A new trussed roof standing complete over a house, seen from the road: bare timber rafters running the full length, a gable sheathed in board at the near end, scaffold across the front and overhead cables crossing the sky above it.

Horsham · 2025

Truss roof, Horsham

A trussed roof fitted in Horsham, designed and supplied by a manufacturer and lifted in entirely by hand because a low overhead cable ruled out a crane.

Town: Horsham

A trussed roof fitted in Horsham in the summer of 2025. The trusses were designed and supplied by a truss manufacturer; Tennant fitted them, and did not design them.

The thing worth knowing about this job is in the sky above it. A low overhead electric cable crosses the plot, which ruled out the crane that would normally put a roof like this up, so every truss went in by hand.

The crane that could not be used

A modern trussed roof is designed around a crane. That is the quiet assumption in the whole system: the trusses are made in a factory to a length and a shape no one would attempt to cut on site, delivered flat on a lorry, and lifted in pairs or in banded groups straight from the bed of the lorry to the wall plate. Fixing and bracing them is the carpenter’s work either way, but getting them up there is normally somebody else’s machine.

Take the crane away and it is a different job with the same drawings. The lorry’s own crane can reach the road, and that is where the trusses came off — flat on the tarmac behind barriers, which is the only piece of level ground on a street like this. From there to the wall plate is hands, and a truss is awkward long before it is heavy: it is a large, flexible triangle that wants to fold about its own plates until it is upright and braced against something.

That is a decision to make before anything is ordered, not on delivery day. The number of people on site, how long the roof is open to the weather, and how the trusses are grouped when they come off the lorry all follow from it.

The crane and the cable are the owner’s account. What follows from them here is read off the job and the photographs rather than quoted from him.

What a supplied roof still leaves to the fitter

Everything in these photographs arrived designed. The spans, the web pattern and the plates at the joints were all settled in a factory, and the shape that leaves a clear space down the middle of the roof was drawn before a timber was cut.

None of that is a guarantee that the roof stands square. A supplied truss is made to a dimension; the building it lands on is whatever it actually measures. The gable sheathed with its opening framed, and the flat roof joisted off the blockwork next door to it, are the parts of this job nobody delivered on a lorry.

How it went in

01

Delivered to the road

23 July. The trusses arrive on a lorry with its own crane, which can reach the road and no further.

A flatbed delivery lorry parked in a suburban road with its own crane arm folded above, loaded with new timber roof trusses strapped upright in a frame, a telegraph pole and overhead cables beside it. — The load, still on the lorry

A roof truss swinging on the lorry's crane strop above the road while a man in a hard hat and hi-vis watches from the kerb, with more trusses already stacked flat on the tarmac behind him. — Off the lorry, onto the road

02

The old roof off

The existing roof stripped back to the ceiling joists and boarded over, with the wall plate ready.

The stripped roof of a house from scaffold level: old ceiling joists and boards exposed with insulation between them, sheets laid over the openings, and the neighbouring tiled roof beyond. — Back to the joists

03

The first trusses up

Standing and braced at the far end, with the rest of the roof still open.

The first group of new trusses standing braced at one end of a stripped roof, pale new timber against grey sky, with boards and insulation still laid across the open joists in the foreground. — The first group, braced

04

The roof up

6 August. The full run standing, the gable sheathed and the scaffold still round it.

The front of the house with the new roof structure standing above it, scaffold across the elevation, a Tennant Carpentry and Building board fixed to it, and a telegraph pole and cables in front. — From the front

The new roof from the side: rafters running down the slope, the sheathed gable rising at the near end, and scaffold with a Tennant board along the front of the house. — The gable end

Looking along the new roof slope from scaffold level, close to the timbers: rafters at regular centres over the old brick gable, with punched metal plates at the joints and the road below. — Along the slope

05

Inside it

The trusses are shaped to leave a clear space down the middle of the roof rather than filling it with webs.

Inside the new roof looking down its length: repeated trusses with vertical posts either side of a clear central space, diagonal webs outside them, floor joists across the bottom and a boarded gable at the far end. — A clear space down the middle

The same roof space from the other end, sunlight between the rafters, insulation boards stacked on the joists in the foreground and a framed opening in the boarded gable beyond. — From the other end

06

The gable, and the flat roof

7 and 8 August. The gable sheathed with its opening framed, and the flat roof over the single-storey part joisted off the blockwork.

A gable sheathed in board with a rectangular opening framed in it, the new roof slope running away to the right, and a flat roof deck boarded out over the single-storey part below. — The opening framed in

Flat roof joists set out on a new blockwork and brick wall with a spirit level lying across them, the sheathed gable and the pitched roof rising behind. — Levelled off the blockwork

This project involved hand cut and trussed roofs, extensions and loft conversions. See more work across West Sussex.

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