ozarkjohn
01-27-05, 10:18 AM
Have a basic 27ft x47ft single gable ranch and am considering adding an 8ft deep wrap around porch on 3 sides. The current roof pitch is rather low and for astetics we would like to increase the pitch as a part of the job. The current roof is supported with rafters, and since we have no need for the attic space to be liveable or used as storage it appears that a truss roof replacement would make sense. I will need to add about 3ft of wall or truss height to provide the needed pitch for the porches. Can this be done with raised/energy heel trusses? Or could trusses be made which support both porches and the main roof (different pitches) in one unit? I'd probably contract out most of the work. Any cost swags for planning porposes would be appreciated.
Guess I'm visualizing this wrong or on a different train of thought, with your needing to add 3" of wall heigth for needed pitch.
If you are going 3 sided wrap around and current roof wont allow it, consider just installing a new hip roof and be done with it. When you do the proch you will have to pour appropriate sized footings to build the porch frame work on, this outter porch framework will now be your new "outside wall" so to speak. You could either do pre built trusses set in place and they require some manual framing to tie together, or just build rafters. Have the contractor bid the roof both ways, it usually come sout in the mix-especially on a hip roof so higher prices of trusses will save money overall on installation while site built rafters are very cheap, the labor to build will be high.
Does'nt sound like a very techincal project at all, just a pricey one! :D