High-profile tile

The FRSA-TRI Florida High Wind Concrete and Clay Tile Installation Manual, 7th Edition, keeps its profile definitions in a glossary whose terms, it says, are “used in the context of concrete and clay tile roofing.” Two figures do the sorting: how far the tile rises, in inches, and the ratio of that rise to the tile's width. The medium and high entries both carry the same condition, “measured in installed conditions”, so the reading belongs to tile already laid on a roof.

Read in order, the manual's entries step up from the half-inch line:

• First, the half-inch line. Tile with less than half an inch of rise is flat/low profile, and flat tile with a top surface rise equal to or less than half an inch is low profile. That side of the line is covered under low-profile tile.
• Next, the ratio. Tile rising more than half an inch, with a rise-to-width ratio of 1:5 or less, is medium profile.
• Last, the high entry. As printed, high profile tile is tile “having a rise to width ratio greater than” a half-inch rise, measured in installed conditions.

That last entry puts a ratio and an inch figure in one phrase, so this page carries the manual's own words rather than rounding them into a tidier rule. The manual defines the bands; it does not classify anyone's roof. Measuring an installed roof and deciding which band its tile falls in is a roofing contractor's work, and a name or a photograph does not settle it.

InterNACHI's course, Mastering Roof Inspections: Tile Roofs, Part 1, uses the same three bands without the numbers: “Generally, profiles are categorized as low, medium and high.” It then puts shapes into them, saying high-profile tiles are typically barrel tiles, while medium-profile tiles may be shallow clay-pan tiles or S-shaped tiles.

A maker's catalog can move a name across that line. Eagle Roofing Products calls its high barrel tiles S-tiles, where InterNACHI files S-shaped tiles as medium, and the two readings are set side by side under S-tile. The FRSA-TRI profile definitions use neither name, so a name alone does not place an installed tile in one of the manual's bands.

The phrase also turns up in a walking rule. TRI Alliance's Roof Maintenance Guide, whose walking lines are written for tile in general, gives one for high profile S tiles: distribute weight on the high points of adjacent tiles. How a curved, high-profile tile fares under a cleaning, and what its maker publishes, belongs to soft washing on barrel tile.