Ridge Vents

[Toyboy]

I'm gonna get a new roof this spring and was wondering what the consensus was on the best/most efficient ridge vents to request? Our house is fairly new, 13 yr old, and has them. No idea what brand or where they came from.
You always get to pick the shingles and sometimes underlayment but ridge vents are never talked about. So I decided to educate myself and found a dizzying variations of them. So now I'm seeking your opinion.

#1- we live in northern Wisc that affected by lake effect snow.... which is code for lots.
#2- winter temps can swing from -20 to +30 in a week to 10 days

Your thoughts??

 

[teejk]

Your house is not that old...do you need to replace the ridge vent? If so the best I can tell you is that they are all the same...piece of plastic that completes the airflow from your soffits. Now you being Hayward (not far from here), are you looking at steel roofing or just conventional shingles?

 

[PILOON]

While we are more north but do see our fair share of snow we find ridge vents not to be the vent of choice.

The choice vent here is 'Maxivent' which is a 12" X 12" Cupola style with louvers on all 4 faces. They offer a few options and each are rated for attic sizes.They stand about 2 ft tall and come in popular colors. Insulated and adjustable for roof pitches.
The design works no matter which direction the winds come from and have proven themselves.

In heavier snows ridge vents get buried and become inefective. Rotating vents usually freeze up when most needed leaving the Cupola as the preferred option.
Attractive enough and fairly priced at about the $100/ range.

 

[teejk]

While we are more north but do see our fair share of snow we find ridge vents not to be the vent of choice.

The choice vent here is 'Maxivent' which is a 12" X 12" Cupola style with louvers on all 4 faces. They offer a few options and each are rated for attic sizes.They stand about 2 ft tall and come in popular colors. Insulated and adjustable for roof pitches.
The design works no matter which direction the winds come from and have proven themselves.

In heavier snows ridge vents get buried and become inefective. Rotating vents usually freeze up when most needed leaving the Cupola as the preferred option.
Attractive enough and fairly priced at about the $100/ range.

Never seen that as an option around here. Code on new construction around here only calls for the ridge vent...in snow-load areas the roof pitch is high enough that I've never seen anybody burying the ridge vent...even insulated to R50 there is enough heat/air to keep that clean I think.

 

[npalen]

Our ranch style had soffit and gable vents only for the first 35+ years and then converted to ridge vents when reshingled about 5 years ago. (Still have the soffit and gable vents) Had a mother of all hailstorms a year ago last labor day and will be replacing shingles again this summer.
The adjustor mentioned that all the shingles on the north slope show blistering and attributed it to inadequate ventilation. Not sure why just on the North slope though. (north central Kansas)
Current shingles are Malarky Class 5 (50 year) asphalt shingles. Probably will go with the conventional metal box vents this time around.

 

[Toyboy]

Your house is not that old...do you need to replace the ridge vent? If so the best I can tell you is that they are all the same...piece of plastic that completes the airflow from your soffits. Now you being Hayward (not far from here), are you looking at steel roofing or just conventional shingles?

Sorry, just conventional shingles.

If you start researching ridge vents you'll see that there's a bunch of them to choose from. My concern though, is the roofers will install the most economical or easily procured ( say middle of the road) and not the best available. You can ask 100 people and 95 will have no idea of what brand/style they have, let alone what they do. That's why I decided to educate my self on this. If I don't know whats best I can't ask for the best.

The problem I'm seeing is none of the manufactures break down there products by region/zone like the nursery's do for plants. What may work great in Tenn may be a disaster in the far north.

 

[check]

The problem with ridge vents is that almost all of them are way too small. I need about 3 inches of space at the bottom of the roof, but most ridge vents give you less than 1 1/2 inches at the top. So, how can you vent properly if the "inlet" vents at the bottom of the roof are twice as big as the ridge vents at the top?

 

[murphy1244]

The problem with ridge vents is that almost all of them are way too small. I need about 3 inches of space at the bottom of the roof, but most ridge vents give you less than 1 1/2 inches at the top. So, how can you vent properly if the "inlet" vents at the bottom of the roof are twice as big as the ridge vents at the top?

I used power vents on my house for that reason.

 

[Toyboy]

The problem with ridge vents is that almost all of them are way too small. I need about 3 inches of space at the bottom of the roof, but most ridge vents give you less than 1 1/2 inches at the top. So, how can you vent properly if the "inlet" vents at the bottom of the roof are twice as big as the ridge vents at the top?

My house has at least 3.5 to 4" cut back in roof sheeting on each side of peak so I'm sure I've got plenty to work with.

 

[EddieWalker]

Usually the roofer will ask you what shingles you want and give you a bid on the total job using the materials they use most of the time. When I hire a roofer, I specify that I want the roof stripped down to the decking and the wood inspected. If any needs replacing, add that to the cost of the job. I want all the flashing and vents removed and new ones installed. I want 30 pound paper and Grace Weathershield used in the valleys. I want 1 1/2 inch nails to be used. No staples EVER!!!! And I want a brand new ridge vent installed.

I've seen several different brands of ridge vents and think they are pretty much interchangeable as long as it's a name brand that I'm familiar with. They usually come with their own nails, but if not, I make sure they use the proper sized nails. In every case, they already know this and it's just a formality that I bring it up.

