Low-profile tile

The FRSA-TRI Florida High Wind Concrete and Clay Tile Installation Manual draws its line at half an inch, and two of its glossary entries sit under it. The flat/low profile entry covers tiles with less than half an inch of rise. The low profile entry covers flat tiles with a top surface rise equal to or less than half an inch.

Read closely, the two entries do not use the same comparison. One says less than; the other says equal to or less than. A tile rising exactly half an inch fits the low profile wording and not the flat/low wording, as the entries are printed. The lines read for this page do not reconcile the two, so both are carried here rather than one chosen.

Everything above the line belongs to the medium and high entries, and the top of that scale is explained under high-profile tile.

InterNACHI's course, Mastering Roof Inspections: Tile Roofs, Part 1, names the category without a number: “Low-profile tiles are flat or close to flat.” Close to flat is the course's allowance for a tile with some rise, and that sentence gives no inch figure for how much.

A tile maker uses the word flat for something else again. Eagle Roofing Products says its flat concrete roof tiles are a variety of profiles completely lacking in any barrels or rolls, which it says can emulate materials such as wood shake, clay and slate. That is a product family defined by shape and look, set out under flat tile. Low profile is a category defined by rise. A catalog name does not place an installed tile in the manual's band, and classifying a particular roof is a roofing contractor's call.

The course also names the materials the category sits in. Clay and concrete are, in InterNACHI's words, the most common materials for roofing tiles, and the low band is described by shape, not by either material.

Profile is how far a tile rises; the edge is how it meets the next tile. InterNACHI's course says: “Interlocking tiles are manufactured with edge profiles that fit together to keep tiles aligned and to help seal against moisture intrusion. Interlocking tiles are typically low- or medium-profile.”

Typically is the hedge worth keeping. The same course describes tiles that butt against each other, with flat clay tiles as its example, and tiles that overlap, which may be two-piece pan and cover or may be flat. So a low, flat face does not tell you which of the three joints a roof uses. The fitted edge is a feature of a particular product, and the maker's literature for that tile is where it is described.

Neither the profile nor the edge is a cleaning instruction. Whether a soft wash suits a flat concrete tile, and what its maker publishes for it, is answered under soft washing a flat concrete tile roof.