Roofing in Palau

Palau's signature roof belongs to the bai, the men's meeting house with a tall, steep gable decorated with painted legends. Traditional bai and houses were tied together with coconut-fibre rope and thatched with pandanus or nipa palm. Most homes today have metal roofs, and about one in six has a concrete roof.

Climate and hazards

Palau has a hot, wet tropical climate, and the steep pitch of traditional roofs sheds heavy rain.

Roofing history

Palauan houses were described by early observers as elongated A-frames, and bai followed a similar shape on a larger scale. According to oral history recorded by the Pacific Worlds project, bai were built without nails and tied with rope made from coconut husk fibre, and the traditional thatch was pandanus (búuk); nipa palm (tóechel) came into use later, and palm fronds (melóuch) changed roofing again.

The Airai Bai on Babeldaob, built around 1890 on a stone platform that had carried earlier bai, measures 20.7 by 6.1 m (68 by 20 ft) and rises to about 12 m (40 ft) at its peak. It was restored in the 1970s and listed on the US National Register of Historic Places in 1976. A bai built in 1907 for the Ethnological Museum in Berlin under ethnologist Augustin Krämer is now displayed at the Humboldt Forum; in summer 2022 a team from Palau led by Patrick Tellei gave it a new roof.

Traditional and vernacular roofs

• Bai: men's meeting house with a decorated gable and steep thatched roof on a stone platform.
• Dwelling houses: smaller, elongated A-frame houses.

Roofing today

In the 2012 mini-census, 818 of 4,926 housing units (16.6%) had concrete roofs and the remaining 83.4% metal, wood or other roofs. About 28% of units had concrete foundations and walls with metal or tile roofs, 28% concrete foundations with metal or wood walls and metal or tile roofs, and 27% stood on stilts with metal or wood walls.

Codes, standards and regulation

Palau has no national building code and no clear building regulatory authority, according to a recent regional review.

Notable roofs

• Airai Bai (c. 1890), Babeldaob, described as the last traditional bai of its kind.
• Palauan bai at the Humboldt Forum, Berlin (1907, re-roofed 2022).

Local roofing terms

• Bai: meeting house.
• Búuk: pandanus thatch. Tóechel: nipa palm. Melóuch: palm fronds.

Sources and gaps

Information on storm damage to roofs: published information is limited. No domestic roofing manufacturers were identified.

Exact thatching methods and the timber species used for bai: published information is limited.