Snow Load On Roofs In Virginia

A great deal of confusion currently exists among engineers architects recreation specialists and maintenance personnel concerning the proper snow loading to use for the design and maintenance of trail bridges building roofs and other structures in mountainous high snow load areas.

Snow load on roofs in virginia.

If the snow weighs 10 pounds per cubic foot and there are 1 5 feet on the roof each square foot of the roof is getting 15 pounds of pressure. Schilke civil agricultural engineering montana state university august 1989. Why snow load information. Victor staley a building official in the town of brewster mass responds.

Snow load is the downward force on a building s roof by the weight of accumulated snow and ice. The flat roof snow load is calculated using formula 7 3 1. The roof shall be designed for the live load indicated in table r301 6 or the snow load indicated. If you live in the us our snow load calculator compares the total weight on your roof with the permissible load calculated according to the standards issued by the american society of civil engineers regarding the minimum design loads for buildings and other structures asce7 16.

To figure out the load on your roof take the depth of snow in feet and multiply it by the weight of a cubic foot of snow. Use our roof snow load calculator to determine your design roof snow loads. How snow load can damage your buildings. Ground snow load might seem somewhat confusing until you read the basic premise that is identified in irc section r301 6 which states.

If you have any questions or concerns about specific ground snow loads within the state of washington please call us at 1 425 741 5555. The snow load that is applied to our structure is not the ground snow load but in most cases the flat roof snow load. The determination of the drift load that is. The minimum design roof snow load.

Please review our state snow loads page to investigate state specific snow load requirements. In our case let s assume that our structure has a flat roof roof slope 5. If your roof is 1 000 square feet the total snow load is 15 000 pounds of snow. The truss could be designed based on the assumption that the 25 psf roof snow load is a factored ground snow load in which case a ground snow load is back calculated using asce 7 based on the specified roof snow load pg 25 psf therein lies the problem with specifying only a roof snow load.

For additional questions or concerns about specific ground snow loads please call us at 1 425 741 5555. Use our roof snow load calculator to determine your design roof snow loads. The roof or the entire structure can fail if the snow load exceeds the weight the building was designed to shoulder. In areas of the state outside of certified local government jurisdictions the design snow load shall be based on the ground snow loads developed in snow loads for structural design in montana authored by f f.

Other considerations for sloped roofs can be found throughout chapter 7 of asce 7 10.