Gambrel Standing Design with Seam Red Roof
Most of the time, here on our blog and on our website, we are looking at examples and talking about the details of low slope roofing here in Washington DC. The vast majority of roofs here in Washington DC are low slope because, at least in the central areas of the city, that’s how our buildings are built. Today though, we’re looking at an anomaly or something a bit different.
The picture below shows a historic barn with a standing seam red roof. The color really is mostly irrelevant, because a variety of different colors are common for metal roofs, but red roofs are a bit more predominant with historic structures as the red color was one of the original few available colors for roof paint.
The red color paint, originally, historically, used iron oxide as a stabilizer and iron oxide was prevalently available at low cost. That’s one of the reasons that red roof paint is so commonly associated with historic structures. The standing seams used in this metal are also common in historic types of roots because although flat seam roofs were a common alternative, standing seams were very commonly used.
This particular roof is also been fitted with a wireless weather station. This type of weather station can identify several different characteristics of the weather and create a registry of conditions. Since this system is wireless, it can send data to a remote device where information can be processed. This type of weather station provides data on whether that is even more localized than the weather reporting services available to everybody else.
The exhaust vent termination shown in the picture below looks a lot like a common and popular type of siren used about 60-90 years ago. Sirens on rooftops, particularly where building are centralized in populated areas, could alert people to natural disasters, storms, and other types of risks. We don’t believe that this isn’t actually a remnant of a historic siren though, we think it’s actually a exhaust hood similar to a cupola. Cupolas are installed in similar ways, generally set at the rooftop ridge, similar to this installation and can be used to emit air, ventilation, and light through fenestration or partially open louvers.
This roof is a little bit different than a typical gable roof, although it has a gable. Hip roofs, by comparison, do not have any gables at all. Sometimes both different types of styles can have dormers, but the big difference between a hip and a gable roof is that the gable roofs have a portion of the wall that runs perpendicular to the ridgeline and runs up to the underside of the roof and meets at a portion of the roof with a rake board. Here though, although it is a gable roof it’s different than most because it’s a gambrel style which has a change in slope in the middle or near the middle of the distance between the roof ridge and the roof eave.
You can see the tall Gable set of the building in the next picture below. Similar to the aesthetic of the standing seam roof, the vertical wall at both ends of this building are board and batten style so each individual vertical board that is installed, basically like a plank, has an overlaid batten to cover the butt joint between each plank and the next. This board and batten creates a distinct visual style.
Unlike most cable buildings, this particular building does not have a downspout installed along the eve of the roof. Generally there would not be a gutter installed at the Gable side, instead it would be installed along the near horizontal Eve Edge at the bottom of each of the roof trusses on both sides.
A particular flashing design has been used to transition from the lower slope upper portion of the gambrel to the higher slope lower portion of the gambrel roof. You can see this detail up close in the picture below. This type of flashing helps cover the gap at the edge of the transition. Essentially the upper part of the gambrel roof extends beyond the top of the lower portion of the roof, but that extension is just a slight amount, enough to have a drip edge, effectively, but not enough to alone prevent water entry through wind driven rain. The flashing element essentially caps the lower portion of the transition to help deflect any non-vertical precipitation.
We provide this information here on our blog, and our website, to help our customers and future clients, and we recommend every building owner in DC who values the longevity of their roof (and their investments) and building use a contractor who values the simple and important principles of proper roof construction like Dupont Roofing DC.
Our company specializes in flat roofing here in Washington DC and we’re happy to help building owners of almost all types. Learn more about our company and the proper techniques of working with roofing on historic buildings in Washington DC here on our blog at DupontRoofingDC.com, and you can call us at (202) 840-8698 and email us at dupontroofingdc@gmail.com. We are happy to help and at least talk through options.
