The correct answer is 4.58m.

To make sure I checked with my 17-year old son who, although studying maths at A-Level, has never looked at a calculation of this sort. He also got it right in seconds without any prompting from his dad.

How embarrassing for the 鈥渆xperienced鈥 professionals and other 4.90 鈥榚rs who made the fundamental error of thinking that the pitch of the hip rafter is also 30 degrees 鈥 whereas it is actually 22.2 degrees.

R E Wilson MCIOB Senior Project Surveyor