Salt Lake County carries a 25 to 30 psf ground snow load design requirement. Higher elevations and canyon corridors exceed 50 psf. Every roof we install on the Wasatch Front is specified against the actual snow load for the building site - not a generic regional default.

Snow load is the defining structural challenge for commercial roofing in the Salt Lake City market. The Wasatch Front's proximity to the Great Salt Lake, combined with elevation gains from 4,200 feet in the valley to 7,000 feet in canyon communities, creates one of the most variable snow load environments in the Western United States. A commercial building in Murray has a different ground snow load design value than the same building footprint in Holladay, Draper, or the I-80 Parleys Canyon corridor - and the difference can be the margin between a roof that performs through 30 years of Utah winters and one that requires structural reinforcement after a single heavy storm season.

Utah's snow load history includes multiple seasons where valley-floor accumulations exceeded design expectations. The 2022-2023 season produced record snowfall across the Wasatch Front - Salt Lake City International Airport recorded over 200 inches for the season, and many commercial buildings carried sustained roof loads for weeks at a time without the typical mid-winter melt cycles. That season moved dozens of commercial roofs in our service area from inspection status to emergency assessment and, in some cases, to emergency shoring and immediate replacement.

Our snow-load engineering work begins with the site-specific ground snow load determination under ASCE 7-22 and IBC Chapter 16, accounts for roof geometry, exposure, and thermal factors, and produces a written snow load specification that stays in the project closeout file as a permanent building record.

ASCE 7 and IBC Snow Load Compliance on Utah Commercial Buildings

ASCE 7-22 Chapter 7 governs snow load design for commercial buildings in Utah. The ground snow load - expressed in pounds per square foot - varies by location and elevation. Salt Lake County valley sites carry pg values of 25 to 30 psf. Higher-elevation sites in the county - East Bench neighborhoods above 5,000 feet, Holladay, portions of Cottonwood Heights - carry higher values. Davis County (Bountiful, Layton) and Utah County (Provo, Orem) have their own elevation-specific ground snow load tables. Weber County (Ogden) sites near the Wasatch foothills can carry substantially higher values than valley-floor sites a mile away.

The flat roof snow load used for structural design is derived from the ground snow load with adjustment factors for exposure, thermal condition, and occupancy. Unheated buildings and partially conditioned spaces carry higher roof snow load multipliers than fully heated occupied buildings. Rooftop mechanical equipment, parapet walls, and roof geometry changes create drift conditions - localized accumulations that can exceed the flat roof snow load by two to four times in the drift zone.

We provide written snow load documentation for every replacement project - the ground snow load pg, the flat roof snow load pf, and the drift load pd for any geometry conditions on the building. That documentation goes into the project closeout file and is available to future building engineers, insurance adjusters, or buyers performing due diligence.