If you want your place in Enterprise to be anything close to "healthy" and "energy-efficient," then you had better install your proper roof ventilation system, and do it right. Because if you don't, your roof is going to die a premature death—and that's about the worst energy inefficiency there is, considering the average American household spends something like $2,000 a year just on keeping the roof over their heads. Proper roof ventilation allows your building's envelope to do its job: keeping the heat and humidity of summer and the cold and damp of winter from getting to the living spaces in your home; keeping moisture from penetrating your roof assembly; and letting any moisture that does penetrate escape before it can do any damage.
Climate considerations play a vital role in determining the best roof ventilation for your home, and where you live really influences what type of vents are most effective. In areas like ours, with intense summer heat and mild winters, failing to keep the attic a similar temperature to that of the insides of your home can lead to some pretty serious consequences in not just the short, but the long term as well. And the roof is the first line of defense when it comes to keeping the attic cool. With that in mind, what type of ventilation allows for the most airflow through an attic space at the roof level?
Besides bettering temperature control, servicing the roof's ventilation system can safeguard against moisture damage. Too much moisture can cause wood to soften, mold to grow, and lead to other structural defects that compromise the roof's integrity. Soffit vents work with the rest of the ventilation system to pull in cool air from outside and push out hot, moist air through the roof. This system probably isn't necessary for most roofs in places like Enterprise, where we don't really have much of a winter. But roofs in the wetter, hotter, and more humid parts of the country really benefit from this ventilation system, which reduces the chance that moisture will be in the attic long enough for something bad to happen. And even in what we might think of as the winter, roofs in the south really aren't that cold. A lack of warm air coming up from the house is what helps reduce the chance that you will get an ice dam on your roof.
