Guide to Adding Patio and Carport Roofs

Adding a carport or patio roof is more complicated than many people assume.

Although many contractors jump at the easy way of adding a roof to the edge of the roof (This piece of trim is called fascia), this is a cheap process that can easily cause roof damage to the original house later.
We have added many types of roofs, but we consistently see damage from these types of roofs years later. Often, we are asked to just remove this roof completely and repair the main house's roof.
Roofs can be successfully attached to fascia, but this option should only be done if not enough funding is available to do the job right. It should be understood that this method will have bad results in some one story homes. There will also be some problems in the future, even if all is good for a few years.
Most problems with added roofs only apply to one story houses.

Below are two photos of some houses with carports (patios would look much the same).
One house has a gable roof, which is the wall in front. The other roof is a hip roof, which has a roof deck in front also.

If you wish to add a roof to a multi-story house, any roof type is fully compatible. The only concern is if any windows get in the way. A gable roof, hip roof or a simple sloped roof will always work.

Here are two photos of a budget sloped roof. You can clearly see that the new roof is placed, not onto the fascia, but on top of the old roof. This means that two things have happened. The new roof is strongly supported. The new roof (hopefully) now has a steep enough slope to allow proper water drainage.
I call this a budget roof for two reasons. Neither the old tail end of the existing roof nor the gutters were removed. This section underneath could be filled in by building the wall of the house up until it reaches the new roof. But the work done here is acceptable and sound. Just not as pretty (or as expensive) as could be done.

Note: Important! Not all one story roofs have enough slope to permit a simple sloped roof. These homes simply must have gable or hip roofs added, as are shown above.