Good morning Lee, A ridge vent properly installed allows air to rise up from the soffit at the lower edge of the eve of your roof and exhaust out the top. This is intended to keep the under side of the roof deck cool or at least cooler.
The cavity between the rafters of course must be open and free to allow the air to move. This should help reduce the shingles curling and it should very much reduce any moisture, particularly in the winter when the home is warm and moist and leaking warm moist air up into the roof where it cools and condenses into water under the roof decking. It can even freeze and build up until, in the spring when that decking warms up the ice melts and falls back onto the ceiling and ultimately dribbles into the home. Most composite shingles will begin to curl as they age. The darker the colour the more readily this will happen and it is due to the heating as the sun beats down on them. Where they shingle over shingles this will happen more quickly because the extra layers retain the heat of the sun radiation. With age too, the sand washes out of the shingles tending to destabilize the structure. You could have concrete shingles or slates or, these days many people are having rolled steel roofing installed. The steel can be very durable, fifty years and more and on a roof as steep as yours, 1 to 1 ratio, snow will slide right off that puppy. They can be cooler in summer as well if you select a light colour. much of the sun's radiation will be reflected back off of the steel rather than absorbed. I would, will seriously consider a steel roof here in another couple of years when this roof requires renewal. Won't benefit me much but could be an additional selling point. Anyway, your ridge vent is probably a very good thing, it would be interesting to get up onto that roof during a really hot day and see just what air flow does come through it. I can't see it being any harm. Dale Leavens, Cochrane Ontario Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype DaleLeavens Come and meet Aurora, Nakita and Nanook at our polar bear habitat. ----- Original Message ----- From: Lee A. Stone To: Blind Handyman Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 2:04 AM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] all these dad blame new inventions about 14 years ago we had a new roof installed by sighted people . the guy sold me on the ridge vent I think it is called . It runs across the top of the roof from North to South. well I am getting a new roof put on by a different installer and I think that ridge vent is coming off. tell you why. My wife was reading online at a local lumber supply place. one comment was " for shingles that are curled up in a vast area the problem is either lack of ventalation and or moisture buildup. No other structural changes have been made to the upstairs of this house since 1986 . the only new thing is that pvc ventalation ridge cap . What is your opinion of these new inventions like the ridge vent I am talking about? thanks Lee -- File cabinet: A four drawer, manually activated trash compactor. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
