Why roof tiles exist. I understand why we don’t have flat roofs, but why do we have hundreds of tiles that sort of overlap each other and can be pulled or blown off easily?
Why aren’t roofs like a giant tent, still A shaped but each side is just a big sheet of whatever weatherproof material we got?
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Aside from the other answers you got, there’s another one:
The tiles/shingles/etc are not for waterproofing. They’re primarily to protect the waterproofing layer under them.
Waterproof materials tend to break down under sunlight, and most are easily torn, punctured or broken by hail and other hazards a roof has to survive. So you don’t have the waterproof material as the top layer of the roof.
If you were looking at the roof from the side, it’s usually:
tiles/shingles/metal/etc
waterproof layer (used to be tar, then tar paper or rubber, now it’s a plasticized fabric)
plywood
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