Roofing Measurements

Your roof is a major structural component of your home, and a successful reroofing project requires a large investment in both time and money. Since you cannot afford mistakes during installation, we highly recommend you hire a professional contractor. 

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Estimating Shingles and Square Footage

If you’re intending on doing a shingle roof, you’re going to need to consider exactly how many shingles you will need to procure. To do this, you’ll need to assess the total square footage of your roof’s total surface. Doing so is straightforward. You or your hired roofing team will initiate by evaluating the span and width of each plane of the roof, adding to any dormers. Multiply the entire length by the width to receive the exact square footage of each plane. In the end, tally the roof’s full square footage by summing the square footage of each plane together.

Every roof surface is surveyed in “squares.” A square is purely any area of roof which computes at an exact 100 square feet. You’ll need to find out the number of squares on a roof in order to learn the number of shingles you’ll need to cover the roof. Let’s say you have a gable roof that is a sum of 24,000 square feet. Simply divide the entire square footage by 100. You’ll get a result of 240, meaning that you’ll need 240 squares of shingles to cover the roof.

How to Manually Measure a Roof

1. Measure the width and length of each plane of the roof (including dormers), and then multiply those numbers to get the correct figure for the square footage of that area.
2. Note any skylights, chimneys or other parts of the roof that would not require materials so you can subtract those measurements from your total area.
3. Add together the calculated square footage of each surface to get the figure for total square footage of the roof.
4. After determining the total square footage of the roof, you must calculate the pitch of the roof by measuring the vertical distance (rise) over a 12 inch horizontal segment (run).
5. Write down these numbers as the vertical measurement listed first and the horizontal measurement recorded second so you can find rise over run.
6. When you have the total square footage and rise over run of the roof, you can calculate the roof squares to determine how much materials are needed to cover the roof. To calculate the number of squares on a roof, you need to divide its total square feet by 100.