How To Work Out The Pitch Of A New Roof

Find the inverse tangent of the pitch to find the angle in degrees.

How to work out the pitch of a new roof. The roof pitch measures the steepness of your shed roof and typically takes values from 1 to 12. To convert between american roofing ratios and pitch degrees follow these steps. Here is the equation in full roof pitch 1 tangent rise run. Express roof pitch as the ratio of the amount of the vertical rise of a roof or rise over the corresponding horizontal distance or run you write the pitch assuming a run of 12 inches thus the ratio would describe how much a roof rises for each foot of the run.

One method to find the pitch is to climb on the roof and measure the rise for a 12 run. As aforementioned there is no standard pitch of a roof. Here are a couple examples. For a simple gable roof the span wall to wall will be twice the size of the run wall to ridge horizontally.

The next step is to punch in 1 whatever your tangent is to find the angle of your roof pitch. For a roof with the ridge above one wall the span is the same as the run. Once you have these two measurements you ll need to grab hold of a calculator and divide the rise by the run to work out the tangent. If you are trying to learn how to measure roof pitch calculations accurately you should really consider the importance of using a calculator.

If your roof pitch is greater than 3 your roof is considered pitched read more about roof pitch at wikipedia. Divide the slope by two to get the pitch. You ll need a level that is 12 or longer and a tape measure. A 12 12 pitch roof has a pitch angle of 45.

For example if the roof rises 4 feet and the span is 16 feet twice the run then the pitch is 4 16 or 1 4. If you are trying hard to work out how to figure roof pitch measurements the calculator takes away all of those problems for you more or less instantly. On the roof hold the level perfectly level and measure the height from the roof to the level 12 inches away from where the level touches the surface this will be the rise.