Roofing in Saint Kitts and Nevis

Saint Kitts and Nevis is a two-island federation in the Leeward Islands. Its building regulation follows the regional OECS model, and roof design is driven by hurricanes.

Climate and hazards

As elsewhere in the Eastern Caribbean, hurricanes are the main threat to roofs, with earthquake, volcanic and flood hazards also noted in the OECS code.

Roofing history

Throughout the Eastern Caribbean, older timber houses typically have steep hip or gable roofs clad first in wooden shingles and later in corrugated iron. Hip roofs, sloping on all four sides, are self-bracing and lack tall gable ends that catch the wind, and slopes of about 35 degrees or more are often preferred in hurricane regions because shallower roofs are more prone to uplift.

Codes, standards and regulation

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) developed model building codes and guidelines for small buildings with support from UNCHS and UNDP, based on the Caribbean Uniform Building Code (CUBiC). The USAID-funded, OAS-executed Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project helped Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada and Saint Lucia prepare national codes from these models, and published construction diagrams covering hip and gable roof framing, rafter-to-ring-beam and wall-plate connections and hurricane straps for houses under 3,000 ft² (279 m²). A revised OECS Building Code was issued in June 2015, reviewed that year for Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia and Montserrat, and drew on the codes of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. National consultations on administering it were held across the sub-region in 2017 under the EU-funded iLand Resilience project. A stakeholder consultation in Saint Kitts in March 2017 worked on tailoring the code's administrative section to the federation.

Sources and gaps

Published accounts of island-specific historic roofing: published information is limited.

Roofing history, material statistics and heritage roofs: published information is limited.