Attic Ventilation

Heat Ruins a Roof From Underneath

Everyone worries about the sun hitting the shingles. The bigger problem in Central Texas is the attic below them. Trapped heat bakes the asphalt from the back side, dries out the oils that keep a shingle flexible, and ages the roof faster than the weather on top of it does. A poorly vented attic can take years off a roof that was installed correctly with good material.

Signs Your Attic Is Not Venting Properly

You can catch most of these without going on the roof.

• Shingles curling on a roof too young for it
• An upstairs that never gets comfortable
• An attic still baking well into the evening
• Rusted nail tips poking through the decking
• Dark staining on the underside of the plywood

Balanced Means Intake and Exhaust

Adding vents at the ridge does nothing if air cannot get in at the eaves. A balanced system pulls cool air through soffit vents at the bottom and pushes hot air out at or near the ridge. When the intake is blocked by insulation or was never there to begin with, ridge and box vents just pull conditioned air out of your house instead, and you pay for that twice.

How Much Ventilation a Roof Needs

The industry standard is one square foot of net free ventilation area for every 300 square feet of attic floor when intake and exhaust are balanced, and one to 150 when they are not. Most homes we look at are short on intake rather than exhaust. We measure your attic rather than guessing from the driveway, and we tell you the number we are working from.

What We Install

Which one fits depends on your roof line and how much attic sits under it. We work that out on the roof, not from the driveway.

• Ridge vents
• Box vents and turbines
• Soffit and eave intake vents
• Bathroom exhaust reroutes, for fans dumping into the attic

It Shows Up on Your Power Bill

An attic running 150 degrees in August pushes that heat down through the ceiling, and your air conditioner fights it all afternoon. Ventilation will not halve your bill, and anyone promising that is selling something. It does take real load off a system that already works hard here.

Ventilation Affects Your Shingle Warranty

Most manufacturers require adequate attic ventilation as a condition of their shingle warranty. Skip it to save a few hundred dollars on a roof replacement and you can end up with no coverage on a defect claim years later. We install ventilation as part of every replacement for that reason, not as an upsell at the end.

We Check It on Every Inspection

Ventilation is part of the free roof inspection whether you called about it or not. If yours is fine, we say so and move on. If it is the reason your shingles are curling on a nine year old roof in Leander or Cedar Park, you should know that before somebody sells you a new roof that will do the exact same thing in another nine years.