How To Stick Frame Roof Rafters

With premanufactured trusses or with rafters and ceiling joists commonly called stick framing.

How to stick frame roof rafters.

There are two common ways of framing the roof of a house. If your project had a rafter length of 8 or less a safe and strong method is to use 2x8 framed 16 on center. Rafters are a good option when building something on a smaller scale such as a shed or a garage. The rafters are usually positioned directly above the wall studs.

They can be handmade and installed as needed one piece at a time on site. Let s consider a basic gable wood roof framing design. While most home builders will outsource the construction of roofing trusses the rafter supports of the roof itself learning to frame a roof yourself is one of the true arts of carpentry and a basic primer is covered below. Structures such as sheds or barns can be frames with rafters every 24 again make sure to consult local codes.

Floor beam span tables of residential structural design we will now look at roof rafter and beam design. Before you cut your boards you ll need to measure the width of your building and calculate the exact length of each rafter. The image below shows a cross section of our simple 12 x 13 house from the joist span tables section of this tutorial. If you re framing a gable roof on a new house or building a shed or even a doghouse with a gable roof you ll need to cut a number of roof rafters.

This will the first point of the rafter measurement line using the results of your rafter length calculation measure from this point along the rafter measurement. Rafter layout with a framing square. This example is for a roof with an 8 12 pitch. There aren t many differences between rafters and trusses.

Framing a roof is the last step in framing new construction. Position the square with both the 8 inch on the outside edge of the tongue and the 12 inch on the blade on the upper edge of the board. Like wall studs and floor joists rafters and trusses are spaced every 16 or 24 inches from center to center. Position the square at the end of the rafter board with the tongue on your left and facing away from you.

From one end of the rafter material using a speed square or framing square mark an x in 12 angle on the rafter and cut it measure down y height from the long point of the rafter cut and make a mark. It is always better to have a large rafter rather than be concerned with a sagging roof. Roof framing rafter layout. Most roofs utilize 16 inch spacings for strength and rigidity.

They ll both result in the same quality when the build is finished each supporting the roof with the same strength. The roof rafters provide integral structural support to the roof. Here we have a wood framed gable roof.