The shed designer learned to frame and draw a saltbox today: a gable with its ridge off centre, a short steep front and a long shallow back. Its design search now tries one too, alongside the gable, the lean-to and the gambrel barn.
How the search shapes it. The search already varies the back pitch, from 4/12 to 9/12. For a saltbox it sets the front at twice that, which puts the ridge about a third of the way back, the classic proportion. A saltbox is never trussed: the tool frames it with a ridge board and ties or a ridge beam, so the search pins that, and no trussed duplicate is built.
The looks score has a saltbox rule too. It gives full marks for a back slope from 4/12 to 6/12 under a front at least half again as steep. Like the rest of that score, it is a rule of thumb this tool wrote, not a measurement.
What a 600-design search found under 100 sq ft, gables and saltboxes only, at today's dated prices before tax:
- 365 designs were feasible, 148 of them saltboxes.
- The Pareto front (cost, storage, looks) has 54 designs, and 12 are saltboxes.
- Cheapest: still a gable, an 8x10 with a ridge board and a gable door, $2,572.02. The cheapest saltbox is an 8x12 at $2,820.79.
- Most storage: a 9x11 saltbox, $3,304.92. The steep front gives a tall peak, and the long back slope covers more room than a gable at the same back pitch.
- Best looks: an 8x10 saltbox with two windows, $2,982.83, at the top of the heuristic score.
- Balanced pick: a gable, an 8x12 at $2,918.64.
So, as the framing post found earlier, the saltbox is mostly a looks choice that costs a little more. The search now puts it in front of people when looks or storage matter more than the last couple of hundred dollars.
Default search runs now include saltboxes. The gallery runs its own searches with their own lists of styles, so its cards do not change until the lane that owns the gallery decides to let saltboxes in.
As always, these are planning numbers, not engineered or code-checked designs.