Roofing Calculator - Estimate roofing project:

What you can accomplish with this interactive tool:

This tool calculates a ballpark figure for any roofing project. Bottom-line figure for the project changes with the choice of materials used, size of your roof, slope, and complexity of the roof. This tool will help you figure out the differences in cost so you can do a better planning. Figures used in this calculator reflect hiring skilled professionals who have all the necessary experience, tools, insurances and workers' compensation required by the state.

How to use this Calculator:

To get started, you will need to measure the length and width of the building, over which the roof is seated.

The easiest way to obtain accurate roof measurements, is to walk around the house and take ground measurements right underneath the roof. Keep in mind that your roof will usually extend away by a foot from the walls of the house. Thus, you will want to use the actual roof edges, and not the house walls when taking the measurements. Have a pan and a paper ready to record the measurements, in feet, for every section of the roof of the building.

Now that you have the ground dimensions of your roof, it is time to figure roofing pitch, also known as slope, which tells you how steep your roof is. The question many people will ask is How do I figure out the roof pitch without going on the roof itself. As it turns out, you can actually figure out pitch in several different ways. One way to do this, is to go to your local hardware store and buy a pitch meter that you can use to estimate roofing pitch while standing on the ground. Antoher way to do it is by simply looking at the roof and asking yourself wheather it is possible to walk on this roof with ease.

If it looks like you could kind of try to walk up the roof, but you would be taking chances, then the roofing pitch is medium.

And finally, if your walk up the roof would be considered suicidal, then your roof slope is steep, and non walkable.

Now that we have figured out the roofing pitch, we need to determine the roof type. To do this look at your roof and count the number of sides that it has:

If the roof you are looking at, has only two sides of roofing planes/surfaces connected by a straigth ridge line, then it is a gable type roof, or a simple roof. If your roof has four sides, then it is a hip roof, which means that your roof will require more roofing material will to cover it. Consequently, there will be more roofing material waste involved in covering of the hip roof.

A quick rule of thumb is that the more complex your roof is the more material will be wasted during the installation of a new roof. If a roof has a lot of sophisticated dormers, hips, slope changes, and valeys, then installation process becomes more involved taking longer time to complete and adding to the bottom line.

Selecting Roofing Materials

In order to help you better understand the numbers involved in purchasing a new roof, we have included both, the commonly used roofing materials, and premium roofing materials in the calculator.

The commonly used roofing material for slopped roofs is conventional asphalt shingle, which, by the way, has many different grades and ratings of its own. For the flat roofing, conventional materials are EPDM, rubber, TPO, modified bitumen, and other commonly used flat rubber roofing systems

The materials above represent typical non-premium roofing materials that are commonly installed on the roofs of regular buildings. If you are interested in premium roofing, then you are probably looking at Slate, Clay Tiles, Cedar Shake, and Metal Roofing. We have included all four of these premium roofing types in this calculator.

Any premium roofing installation is a specialized job that requires special skill set, tools, and experience doing that particular type of installation. Be sure to hire only a roofing professional