Blew 6 hours trying to dimension a sloped roof detail last week

I had this simple looking roof tie-in at a house in Beaverton, and I figured it would take me maybe 45 minutes to get the section drafted. Turned out the existing framing was out of square by nearly 2 inches across the ridge, and none of my standard methods for calculating the slope transition worked. I tried drawing it three different ways, kept getting weird overlaps or gaps at the cricket. Finally just printed the whole thing at 1/4 scale, overlaid some trace paper, and sketched it by hand like a caveman. That took another hour and a half but at least it was accurate when I modeled it back in. Has anyone else hit a wall on something that should have been basic but the field measurements were just off enough to ruin everything?

2 comments

2 Comments

andrew69324d ago

That manual trace method is honestly underrated. I've had to do that on a few retrofits where the camera didn't catch everything and the laser measure rounding was throwing off my slope ratios by half a degree. The paper overlay trick catches those subtle errors because you're literally matching physical lines instead of trusting the math alone. Did you end up finding the root cause of that 2 inch shift or was it just an old house settling funny over the years?

tyler_white4223d ago

Yo exactly, the paper overlay thing is legit slept on. I've caught so many weird little warps that way, especially on old houses where the foundation's just got that natural "character" over decades. That 2 inch shift was actually a combo of an old chimney footing sinking on one side and a misread on a foundation wall angle. Math alone woulda missed it, but the paper trace showed the whole ovals instead of straight lines.