The area of my hip roof attic is approximately 25 x 45 feet with the ridge appr. 25 feet long. Ventilation is provided along the length of the eaves and there is a thermostatically controlled exhaust fan installed. I intend to replace the original roof on my 25 year old house and wonder if it would be cost effective to replace the exhaust fan a ridge vent system. Installation seems easy enough and if a roofing contractor would not normally do this could a D-I-Y er do it?
Thanks for your comments.
Replies
I'd suggest doing some calcs to figure out exactly how much net free area of ventilation you need. Then figure out if you have enough with 25' of ridge vent.
Go to a lumberyard - They should have the info you need with literature for the type of ridge vent that they carry.
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Someone once posted a great .PDF file here about ventilation, but I can't find the thing. Had a lot of good info in it.
I graduated in the top 80% of my class.
I did my ridge vent. Its real easy and all you need is a circular saw, a knife, a hammer, and some nails.
Basically you cut slots on either side of the ridge at the peak. Set the saw blade just enough to cut through the shingle and sheething. Nail the ridge vent along the slot, and shingle on top (if its that type of ridge vent). The only trick is to watch you don't cut too deep, and stay away from areas where water will want to flow into the vent like give some distance between a ridge which is lower than a ridge from a taller, intersecting roof.
I think the calcs are 1/300th of the roof area (DON'T forget soffet vents). In your case, I think that works out to 45 square inches of ventilation, so it should be a piece of cake. I came out to way more on my roof, so I asked the technical support people at my ridge vent company via email what to do, and they said, pretty much more is better, provided I had the soffet venting at least the same amount.
I seems to work ok, anyhow. Have fun