In our attempts to satisfy the HOA, we increased the pitch of our roof, from 1:12 to 2:12. (Roof pitches are often expressed in terms of rise over run – how far does the roof drop vertically for every “X” horizontal distance; so a 1:12 roof drops 1 foot vertically for every 12 horizontal feet – pretty flat). We didn’t expect the roof slope tweak to be cost-neutral, but it sounded like it shouldn’t significantly add to the cost. But as Shaun worked with the structural engineers and roof truss company, the pre-fabricated trusses got fatter and fatter to handle the additional twisting loads that were being placed on the walls. It also looked like we would need to add structural steel to our second-story “window wall,” or otherwise start losing windows. The steel would be expensive, and the fatter trusses would be both somewhat ugly and more expensive.
Or, we could avoid lots of these issues if we went back to the HOA and got them to approve a 1:12 slope, while keeping the stepped roof lines that we added to include some additional complexity.
The good news was that because this was all second-story work, there wasn’t any reason for it to slow down our excavation or foundation work. We were still trying to get that done in the fall or early winter. So we went back to the HOA, asking only for their approval of the lower roof pitch.
As with many of the other issues, it was a longer and slower process than we expected.
We went weeks without hearing anything. Then, around Thanksgiving, we learned that the architectural subcommittee was going to kick the question up to the full board, since they didn’t feel like they could make decisions on roof slope and snow-loading issues. We replied that the county handled those things, but we included some additional information in an attempt to satisfy any concerns they might have.
Weeks of waiting turned into months. One of the board members, a builder, had some additional ideas for changing the roof pitch over the living room 90 degrees. Something like this:
It wasn’t a terrible look, but we didn’t like it as much as our design. We also weren’t looking to spitball new ideas. We just wanted approval for a slightly flatter roof. Meanwhile, things weren’t going great on the initial dirt work.