Hip Roof With Gable Additions and a Flat Porch
A 2004 two-story home has a complex roof. The main roof is a hip design covering about 1,800 square feet. An attached garage has a front-facing gable roof of about 300 square feet. A bonus-room dormer has a gable end of about 100 square feet. A rear porch has a flat roof of about 100 square feet over a screened enclosure. The owner's insurance agent lists the roof as hip because the largest area is hip. The inspector notes that the garage gable and dormer gable are part of the same roof system, and the porch flat roof ties into the rear wall. The form asks for roof geometry. The inspector must decide whether to report hip, non-hip, or flat, and how to describe the mixed roof.
1. Is the roof geometry hip? Why or why not?
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Report non-hip, not hip. Hip roof geometry means the roof has no gable ends; it is not a majority-area test. The main 1,800-square-foot hip area does not cancel the front-facing garage gable or the bonus-room gable. Both are gable ends that create a non-hip section. The flat porch roof is also not a hip plane. Size and insurance-agent preference do not change the geometry. The inspector should describe the main roof as hip and the overall roof as non-hip because of the gable additions, and should not use a percentage to conceal the gables.
2. How should the flat porch roof be handled?
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First decide whether the porch roof is part of the dwelling roof system or an excluded appurtenance. If it covers conditioned space or ties into the main roof structure, include it and note it as flat. If it is only a screen-enclosure roof, document that and exclude it from the dwelling geometry, but do not call the dwelling hip if the garage and dormer gables remain. A flat section is not averaged into hip area; it is a different geometry with different wind performance.
3. What documentation should support the geometry choice?
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Provide a roof plan sketch with dimensions and areas, label each section hip, gable, or flat, and photograph all four elevations. Include close-ups of the garage gable end, dormer gable, and flat-roof tie-in. The photos must show the gable triangles, not just the roof slope. The report should state the method: any gable end on the dwelling roof makes the geometry non-hip.