There are two primary roof-framing systems used by Bay Area Roofing companies: rafters and trusses. Rafter framed roofs have individual rafters spaced from 12 to 14 inches on center, which span from the exterior walls or roof eaves up to the roof top or ridge, or into the sides of the main hip rafters. This style of Bay Area roofing construction is called stick framing. This system holds most of the roof weight and must rest on the designated interior, load bearing, wall.
Homes that have truss-framed roofing have fabricated sawn lumber members connected by pre engineered metal plates. This type Bay Area roofing support is specially designed to pass code specific structural load combinations. If your home has a unique roof shape, trusses are the best choice for roofing support. Trusses have close fabrication tolerances that benefit homes with complex roofing framing composition.
One of the mail differences between rafters and trusses is that trusses do not need support from partition walls in interior rooms because this technology uses outer bearing points to support their load. Trusses are customized to fit across the entire width of your home.
Rafters have a ridge board that does not provide structural support. Instead, these act as a bearing plate for the opposing rafters. This causes sagging floors due to the face that floor joist are not sized for the roof load. The ridge road is required by codes to be deep for full contact to the cut face of the matting rafter.
When a ridge board is placed in a rafter framed home it is important for the roof rafters to be connected to the ceiling joists at the exterior wall plate. the result of the overlapping of rafters and the ridge board will be a tension-tie across the home.
Your Bay Area Roofing company may be able to talk to you further about this. If you experience roof support problems, call Yorkshire Roofing today. We are here to help you with all your roofing needs!