How to Calculate the Bundles of Shingles Needed for Your Roof

Shingles are one of the most daunting roofing materials to install. Because it is purchased in pieces, the installation requires time in placing each piece to obtain a well-balanced finish. Depending on the material they are made of, the installation can be obstructed by breakages due to negligence. The entire procedure will be less discouraging if the materials needed are correctly estimated. This means even the anticipated wastes are included in the counting.

To begin the estimate, prepare the blueprint of the house and measuring tools. The blueprint presents the dimension of the birds-eye view of the house in details. Take the length and the width of the roof line. Do not confuse the roofing line with the wall line. The wall line is indicated by a darker shade. The roofing line is always longer than the wall line because of the eaves overhang.

Do not multiply the length and the width shown on the blueprint, as they won't match the accurate area needed to determine the number of shingles. Roofers in temperate cities like Miami proceed to measuring the pitch (height from the ceiling joist) of roof as a factor of the real width. The pitch's height is squared and added to the squared half of the entire joists. The square root of the results represents the real width.

The real width is multiplied by the length of the roof to obtain the area. For example, a roof 15 meters long and 5 meters wide has an area of 75 square meters. This represents only half of the roof, so installers like the Miami roof professionals proceed to multiplying the result by 2 to obtain the area of the entire roof. With the given data, the total area is 150 square meters.

Convert the result to feet to match with the standard size of shingles. One hundred fifty square meters is equivalent to 1613.76 square feet. This is important because shingles are measured in feet. Calculating for the number of needed shingles for a Miami roof will require all dimensions to be in the same unit. There are 32 shingles in the standard roof area of 32 square feet.

Dividing the roof area with 32 obtains the actual number of bundles of shingles to be installed, which is 50.43 or 51. Miami roof experts do not look for the exact amount, but rather considers wastes. Ten percent of the total number of shingles should be anticipated for waste.