Roofing 101

In our line of work, we run into a lot of new entries into the roofing industry. From gung-ho entrepreneurs starting their first businesses, to tired nine-to-fivers moonlighting on the weekends, we have all users of all types taking advantage of RoofSnap’s tools to streamline their workflow. Sometimes these newbies aren’t entirely up-to-speed on the industry lingo though, and this week’s blog is going to try to fix that. (You old-timers don’t get a pass though, read through and make sure we didn’t miss anything!)

Roofing101

The Parts of the Roof 


We know it sounds incredible, but we get subscribers that don’t know all the names for the constituent parts of the roof. RoofSnap’s measurement tools are so easy to use that some offices delegate the sketching to one of their administrative staff so their salesmen can be free to spend more time on-site with clients. We’re all for that! But some basic roofing knowledge is required for accurate measurements. The graphic below has all the line labels you can use in RoofSnap with the color that RoofSnap assigns the line once it’s labeled. The descriptions are a little small so we’ve re-written them below the image.

Roof Line Labels-18

Rake – End of the roof that is at an angle. Follows the pitch of the roof.

Ridge – Horizontal top of the roof. Found at the end of two rakes or hips.

Hip – Where two sides of a roof meet to make a corner. (Think of a human shoulder.)

Valley – Where two sides of a roof meet to make an inverted corner. (Think of a human armpit.)

Step – Where the roof meets a wall of the house at an angle.

Wall – Where the roof meets a wall of the house horizontal to the ground.

Pitch – The angle of the roof, usually presented as the number of inches it rises over the number of inches it runs. (ex. 6/12)

Facets – The planes of the roof.

That should be enough to get even someone with this level of experience going.

We know most of our readers are experienced roofing professionals, so we’ll stop this lesson here and let you out of class early, this time. If you know someone in your company or in your life that could use this refresher, make sure to share it with them! Let us know what other Roofing 101 topics you’d like to address as well. If you’d like to see how RoofSnap can make even an inexperienced roofer a pro at measuring and estimating, take a tour of our YouTube channel or schedule a demo to see how the software works, we promise it’s more interesting than your last 101 level class.

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