Press Room

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 12, 2019                Contact Duane Ediger, 312-523-9955, duane@raftereye.com

Rafter center locating tool to launch

Tucson-based RafterEye LLC announces the upcoming availability of the RE1 Rafter Center Locator, designed to reduce labor time, improve precision and avoid damage in rooftop structural attachment.

The patent-pending RE1 forms a magnetic field around and through an exposed or accessible rafter or truss. A rooftop reading directly indicates the center. Rooftop installers can quickly locate a series of attachment points before any penetrations are made.

Applications of the RE1 include porches, carports, exposed beams, navigable attics, skip sheathing and log rafters. The RE1 works through all roof types except steel. Its magnetic field can be read through up to 8” of roofing and insulation.

Sales of the tool are anticipated to start in May, 2019, through RafterEye.com.

Duane Ediger, founder of RafterEye LLC, is also a NABCEP-certified solar installation professional based in Tucson. “We anticipate that residential PV installers will drive the majority of our sales,” he said. “On installations where multiple standoffs need to be installed over exposed rafters, this tool has saved scores of labor hours and prevented nasty lag screw blowouts that used to leave visible damage.”

The National Design Standards for Wood Construction (NDS) prescribes a minimum edge distance from lag to rafter edge of 1.5 times the nominal screw diameter. Compliance is difficult to verify; yet violations and resulting attachment failures can cause serious property damage, as can weakening of rafters due to probing holes and blowouts, both directly and through water leakage.

Rooftop attachment has long bedeviled the solar industry. The most common approach, over hidden rafters, is a game of battleship: drill enough holes to infer center from hits and misses. But this and other methods that leave telltale swiss cheese are unacceptable over exposed rafters. Stud finders can’t read through the roof, and expensive radar scanners give mixed results at best.

The only remaining option to date has been to map a series of rafter-to-rafter distances (which are not the same at the rafter bottoms as at their tops) below the deck and then duplicate those measurements above. Errors inevitably abound and compound.

RafterEye intends to change that. 1 lag. 1 hole. No doubt.