Flat tile

The look comes first here, in Eagle Roofing Products' words: “our flat tiles can emulate the texture surfaces and style of other roofing materials such as wood shake, clay and slate.” The same flat concrete tile page defines the category: “Flat Concrete Roof Tiles refer to a variety of profiles completely lacking in any barrels or rolls.”

Two things follow from that wording. Flat is defined by what the tile does not have, so the word covers a variety of profiles and surface textures rather than one shape. And the look a flat tile imitates is a separate matter from what it is made of: in Eagle's range, a tile made to read as slate or wood shake is concrete.

Concrete is one of two usual materials. InterNACHI's tile roof inspection course says “The most common materials for roofing tiles are clay and concrete.” The same course describes how flat tiles meet their neighbors in a course. Tiles may butt, with flat clay tiles as its example, and it lists flat tiles among the tiles that may overlap. A barrel tile, by contrast, is the course's example of a tile that overlaps.

A flat face does not answer cleaning questions by itself. Whether a soft wash suits this surface, and what Eagle publishes for concrete tile, is covered in is soft washing safe for flat concrete tile. Whether a flat concrete tile roof has to be cleaned before any coat of paint goes on is the subject of cleaning a concrete tile roof before it is coated or painted.

Flat is the maker's word. The FRSA-TRI Florida High Wind Concrete and Clay Tile Installation Manual uses a measurement instead. Its glossary defines flat/low profile tile as tile with less than half an inch of rise, and low profile tile as flat tiles with a top surface rise equal to or less than half an inch. InterNACHI's course, without a number, says low-profile tiles are “flat or close to flat.”

The two vocabularies overlap in plain language, since both talk about flat tile, but they are not the same thing. The manual's category is set by the rise of the tile, not by the name in a catalog, and that measured category is explained under low-profile tile. Which profile a particular roof carries is a question for the tile's maker or a roofing contractor.

Flat also describes the tile, not the roof. The incline of a roof has its own vocabulary, and the fall protection rules the trade works to, down to what a personal fall arrest system must do, do not turn on the shape of the tile either.