What Is a Gambrel Roof?
A gambrel roof is a two-sided roof with a central ridge. Each side has two sloping surfaces. The upper surface is shorter in length and has a gentle slope of about 30 degrees, while the lower surface is longer and has a sharper slope of about 60 degrees. Gambrel roof trusses are made with shorter pieces of lumber joined together, rather than the very long pieces of lumber needed for roofs like the A-frame. The great advantage of the gambrel roof is that it provides a surface that is very resistant to damage from weather. At the same time, the gambrel roof provides a large amount of interior space. Because the weight of the roof is supported by trusses that direct the stress to the building’s exterior walls, weight-bearing interior walls or posts are unnecessary. The name for a gambrel roof may come for the Middle English word gambril, which referred to a “hooked or crooked stick” and could also be spelled as gamrel or gameral. In 17th century England, the word gambrel was sometimes use
Although the gambrel roof is popular for certain house styles, most notably Dutch Colonials native to the Hudson River Valley, perhaps it is most familiar capping the barns that dot rural countrysides. It has a straight ridge like that on a gable roof, but midway down the slope, the planes break downward at a steeper pitch. A gambrel roof is so named because its curved, hip-like shape resembles the contour of a horse’s hind leg, called a hock or gambrel in 17th-century England. This type of roof utilizes two shorter rafters in place of each single rafter that spans a typical gable roof. This is an advantage where quality rafter material is scarce, but gambrel roofs are slightly more complicated to frame. Their greatest advantage is that they allow maximum living space in the attic or upper-floor level.Find a Pre-Screened Roof Framing Contractor in Your Area GA_googleFillSlot(“HT_Roof_Chimney_Gutters_All_Roofing_Articles_Bar_Upper_Middle_468x60”); Copyright. All rights reserved.
The iconic visual of a gambrel roof is the big red country barn with a hip roof but with jointed gables forming a point at the top of the roof line. The gambrel roof line was popularized in Europe and then brought to the American colonies, and it remains a key architectural style in farming and agricultural buildings.
A gambrel is a double angle gable, like a typical barn has. Here’s a bunch of photos: http://images.google.com/images?sourceid…
