How Balanced Ventilation Can Improve Your Roof’s Longevity and Energy Efficiency

Do you know what balanced ventilation is? If your answer was no, do not feel bad. Most homeowners do not. In fact, they may not even realize that their roof should have a balanced ventilation system. Balancing the ventilation can make your home more energy efficient. It can also increase the life of your roof.

Ventilation lets air out of your home. Of course, you want to keep most of your home’s air inside to keep your heated and cooled air inside. However, your home generates warm, moist air. Your dishwasher, washing machine, and oven all create heat. That can cause moisture to build up in your home. Providing ventilation lets this air escape.

Your roof’s ventilation system should be balanced. In a balanced system, wind blows over the ridges of the roof. That creates negative pressure. The negative pressure pulls warmer air out of the attic through the ridge vents, gable vents, or roof vents. Cooler air enters through the soffit vents or eaves. This creates a cycle of fresh air and ventilation in your roof.

The ventilation system of your attic does not rely on the wind, though the wind can make it operate more efficiently. Since warm air rises, there should be a continuous ventilation and exchange of cooler and warmer air. This helps remove moisture from your attic. The more moisture you remove, the lower your risk of rot and decay.

Sometimes people think that ventilation will increase their heating costs. While you do want a well-insulated home to keep in your heated or cooled air, that is actually separate from ventilation. You still want the super-heated, humid air to be able to escape from your home. Unfortunately, if you are not the original owner of your home, a previous owner may have altered ventilation in a misguided effort to improve insulation. When done properly, ventilation actually helps improve the energy efficiency from your home. While hot air escapes, it can even keep your home warmer in the wintertime.

Ideally, your builder optimized your roof’s ventilation when they built the roof. However, many builders ignore this critical step. Fortunately, we can fix that. Contact All Weather Roofing today. We can send out one of our experts to inspect your roof’s current ventilation system. We can tell you how to improve it and provide an estimate for that work. The solution is more affordable than you think!