Question: Rick Sanderson owns a residential roofing business near Memphis. Rick has a small crew of three employees, and he does all of the measuring and calculations for the roofing jobs his company bids. Rick does all of his materials calculations based on the number of "squares" in a roof-one of the most commonly used terms in the roofing industry. One roofing square 100 square feet. It does not matter how you arrive at 100 square feet: feet, or 1 roofing square, is the same as and so on. Although roofs come in many shapes and sizes, one of the most common is a gable roof. This is a type of roof containing sloping planes of the same pitch on each side of the ridge or peak, where the upper portion of the sidewall forms a triangle.
1. Rick just finished measuring a gable roof for a detached garage, and needs help with his materials calculations. Each of the two sides of the roof measured 45 feet (ft) 20 feet (ft). How many square feet (ft2 * ) would this be in total? How many roofing squares would this equal?
2. Rick knows that for each roofing square he needs 4 bundles of 40-year composition shingles, which he can buy at $14 per bundle. He also uses 15-pound (lb) roofing felt as a base under the shingles, and each roll costs $9 and covers 3 squares. Given your answers to Exercise 1, how many bundles of shingles will he need? How many rolls of roofing felt? What are the costs for each?
3. To finish the job, Rick needs roofing nails and drip edge. A four-pound box of one-inch roofing nails will cover 3 squares, and cost $5. Drip edge comes only in 10-foot lengths, costs $3 per length, and is attached only to the horizontal edges of the roof. How many pounds of 1-inch roofing nails will the job require, and what is the cost? How many 10-foot lengths of drip edge will finish the job, and at what cost? Finally, what is the total materials cost of the entire roofing project?