Eli5: Why do houses have a triangle shaped roof? Why not flat?
In: Engineering
Snow, particularly getting rid of snow
If you live somewhere that rarely gets snow then flat roofs are common, you’ll see them all around the equatorial region from the Caribbean to the middle east
If you live somewhere that gets a sizable amount of snow then a flat roof is just asking for disaster.
Snow weighs 21 pounds per cubic foot, if you’ve got a 20’x20′ roof that’s got a 12:12 pitch(sharp 45 degree roof) then it may only hold 6 inches of snow on it or 4,200 pounds. If you’ve got a flat roof and you get a blizzard that drops 3 feet of snow then you have 25,000 pounds of snow on your roof and you run the risk of your roof collapsing.
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