Pitch For Earthship Roof

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.

Pitch for earthship roof.

Since earthships were born out in the desert southwest i suspect the folks out there didn t give it much thought. In the video above i explain the importance of roof pitch when it comes to snow. 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. According to the conventional rule of thumb this would require roof glazing to be about 60 degrees off the horizon 40 20 60.

For that reason flat roofs are limited to these types of covering materials. 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. Roof pitch or slope is a measure of vertical rise to horizontal run expressed in inches per foot. 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.

Two most common methods 4 12 or 4 12 are used for marking the pitch of a roof. A a roof with a 6 rise for every 12 run has a 6 per foot or 6 in 12 pitch. The graphic below helps flesh this out. The combination of two numbers are used to display or show the roof pitch.

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. In the video i also explain why the chimney and vent pipes should be located close to the roof s ridge. I also share a little about why we did not build an earthship as we had planned because of the climate here. 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.