Apex or pent roof: which should you choose?

An apex roof is a pitched roof that rises from both sides to a ridge along the middle, giving the classic house-shaped outline. A pent roof slopes in one direction only, from a higher front to a lower back. Apex looks more traditional and gives more height inside; pent is lower, cheaper and fits under windows and boundary lines.

That's the whole distinction. The rest of this page is about which one suits your plot.

An apex roof rises from both eaves to a central ridge, forming a shallow triangle when you look at the gable end. It's the shape most people picture when they think of a roof, and it's the reason an apex concrete garage tends to look like part of the house rather than a box in the garden.

On a Nucrete apex garage the extra height in the middle is genuinely usable — it's where people put roof storage, a light, or simply enjoy not stooping. The trade-off is that an apex building is taller overall, which matters if you're working under permitted development limits or beneath a neighbour's window.

A pent roof slopes in a single direction across the building, so the front wall is taller than the back. Older literature sometimes calls this a sloping roof garage. It sheds water to one side, which lets you decide exactly where the rain goes — usually away from a path, a boundary or a neighbour.

A pent roof concrete garage is the most economical way to buy a Nucrete building, and it's the practical answer when the garage has to sit under a window, beneath an overhanging tree, or hard against a boundary where height is limited.

Nucrete roofs use Profile-5 cement fibre sheets over the concrete panel structure. They don't rot, they don't need felting or re-covering, and they carry the same 10-year factory guarantee as the rest of the building.

That's a deliberate choice rather than a cost one. A concrete garage is expected to last 50 years or more with basic annual maintenance, and there's little point putting a roof on it that needs replacing in fifteen.

Not truly flat, no — and that's on purpose. Every roof needs a fall so water runs off rather than sitting on it, which is why a pent roof is the flattest-looking option we build. From ground level a pent roof garage reads as flat, but it's shedding water the whole time.

If you've been quoted a genuinely flat roof elsewhere, ask what the covering is and how long it's guaranteed for. It's the part that tends to fail first.