Roof Calculator – Make An Accurate Assessment Of Roofing Needs

A roof calculator makes life’s easy for homeowners when they need to find out how much roofing material they need in order repair or replace their roofs. Roofing has take into consideration lot of factors and not including in your calculations will lead to erroneous conclusions.

If you check out the online roof calculator applications you will find that they have many simple set of boxes to fill in. You need to enter the details after measuring the roof and arriving at the area. To calculate the area of the roof you need to reduce the complex roof pattern into simple squares, rectangles and triangles. Using simple area formulas calculate the areas of individual components. The total area is the sum of the all these components.

Once you enter the area the script in the application will automatically make the calculations and let you know how many bundles of shingles you need for the roof. If you are planning to put roofing felt then the calculator will also let you know the number of rolls you need for this.

Let’s investigate how this system works in a little more detail. The area is presented in squares. One square is 100 square feet. Each shingle bundle will cover about a third of a square. So, you will need three shingle bundles per square. For 10 you will need 30 shingle bundles. The roof calculator gives you this information. Roofing felt is available in rolls of 3 width by 36 feet length and will cover one square.

Even if the roof calculator gives only a rough estimate of the cost of roofing it is still better than shooting in the dark. If you just get into repairing or replacing an old roof with out any idea about costs you might run serious trouble with finances particularly if you overrun the budget you had in mind. If you are sure about the costs and how many shingles you need then contact an expert.

People with experience will be able to guide you. If your friends or neighbors have had their roofs replaced or repaired then seeking help from this another option. You can also fill roof estimate forms on websites with this facility. You get clarity in your thinking by asking for help on discussion boards and forums related roofing, home construction and other DIY forums. The Internet is a vast resource and you can tap into it to get as much information as you want.

Also, professional contractors will get more discounts on materials than you as an individual buyer. As regular buyers of shingles and other roofing materials they build a relationship with the wholesalers and retailers and get special prices which may be much lower than what you will get. If they pass on even a part of the savings you might be able to employ for just a little bit more than what you pay in material costs alone. So, the estimates you get with your roof calculator will be of great help in making these decisions.