On a recent new house
with some 26 different
roof planes, our crew got
lots of practice joining
unequally pitched roofs. By the end of
the job, we had settled on an accurate,
efficient method for figuring the cuts
on irregular hip and valley rafters. In
this article, I’ll focus on a section of
the roof where a lower bumpout with
a 43/4:12 pitch met the higher 61/2:12
main roof. We framed this section of
the roof with a major (or supporting)
valley rafter — a doubled LVL that
extends all the way to the structural
ridge and supports the minor valley,
which intersects it lower down.
Find the Angle in Plan
Locating where a hip or valley