DIY Home Improvement Guide

Improve Roof Ventilation To Protect Your Home And Save Money

Improving roof ventilation is something that most people overlook, but can have a huge effect on the structure of your home as well as heating and cooling costs.  Allowing air to move freely through your attic will help your roof last as long as your house does.  Continuous freezing or damming from snow, as well as letting hot air stay in there can cause a slew of problems that people just don’t pay attention to.  In this post we’ll go over some ways to help ventilate your roof and attic as well as help you better understand the problems that you run into when you don’t.

Failure to properly ventilate your roof can cause your roof to collapse.  That’s not a joke at all, roofs can cave in if there isn’t air circulating through the attic!  In order for a plywood roof to maintain its rigidity one side of it needs to be able to “breathe”.  If it doesn’t do that it will warp and eventually deteriorate, causing the roof to be springy and vulnerable.  Lack of circulation also inhibits extra moisture in the attic, which leads to condensation, which leads to rust and leaks.  Extra moisture can also lead to fungus and mildew growing in the attic, which will work its way into the rest of your home.

So what do you do to prevent these nasty messes?  It starts with intake vents and roof vents.  The intake vents are the grates that you see on the exterior of your home just below the eaves.  These allow air into the attic and once it’s warmed by being inside the attic it rises up and out through the roof vents.  If you’re having problems with the circulation of air in the attic check all of your intake vents first to make sure that nothing is blocking them, as this is a very common problem.

It’s possible to overdo your roof ventilation.  Ideally, roof vents should be on the ridge of the roof so that all of the air has to hit the top before exiting, so when vents or turbines are in places other than the ridge it will create a bunch of stale air sitting at the peak of the roof.

To sum it up, check your intake vents first to make sure that they’re clean and clear so air can get in.  Second, check the roof vents to make sure that they’re in good working order.  If they need to be replaced you can look to replace them with powered models that work with a thermostat to make sure that ideal attic temperature is always achieved.  Third, don’t go adding a bunch of extra vents to your roof, it will only cause more problems!