Rooftop Revolution

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If you didn’t know better, you’d swear that Canadian homebuilding sites have been invaded by armies of highly skilled roof framers. Interesting, complicated roofs are popping up in new subdivisions all over the place, and the source of the striking beauty may surprise you.

More and more builders are including stunning roof designs in their projects, yet they’re doing it within ordinary building budgets employing carpenters with ordinary skills. And the key behind all this is computers. By harnessing information technology to design, cut and assemble factory-made roof trusses, the housing industry now offers both stunning, intricate roof lines and affordable home ownership all at the same time. Where the term truss roof used to be synonymous with plain, low-slope, ho-hum houses, computer-designed trusses now offer the low-cost possibility of steeper roof pitches, space-enhancing dormers, vaulted ceilings and bonus-rooms over garages in areas that would otherwise be clogged with 2x webbing and metal nail plates.

Modern roof trusses are typically triangular networks of 2x4 and 2x6 lumber, whether they’re the product of computer-assisted manufacturing systems or not. Truss roofs also consume less wood than rafter-framed equivalents because they rely on brains instead of brawn for strength. Narrow lumber coming from smaller, younger trees is all that’s required to make them. Comparable rafter-framed roofs require 8 to 12-inch wide lumber that only come from dwindling, old-growth forests. Besides saving money, truss roofs also preserve stands of trees that may be more financially valuable left standing as eco-tourist attractions. 

Where We've Been
Residential truss roof construction originated in Florida and first came to Canada in the late 1950s. At that time, and for three decades afterwards, trusses were built following pencil-and-paper drawings, with wood cut using various sorts of power saws. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s that metal gang-nail plates took over from the hand-applied plywood gussets used to secure truss joints traditionally. The only electronic automation to help speed the design process during that era was a $1000 hand-held specialty calculator that appeared in the business during the late 1970s. You’d input figures for stick span and slope into the machine, then a paper print-out showing angles for a basic, simple truss was generated. Raw numbers still had to be transferred to the drafting board by hand.

Then, in the 1980s, Sun Microsystems offered the world’s first computer system capable of digitizing the design process in many industries, including the truss business. Though primitive by today’s standards (it only had a 40 MB hard-drive and a $10,000+ price tag), this digital tool marked the beginning of a revolution that now affects almost everything we buy and build, including homes.

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