Besides being able to support the weight of all that snow a roof needs to be designed to avoid ice dams sliding snow excessive icicle formation and drainage onto high traffic areas.
Snow roof degree.
Building a roof with wood shakes works well in moist colder climates as they don t dry out from the snow.
How to convert roof pitch to degrees.
First convert the pitch to a slope.
If you live in the us our snow load calculator compares the total weight on your roof with the permissible load calculated according to the standards issued by the american society of civil engineers regarding the minimum design loads for buildings and other structures asce7 16.
And although asphalt shingles are the easiest to damage among the roofing materials they are another good option for snow as long as your climate isn t too windy.
Slate is also a popular material in this climate zone.
The minimum roof pitch for shedding snow is around 30 or a 6 12 or 7 12 slope although this is not a definite as the material of your roof the direction of the snow and wind are some factors that can affect whether or not snow will slide as roofs of as little as 10 have been reported to shed snow.
Steeper slopes increase the sail effect that makes them susceptible to wind.
The easiest and most common sense approach is to keep the roof as simple as.
It is not uncommon in our area to have several feet of snow on a roof in the winter.
Rise run rise run slope.
Lower slopes don t handle wind driven rain as well.
To find the angle of a roof in degrees convert the pitch to a slope then convert to degrees by finding the arc tangent of the slope.