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The Mysteries of Roof Ventilation

23 Aug/0 Comments/in Roof Ventilation, Roofing 101 /by Roofing502 - Louisville, KY

In my conversations with homeowners about roof ventilation, I have discovered there is quite a bit of confusion as to what it is for, and how to best set it up.

Roof ventilation is important because it keeps heat and moisture from building up in one’s attic. Heat build-up in the attic not only increases the cost of cooling a house in the summer, but shortens the lifespan of the shingles. And moisture in the attic is undesirable because it allows for the growth of mold, which can be harmful to the health of the home’s occupants. A well-ventilated attic is a dry attic.

But roof ventilation is not intended to ventilate the home itself. I have fond memories as a child spending the night at my grandparent’s home and enjoying the cool breezes created by a large attic fan mounted in the ceiling of their old house. Attic fans are designed to ventilate the house proper. But the box vents, ridge vents and whirlybird vents installed on your roof are designed just for attic ventilation.

But here’s the catch. No matter what type of vent is installed, they don’t work if there is nowhere for air flow to come into the attic. Those vents on your roof are “out-take” points. When attic ventilation is properly installed, your attic will “draw” much like a chimney, with air coming in via “intake-points” and going out the roof vents.

Where are the intake points? The best option is to have vents installed in your soffits.

This way, the air from the lower recesses of your attic is pulled up and out the roof vents. If your home has no soffits, then gable vents are better than nothing, though this flow path—from gable vents to roof vents—circumvents much of the hot air lower down in the attic. If you don’t have either soffit vents or gable vents, there really isn’t any point in installing vents in your roof. Without intake for these outtake points, there is little ventilation accomplished.

The good news is that nowadays, roof warranties are not voided by having shingles installed on roofs without proper ventilation.

https://roofing502.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-Mysteries-of-Roof-Ventilation-1.jpg 400 534 Roofing502 - Louisville, KY https://roofing502.com//wp-content/uploads/2021/09/roofing_logo.png Roofing502 - Louisville, KY2021-08-23 08:07:142021-10-13 15:55:23The Mysteries of Roof Ventilation

The Purpose of Underlayment

2 Aug/0 Comments/in Roof Installation, Roofing 101 /by Roofing502 - Louisville, KY

If you have ever watched a roofing crew install a roof, then you may have noticed that they nail down a layer of some rolled product on top of the roof’s wood decking before the shingles are installed. This rolled product is called “underlayment”.

Many homeowners believe that underlayment is some kind of secondary protection. That when water gets past the shingles, the underlayment is the roof’s last defense against water incursion. Though this may be true to a degree, it is not the main reason it is installed. There are, in fact, two reasons:

1. A roof installation can take a day or several before complete. And sometimes rain storms seem to come out of nowhere. (Or, as I have experienced, form directly over the roofing job). But the underlayment, which can be installed rather quickly, actually waterproofs the roof. If a storm should pop up out of nowhere, the underlayment will actually prevent water from getting inside the house.

2. A second benefit of roof underlayment is to protect the interior of the home if, for some reason, shingles are blown off or torn off. It could take several weeks or more before the repair can be implemented, so the underlayment ensures that, in the meantime, no water gets inside.

Just a few years ago, almost all roofing contractors installed what is commonly called “felt”, which is a black paper infused with asphalt. But felt is relatively heavy and dries out when exposed to the sun within a couple of weeks. The newest technology, and that which most contractors now use, is called “synthetic” underlayment. It is a bit more expensive, but much easier and faster to install. Moreover, if an area of shingles are blown off, it will shield the house up to six months, rather than the two weeks that old fashioned felt offers you.

The advantages of newer technologies can often be debated, but in this case, it is a clear cut improvement.

https://roofing502.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/The-Purpose-of-Underlayment-1-scaled.jpg 1920 2560 Roofing502 - Louisville, KY https://roofing502.com//wp-content/uploads/2021/09/roofing_logo.png Roofing502 - Louisville, KY2021-08-02 08:06:412021-09-13 13:59:11The Purpose of Underlayment

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