Why You Should Vent a Roof

May 11th, 2015

Raise your hand if you want to lower your electric bill.  Raise your hand if you want to save energy.  Raise your hand if you have problems with ice dams on your roof.

If you raised your hand, keep reading.  If you didn’t raise your hand, then you have money to burn, literally!  Don’t read any further.

Temperatures on roofcold roof venting diagrams can sometimes reach 150 degrees or more on a hot summer day as anyone who has ever gone up on a roof in July can attest.  This heat transfers down into the home, and your home air conditioning unit has to cool it in order to keep you comfortable inside.  This can result in higher electric bills.  How do you cool off your roof?

Many people confuse venting a roof with venting an attic.  Attic fans, soffit vents, gable vents and plenty of insulation help to alleviate this problem but are only partial fixes to the problems caused by heat coming up from the home to the roof or coming down into the home from the radiation of the sun.

There are other options that not only help keep your home at a comfortable temperature, but also extend the life of your roofing product and help save our valuable energy resources.

A Cool Roof System is a roofing system which employs the same process that fireplaces do.  Heat from your fire is drawn up from the fireplace and exhausted at the top of the chimney.

Cool Roof Systems create this same process by  providing good venting space between the insulation and the roof.  By creating an eave that draws in air and a ridge that exhausts the hot air with equal intake and exhaust areas,  hot air is similarly removed.  This process  can dramatically reduce the heat accumulating under the roofing product which transfers into the attic and living space.  Cooling this way will also extend the life of the roofing product.  In snowy areas, this system can reduce ice dams and the subsequent leaking that occurs.

New TileVent

 

TRA Snow and Sun’s Tile Vent is uniquely designed to provide venting properties at the ridge on a tile roof. See the TRI Cold Roof Manual, co-authored by TRA Snow and Sun’s owner, Terry Anderson, for more detailed information on how to use venting to prevent damage caused by too much heat under the roofing product, damage caused by sliding snow and ice, and ice dams.

 

Contact TRA for more details and help with planning a cool roof on your next project.