The Right Angle

VENTILATION

Ventilation is extremely important in any climate and the most
important place to ventilate is the attic. By definition, an attic is an
enclosed area above the home. Ideally, if we could take our home,
and build a box, place doors and windows, separate an area above
approximately 3 feet high, and place a giant hat on the box, we call
a roof, but the two never touch and air is always flowing around this
box, and underneath the roof structure and that would be perfect.
Unfortunately, we do not build a home that way; instead, we frame
homes, where the rafters attach to the walls to keep them from
falling.

There are some new trends in this country where the attic spaces
are being closed up making it super tight, and in some instances are
actually air conditioning the attic spaces. I guess that if your choices
are a poorly constructed home without attic ventilation, this new
trend just might use less energy. My question, "Why re-invent the
wheel, when it is so easy just to take what we have, do it properly
and do it simply so as to not cause additional problems down the
road.

The attic should be open, it should breathe, and you should always
try and maintain the same temperature in the attic as the outside
temperature whether we are speaking of zero degrees or 98
degrees-JUST KEEP IT THE SAME TEMPERATURE, and that is a
perfect condition and can ONLY be achieved through proper
ventilation.

Ridge vents need to be installed on all ridges (see picture 3). If you
look on the inside of the attic along the roofline, you will see a visible
opening and this opening allows the air to move out.

Without soffit vents (see picture 6) all the ridge vents in the world
(see picture 5) will not work nearly as well, if at all. Soffit vents feed
the ridge vents; therefore, you actually need MORE soffit vents than
ridge vents. Simply stated, you cannot have too many soffit vents
and in the typical, home you should have approximately twice the
area of soffit vents as ridge vents. Think of the structure as a
triangle, you have one ridge across the top, and two sets of soffits
across the front and back.