We live in an old home (original part of the house was built in 1937) that has been added on to at least once, if not multiple times. One unfortunate result was part of the living space being under a flat roof.
Due to the age of the home, the fact that we have polybutylene piping (added almost 30 years ago - doesn’t leak a drop), living space under a flat roof and rent a detached garage apartment on AirBnB, our annual homeowners insurance is astonishingly expensive. My insurance agent is wonderful and continues to shop the hell out of us but the 4 conditions listed above limits our choices drastically.
The 2 conditions we could change are the piping and the flat roof. The roof is a priority right now as we have an active leak in the flat portion. We’re scheduled for an all new roof in ~2 weeks. Knowing that, I would be thrilled to hear from the hive if there is a reasonable way to add just enough pitch in order to consider it no longer flat. It’s a convoluted set up currently so not sure if it’s even feasible.
On to the pictures.
It sort of looks like the flat part is a valley with peaks on each end?
In some situations you can just angle cut 2x12 and lay it on top of the existing roof and re roof it for a slight angle but I'm not sure you could here
Lightweight concrete and make a skate park?
That's a messed up roof.
What is the least amount of pitch to get the water off the roof if you are not worried about snow or hail ?
I have a car port that has some low spots in the roof and the plywood under the roofing is rotting.....
What is the width of that roof? It appears to be 20ish feet? If so, I'd call that too long for a 2x12 taper cut to provide you enough slope. Maybe a 2x4 truss-like element that is 2ish feet high at one end, tapering to 3 1/2 inches at the other end. As long as the existing roof isn't rotten, you can just nail the truss down through the old roof, add sheeting and rolled roofing on that. The tall end would require some finishing on the face, too.
I guess the first question is, How much slope gets you in the insurance companies good books?
P.S: I regularly see houses from the US that make me question whether there are building codes of any sort there...
