow on the roof 22 000 lbs 11 tons 20 psf 2 feet of snow on the roof 45 000 lbs 22 tons 40 psf 3 feet of snow on the roof 67 000 lbs 33 tons 60 psf lets say you ve got an industrial building or outbuilding with a 40 60 footprint and 2 feet of heavy snow.

Some metal building manufacturers will not warranty a roof with a 1 4 inch slope. S equals the depth in inches of the snow on your roof and p represents the pounds per square foot your roof is supporting. The danger of leaving snow alone. If a snowstorm just dumped about 9 inches of heavy snow on your roof the equation to determine snow load is 9 x 1 25.

In fact having a reasonable depth layer of snow on a roof is a good thing as long as the roof is designed to handle the weight. The best roof for heavy snow. Metal roofing is another option that is extremely resistant to snow and ice formation with ice sliding right off. Anyone who has lived in an area that gets a lot of snow knows that removing icy pile up from your house s roof is just part of life.

It also provides an additional level of insulation and protects the roofing material from sun exposure which is your roof s worst enemy. A steep sloping roof sheds snow much easier than a roof that s less steeply pitched. That works out to be 11 25 pounds per square foot. Metal roofs leak under these circumstances.

Thankfully this type of incident doesn t happen very often. As a result there is no worry of ice and snow building up on the roof and adding unnecessary weight and pressure. Snow roof collapses are rare. If you live in the us our snow load calculator compares the total weight on your roof with the permissible load calculated according to the standards issued by the american society of civil engineers regarding the minimum design loads for buildings and other structures asce7 16.

If you have a low sloping roof on your home and especially on a home addition such as a outdoor porch these may need to be monitored during heavy snow storms. The main danger lies in the fact that snow is heavy and the weight of it can cause some serious damage. For any rafter the portion of the roof deck that transfers this load is the tributary area. That roof will be straining under 70 tons.

It is a sign that the roof is adequately insulated and vented. In most cases excessive snow accumulation on a roof manifests itself in more subtle ways and causes gradual damage over time instead of a sudden calamity.