The advantage of a full ridge vent is that it gives you the most air flow under your roof. Other types of vents direct the air coming into your attic from your soffit vents to just those areas and the flow of air is not uniform. The wider the area, the more of the underside of the roof that you get air to flow, the dryer your attic will remain. Venting is not for cooling, it is for removing moisture created by condensation. If you cool it, that's a bonus to a small degree, but the ultimate goal for venting the attic is to make sure that the moisture left on the rafters every morning when the temps warm up is removed.

 

[techman]

Our original roof (26 years ago) has ridge vents with an aluminium cap. The sides had small louvres for the air flow. With blowing snow, some did get through the openings. We would get a dusting of snow in the attic. Never enough to really make anything wet and nothing was ever ruined, but it was an issue. When we re-roofed we put on new vents. I do not know the brand, but the "framing" is plastic. The vent area has something like a plastic steel wool as the barrier. Never had any snow or rain infiltration with the new stuff.

paul

 

[PILOON]

Here is a link to Maximum Vent
http://www.ventilation-maximum.com/English/pdf/product_model301.pdf

 

[JerryK]

I had an issue just before this Christmas... two flying squirrels ate thru the ends of my plastic ridge vents and got into the attic. Had to wack down five big sugar maples on the East side of my house to keep them from gliding down onto the roof. Next year, the plastic vent is going and putting something more substantial in... So, 1 vote for non-plastic....

 

[npalen]

I had an issue just before this Christmas... two flying squirrels ate thru the ends of my plastic ridge vents and got into the attic. Had to wack down five big sugar maples on the East side of my house to keep them from gliding down onto the roof. Next year, the plastic vent is going and putting something more substantial in... So, 1 vote for non-plastic....

Tell me you didn't "wack down five big sugar maples". Because of squirrels?

 

[npalen]

I had an issue just before this Christmas... two flying squirrels ate thru the ends of my plastic ridge vents and got into the attic. Had to wack down five big sugar maples on the East side of my house to keep them from gliding down onto the roof. Next year, the plastic vent is going and putting something more substantial in... So, 1 vote for non-plastic....

Tell me you didn't "wack down five big sugar maples". Because of squirrels?

 

[JerryK]

Tell me you didn't "wack down five big sugar maples". Because of squirrels?

Yup, those little buggers can glide at up to 40% slope, depending on wind. So, since the trees are up to 90' high, they can go a long way... You could see the spots they landed on the house and where they landed when leaving the roof in the snow. The trees provided no shade to my house, and several had to come down 'cuz they were leaning towards the house. Here is a picture of the lean, and one with four of the five down. Next Spring, I am going to fire up my chipper and wack them up the rest of the way.

 

[Looking4new]

Yup, those little buggers can glide at up to 40% slope, depending on wind. So, since the trees are up to 90' high, they can go a long way... You could see the spots they landed on the house and where they landed when leaving the roof in the snow. The trees provided no shade to my house, and several had to come down 'cuz they were leaning towards the house. Here is a picture of the lean, and one with four of the five down. Next Spring, I am going to fire up my chipper and wack them up the rest of the way.

I don't care if it is made of solid gold, threaten my house and down it comes. End of story.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm a huge fan of trees and early on would go to extremes to try and save one by building around it. Roads that made detours because of a tree, or just planning the location of a barn or shed. I even build a house farther back then I wanted to save a big old oak tree that led to a small backyard which ended up hurting my sales price of that house.

I've learned that if the tree is in the way, it's coming out. I've also found out that once the tree is gone, I never miss it or even think about it again. It's gone and that's that. Here, trees are weeds. If you don't work real hard at keeping them out of your pasture, they will take over!!! But what really did it for me was spending all that money, time and effort to work around an existing tree just to have it die on me, or even worse, drop branches on my fence.

My neighbor fenced in his place and spent tens of thousands of dollars. Every year, he has branches falling on it it. He is now removing all those trees next to his fence. It's cheaper to not have them then deal with the damage they cause.

I'm removing every tree anywhere near where my fence line.

 

[npalen]

My comment in post #15 above was just a "bit tongue in cheek". Our house was built by the local Voc-Tech school back in 1974. It was moved onto this lot which is 200' wide and placed against the east border as there was a hackberry in the way. The hackberry has since died and, yes, mostly forgotten.
So then we planted three Bradford Pear next to the house which have since come down in storms damaging the roof. We had the area landscaped several years ago to fit around them prior to losing them. Oh, yes, there was also a large Scots Pine that was landscaped around but it succumbed to the pine wilt beatle since. I won't go into the Bradford pear planted too close to the house and driveway.

 

[PILOON]

Re trees; in my rural area (really mostly forest) we even need a permit to cut a dead tree.
Our permit dept claims the birds need to roost on the dead branches.
Near the lake front simply forget getting a permit, at least for 30 ft.
Folks do develop various techniques to get around the regs, like cut flush to ground and quickly pile earth to hide the stump and haul the evidence off to the forest.
They actually will tell you that such and such a tree can remain for XX years before it will become dangerous.