Roof area

[jeffehrl]

Any ideas on how to calculate roof area for estmating roofing material? Thanks

[slatta]

this is how I would do it,

print your drawing, do a take off

[MikePreble1]

For practice, to make sure it works for you, draw a simple house and generate an automatic roof.

Then, go up on the menu and select "Tools" and go down to "Materials List" and in that one select "Calculate from all floors" and you should get a spread sheet looking listing of several things, one of which will be (should be) roofing items which should include two things "Roof Sheathing" and "Roofing dimensional Comp."

I believe the "Roofing dimensional comp." is a square footage measurement, though on the list it isn't quite expressed that way.

For the "Roof Sheathing" you are given the number of 4x8 sheets you'll be needing to cover the roof, which means you have to multiply 4x8=32 sq. ft. and then multiply that 32 x the number of sheets for a total square footage. (I believe you already know how to do that math, but if you don't, there it is.)

Hope that helps.
Good luck.
Mike

[jeffehrl]

Thanks, Mike. Will try that. Getting an accurate measurement is worth a lot of money when dealing with expensive roofing materials.

[MikePreble1]

Oh, and I forgot a simple idea.

The square footage numbers in Chief don't seem to calculate for waste, soooo, you might want to add a bit, which I'm sure you already do but that's also something that's easily missed or forgotten.

[jeffehrl]

Yes. Actually had a chance to confirm this at Chief's booth at the Builders Show today. They said the materials spec should be accurate for the roof size, except for the waste.

[Michael C. Stephens]

I sent you an E-Mail with a spreadsheet.

[Niuoka]

If thats your roof,add 15% to sheeting. the builders are not going to sort through all the triangle cutoffs to see what fits where