Put a Parapet on your custom home to make your roof look unique

Put a parapet on your custom home to give your roof a different look.

What is a parapet you ask?

A parapet is when the exterior wall of the home extends past the roof surface straight up on a vertical plain a foot or two. This means that on the gable ends where these parapets are you will have no overhangs on the roof.

Parapets are usually framed on top of the roof sheeting after the roof has been constructed. If the parapets are large you might want to have a couple of studs drop through the roof sheeting and attach to the wall studding below for added support.

One of the biggest concerns that you have to watch out for is that you waterproof the sidewalls of the parapet properly when you are applying the roofing material and the wall material. You should wrap the entire parapet in ice and water shield to make sure that you do not have any leaks in the future.

Parapets are usually seen on commercial buildings or residential buildings with flat roofs. But if you put them on a sloped roof of a house then you should make sure that the roof is fairly steep, this will help the roof shed water and snow, this will be far less likely to have any kind of leak problems.

When the parapet is designed properly into a residential home plan it can have a dramatic effect, it helps give you that dramatic first impression that most homeowners crave. It is an easy way to guarantee that your custom home will be designed to look differently then its neighbouring homes.

You should always top the parapet in aluminum or steel so that there never will be a chance that the top of the parapet will leak as those two materials have the ability to last a long time even though they are situated on top of your roof and exposed to all the elements.

Parapets are not hard to build but they do take some fore thought when designing them and a homeowner that is willing to try something different with the look of their new custom home.

Rob Abbott
Village Builders Inc.