Replies

1. 
   Davo304 | Apr 10, 2003 02:54am | #1

   "anyone know of continous soffit vents that are 3/4 inch thick?"

    

   What does it matter?  A continous vent is a continous vent...period. If you cut out a long strip and insert an aluminum vent, or if instead you install a 3/4 inch thick vent, the face of the vent will still be flush with your existing T&G cedar soffit. The "extra" inches of vent thickness will be housed up inside the soffit bay and will not be noticed anyway.

   If you would rather have a wood looking soffit vent, there are 2 easy ways to make one.

   The easiest way (if you plan on removing sections of the T&G cedar) is to drill a bunch of holes in the  face of the T&G Cedar, and  then staple aluminum screening to the top side to prevent bugs from entering. Re-install the wood back in place, and presto...it's now vented.

   Another alternative is to cut out a long strip in your soffit just like you would do for the aluminum continous soffit vents. Take a matching piece of your Cedar and rip the tongue and the grooves sides off. Drill a hole in the middle at each end and rip out this strip either using a jig saw, a router set-up, circular saw, or even your table saw...whatever it takes for you to produce a nice looking slot in the center of this long piece of wood. Now take a router and a half round or an Ogee bit ( however fancy you like) and put a decorative edge on the outside perimeter of this board. Now, again staple bug screening to the back side of this slotted opening and mount the whole thing up into your existing soffit. A few exterior grade (Grabber-Guard) drywall screws or stainless screws will hold this in place. It will have a "picture frame effect when viewed from below.

   Anoter alternative is to insert more of your 1-1/4 inch round vents, coupled with a powered attic ventilator. These cost around $90 and are hard wired in place and turn on/off via it's integral thermostat which you can manually set. This vent fan is mounted via a hole cut into your roof (mount between rafter bays) and contains a sheild to keep rain water out, and also contains a bug screen to filter out the critters.

   It takes approx 40 minutes to install one of these things, ( if you have electric running into your attic area) and will definately help draw air up through your soffit and keep your attic cooler.

   Just my 2 cents worth.

   LOL.

   Davo

2. 
   Houghton123 | Apr 10, 2003 05:55am | #2

   While this may be too "surface-mounted" for your application, when I did the soffit vents on my Victorian, I used wooden foundation vents -- basically a picture frame shape with hardware cloth stapled on the back side.  My soffits are +/- 10" wide, so the narrower vents at my local builder's supply were just fine.

   I made up a hole-cutting pattern the size of the inside dimensions of the vent, marked out my patterns, being sure to allow for the width of the "picture frame," drilled holes at the corners of the pattern, whipped out the trusty Bosch barrel-grip jigsaw, cut between the holes, spit out the sawdust, painted the inside edges of the cutout (it's a painted house, so I was color matching; I cut an X in the top of a small yogurt container and used a throwaway brush, stuck through the lid, so I didn't have to haul a whole paint can up the ladder), lined up the pre-painted vent and screwed it in with trimhead stainless steel screws, dabbed a bit of paint in the screw holes.  On to the next vent.

   I think they're not unattractive.  In the ideal world, I'd have used those curly Renovation Hardware aluminum register vent covers, to look all Victorian, but my wallet's never visited the ideal world, so I did second-best, but they look pretty decent.

   I over-vented the soffit by about 200%.  Ventilating the attic was amazing -- dropped the house temp at least 5 degrees on the hottest summer afternoons; maybe more.

1. 
   mik | Apr 10, 2003 02:34pm | #3

   Thanks for your reply-I'll try it

3. 
   CapnMac | Apr 10, 2003 11:34pm | #4

   For a finished proch roof, I use a system like Davo's.  I'll get the stock continous soffit vent, as narrow a strip as I can, and cut it int 45" lengths.  This is then placed, first, about 48" on center along the porch ceiling.  (The size & spacing are adjusted to suit the space, as needed.)  Then the T&G goes in, leaving "windows" of vents.  To trim the joint, I use either 1x2 or a quarter-round moulding.  Then paint the eniter ceiling in one go (not a bad idea to put something behind the vents on a windy day before puttign that paint on--so it's not all over the well-ventilated attic . . . )

   Since this sound more like a renovation, you can cut the existing T&G to match the vent size you like.  The tricky part there is having support behind where you want the vent to go.

   It's not a bad idea to check to make sure the insulation stop between the rafters is not flush to the roof deck--hard to get a draft when the space is sealed up.  If so, sawsall is some times faster than using a hole saw multiple times.