Apart from their primary function, which is to protect the interior of buildings, the different types of roofing have other functions that concern the aesthetics, use and structure of a building. In Quebec, as everywhere else, each type of roof is thus special, appropriate to needs and has advantages and disadvantages for buildings.
Advantages and disadvantages
Above all, you should know that each type of residential, commercial, industrial or institutional construction is governed by standards that can influence the choice of type of roof. One thinks in particular of commercial and institutional buildings which are generally built with a flat roof in order to be able to receive all the mechanical equipment they need. Thus, in Quebec, there are as many buildings with sloping roofs as buildings with flat roofs.
Roofs with slopes or low slopes
Pitched or low-pitched roofs have the advantage of allowing good drainage of water and snow through their slopes. This avoids the problems of water infiltration and sealing on a building. As a result, pitched roofs generally require less maintenance and less regular checking of their general condition. Also, the attic of a sloping roof makes it possible to arrange a living space on one floor or to create a very practical attic for storing objects.
The disadvantages of a pitched roof are that it is often more expensive, that it generates a small loss of space due to its inclined parts and that it is more exposed to damage caused by the wind and therefore less resistant than flat roofs.
Finally, sloping roofs, even if they are very aesthetic, are often associated with an architecture linked to the past and can therefore sometimes seem old-fashioned.
Flat roof
For residential buildings, a flat roof offers the advantage of being able to accommodate an additional space which can then be a terrace or a garden on the roof but also an ideal surface for capturing solar energy and therefore installing photovoltaic panels. The flat roof of a house also allows its inhabitants to save the space taken up by the attic of sloping roofs and to create skylights.
The main disadvantage of a flat roof is that it has very specific needs in terms of covering, especially in Quebec, a region strongly affected by extreme climatic conditions. The absence of a slope on a flat roof can in fact pose sealing problems, because the rain and snow accumulate and do not evacuate as quickly as on sloped roofs despite the various systems that currently exist for remedy this.
Differences between cities and towns in Quebec
While in cities like Quebec and Montreal you can see many buildings with flat roofs, the villages on the outskirts seem to have houses built with sloping roofs. This is partly because the buildings in the villages were built based on the gable roof houses of French villages. The buildings in the city centers were built later. During the construction of Montreal, for example, flat roofs were favored because sloping buildings represented, in densely populated neighborhoods, a potential danger for passers-by due to the formation of icicles during the winter which regularly fall from the roofs. .
Apart from these two types of roofs, Quebec architecture also abounds in various other types of more original roofs such as mansard roofs, hipped, basin, dome, conical or even sawtooth like certain industrial buildings.