Talk:Gambrel

Decagon
There was a claim in the article that a symmetrical gambrel was half a decagon. A gambrel has four line segments, while a decagon has ten. It can not, therefore, be half. It could be half of an octagon, but that's a pointless statement anyway. — wfaulk 22:08, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm.

A little thinking about the matter however reveals that a decagon can be sliced in a couple of ways (taking a line from corner to corner and discarding the bottom 3 facets) to give the proportions of a gambrel/mansard roof, along with the walls of the lower storey. Further, one could in fact slice a decagon "in half", for that matter, by bisecting any two opposed facets in a decagon, and connecting a line across, and produce a gambrel/mansard profile along with about half of the lower storey wall section. A decagon would therefore be a valid way to proportion a gambrel.

As for using half an octagon to proportion this roof form, in Newland's The Carpenter's Assistant (1860, reprinted 1990), page 140, plate XXVII, section 3d:

"In fig 463, on the base ab, draw the semi-circle a d b, and divide it into 4 equal parts, a e, e d, d f, f b: join the points of the division, and the resulting demi-octagon is the profile required"

It would appear that the statement was not so pointless after all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thecarpentryway (talk • contribs) 16:14, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Mansard
I removed this claim from the article because it is apparently false. A Mansard roof is sloped on all four sides, while a Gambrel roof is gabled on the ends. Wilhelm_meis (talk) 01:28, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This term is, however, mistakenly used. The correct term should be 'Mansard" roof. This misnaming results from a confusion of terms sometime in the mid 19th century.

Move to Gambrel roof?
Since the word "gambrel" by itself means something different, I propose moving this article to Gambrel roof.--Boson (talk) 23:08, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Like a Hip Roof?

 * A gambrel roof is a type of roof similar to a hip roof but with gables forming the top part of the end slopes.

The type of roof described in this sentence is not illustrated by the accompanying pictures, nor does it accurately reflect what most people consider to be a gambrel, which is shown in the pictures. NB that the pictures do not show any sort of roof hips at all. A gambrel roof is also similar to a unicorn except for the ways it doesn't resemble a unicorn in any way what-so-ever. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.230.30.196 (talk) 16:03, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
One or more portions of this article duplicated other source(s). The material was copied from: http://thecarpentryway.blogspot.com/2009/10/gambrel-mansard-conundrum.html and http://roofing-services-supermarket.com/image-library/html/mansard-roofs.html. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. ⌘macwhiz (talk) 22:13, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

vs. Mansard roof
The explanation of the difference between a gambrel roof and a mansard roof isn't immediately clear. While there is a wikilink to the latter, the clearest explanation I've seen is in Mansard roof [references deleted here]:


 * Two distinct traits of the mansard roof – steep sides and a double pitch – sometimes lead to it being confused with other roof types. Since the upper slope of a mansard roof is rarely visible from the ground, a conventional single-plane roof with steep sides may be misidentified as a mansard roof. The gambrel roof style, commonly seen in barns in North America, is a close cousin of the mansard. Both mansard and gambrel roofs fall under the general classification of "curb roofs" (a pitched roof that slopes away from the ridge in two successive planes).  However, the mansard is a curb hip roof, with slopes on all sides of the building, and the gambrel is a curb gable roof, with slopes on only two sides.  (The curb is a horizontal, heavy timber directly under the intersection of the two roof surfaces.) French roof is often used as a synonym for a mansard but is also defined as an American variation of a mansard with the lower pitches nearly vertical and larger in proportion to the upper pitches.


 * A significant difference between the two, for snow loading and water drainage, is that, when seen from above, Gambrel roofs culminate in a long, sharp point at the main roof beam, whereas mansard roofs always form a low-pitched roof.

Could this, or part of it, be incorporated or transcluded here? --Thnidu (talk) 18:04, 28 June 2014 (UTC)