Flat Roofs And Snow Load

In regions with relatively low snow load values the load from a single event may result in the peak loading.

Flat roofs and snow load.

One of them is that flat roofs leak more easily than pitched ones. Flat roofs can t possibly support all the extra weight a totally valid concern but rest assured your architect and engineer have this in mind when designing the roof structure. For example 18 inches would be 1 5 feet. You need to use a snow load formula for flat roofs.

Certainly the weight of snow can add up but your home must support a variety of loads. Other considerations for sloped roofs can be found throughout chapter 7 of asce 7 10. Minimum flat roof snow load values. First figure out how deep the snow is piled up there.

In our case let s assume that our structure has a flat roof roof slope 5. Wind seismic building weight furniture occupants etc. Another is that they cannot handle as much snow weight as pitched roofs because the snow sits directly on the roof. Express the result in feet rather than inches.

As a result equation 7 1 which accounts for loss between events will result in a non conservative value. There are a few common misconceptions regarding flat roofs that are stubbornly persistent. 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. Snow is actually one of the easiest to design for and all.

The snow load that is applied to our structure is not the ground snow load but in most cases the flat roof snow load.