Ventilation is important in keeping your home’s humidity at a comfortable level. It allows your home to breathe, draw in fresh air, and exhaust stale air. Attic ventilation allows you to encourage ventilation in your home while still being able to use your home’s home heating and cooling systems. Through attic ventilation, you can ventilate specific areas of your home, such as your kitchen and bathroom.
Benefits of Attic Ventilation
Attic ventilation allows your home fight heat build-up in the summer, moisture build up in the winter, and ice dams. It helps prolong the life of your roofing and home structure, including your shingles. It also helps lower your utility bills by reducing the load of your air conditioning system, fans, and refrigerators.
Methods of Attic Ventilation
- Passive ventilation
Passive ventilation or natural attic ventilation is the most common way to provide your home attic ventilation. It takes advantage of air convection – the upward movement of lighter and warmer air, and the downward movement of cooler and heavier air.
Intake vents are placed in lower places in the attic and the exhaust vents in the higher places of the attic. This allows for a continuous circulation of air, where air through the intake makes colder air available to replace the heated air expelled in the exhaust vents. Also called convection-assisted ventilation, it is most effective when equal amounts or ventilation opening are placed at the soffits or eave and at the top of the attic.
- Powered ventilation
Powered ventilation or forced ventilation can be used as an alternative to passive ventilation. A mechanical vent that allows for air displacement of 1 cubic foot per minute per square foot of the attic is used to expel warmer air.
Like passive ventilation, it is also important to have sufficient amounts of air intake into the attic, to replace the amount of air that will be expelled by the mechanical vent. Powered vents should not be used in conjunction with other venting methods, as they can cause an imbalance in an otherwise balanced ventilation.
Call a Roofing Professional for your Attic Ventilation Needs
If you are thinking of implementing attic ventilation for your home, call your nearest roofing professional. They will give you an assessment of your home and the proper type and combination of fans and vents that it needs.
Your roofer will also help you achieve proper home insulation and air sealing to make your home more comfortable, both in the winter and summer seasons. A properly ventilated home promotes comfort and helps your home become more energy efficient as well.
Written by Enrich Construction, the best service for roofing in Columbia, MO.