Upcoming buildings in Nakuru adopt stylish, modern designs

The adoption of stylish and modern architectural designs in the new upcoming middle-class and upmarket residential houses in Nakuru has also brought in some of the best roofing styles in Kenya's newest city.

Some roofing styles are expensive, others less expensive, and some moderately expensive depending on the needs of their owners.

The expensive roofing styles are always found in affluent areas and most of them sit on at least half-acre plots where palatial homes, apartments, or bungalows are built in secluded places in the newest city.

The less expensive roofing styles are found in middle-class estates while the moderate ones are either in "improved slums upgraded estates" or in owner-occupier residential estates.

Roofing styles are at times guided by a number of factors.

For example, in areas that have no piped water, lack sufficient water, or water is rationed in the city, their owners adopt a roofing style that allows easy water harvesting in rainy seasons.

In such areas, roofing materials are of great importance to property owners to allow clean water harvesting for subsistence use without contamination.

Therefore, experts design roofing styles that allow easy and quick water harvesting from rooftops to well-built water reservoirs in the same compounds.

The adoption of roofing styles depends on a number of factors including the shape of the roof, location, climate, and whether its use will be residential or commercial/

Contractor Charles Dullo of Doch Construction Company Limited said there are two main of roofing that are mainly in use in affluent and middle-class residential estates depending on property owners' preferences.

They include heap and gabble roofing.

Dullo explained that any of the two (roofing styles) could be expensive depending on the shape of the house and the materials required to do the work.

"These are the two roofing styles mostly practiced by building contractors in this city whether one lives in the leafy or middle-class-residential estates. Therefore, the cost of work will depend on materials used and the shape of the roof," he said.

According to Dullo, the two types of roofing can use iron sheets or clay, cement, and slate roofing.

Iron sheet roofing is commonly used on flat roofs applied both to the walls and fastened with galvanized nails and are available in a variety of grades.

Clay roofing tiles come in a wide range of earth colors, and patterns and can be glazed while cement roofing tiles tend to be less expensive than clay tiles and also come in a variety of colors and shapes that resemble clay tiles.

Slate roofing tiles are quarried from natural rock and split into thin rectangular slabs.

Leafy residential estates like Milimani, Naka and Section 58 in the city are used to clay, cement, and slate roofing because they depict one's status in the upmarket estates.