Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

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Lily left the valley
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Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by Lily left the valley »

I forget exactly when I realized it (I think when I was looking for bats in the attic), but I realized that not only do we have E/W gable vents, but we also have a ridge vent. Whomever did it butchered the planking in a few spots.

That led me to go back to my research, and I wasn't thrilled with what I found in regards to having both in New England. What I kept reading, though, it that one shouldn't have a ridge vent unless they have soffit vents, with all sorts of maintenance issues regarding soffit vents.

However...I can't seem to find any soffit vents. We do have some ice and snow here now, but they should be visible under the porch roof and such, yes?

Still, I've been leaving a roughly 3" space at the end of my attic floor runs where the roof slopes down in case I have to do baffles later for air circulation, and when I later can get back to dealing with properly insulating the knee walls, some of it will corner partly to that length anyhoo due to the angle.

Why can't we find them? Was the roofer that installed the ridge vent a Drunken Weasel, or maybe the homeowners didn't want to pay for them/thought they'd get to it someday on their own and just didn't? Could they be painted over?

I'll take another look after some sleep, maybe then they'll be so obvious I'll be embarrassed I missed them. Who knows?

So, any :twocents-twocents: as to where to look, or why we have both ridge and gable, and opinions about getting rid of one or the other or leaving them in a 1935 balloon frame bungalow would be appreciated.
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GibsonGM
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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by GibsonGM »

Hi Lily,

Well....interesting, ha ha. Many homes do NOT have soffit vents, and like you, a happy-home-minded person buys the home and has them put in. If it is not moldy up there yet, or dry rotted, then you are probably in time :) A lot of the things you'll find on the net assure you you are about to die...don't worry too much about them, just know it should be 'gotten to'. They COULD be painted over, but you SHOULD see them quite easily, either a 'strip' along the soffit(s), or many round circular vents. If a craftsman, you will see them about every 16", generally the round type.

Having the ridge vent with no soffit vents happens. Won't speculate on why both were not done, but the ridge vent won't HURT anything, it simply won't be very effective without soffit venting to provide the full flow of air over the underside of the roof deck.

Is the home insulated now, or going to be? As that is when they become CRUCIAL. If not insulated, typically that big volume of air up there takes care of whatever moisture gets up there; they didn't vent in the old days.

I chose gable-end venting in my old home, as I have a metal roof. Air flies right thru there all the time, with no issues. But my insulation is on the attic floor, NOT in the rafters, which would make that non-effective at all. For rafter insulation, you'd need the ridge vent + soffits. This is simply about providing enough square feet of 'opening' in the attic to allow any built-up moisture to escape. A mystery at first, until one day it is very simple to understand :)

So - in order to know what you need done, we need to know about your existing insulation, or what you PLAN to install for insulation. Blow-in vs. batts, floor of attic vs. rafters...that info.

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by historicalwork »

This isn't much help but before buying our current home we looked at home that had an unvented attic - no soffit and no ridge vent. At first I thought something was wrong but I learned it's common on many older houses. I found a site where I did some reading - buildingscience.com. I don't know if the site has changed, but they had a forum and a series of articles that I found helpful. At the time I was researching spray foam, etc. Anyway, I wonder if maybe they put new shingles on the roof in recent times and they installed a ridge vent because they thought they should? Just a thought.

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by GibsonGM »

Building science, and green building advisor, are great, but remember....they do NOT deal with our old homes. Their advice is for insulated, sealed, and generally very tight NEW homes. They will make you CRINGE with their talk of indoor moisture and mold...they'll make you think you need to spend thousands to 'correct' something that our homes don't really have. You can learn ALL of the principles from them, but then need to consider your own needs with respect to the logic presented there.

Yes, the older homes had sufficient volume of air in the attic to not require venting, usually. When you see the gable vents, it typically means someone remodeled. A modern roofer would put the ridge vent on because that is how it is done...they didn't hack it, they did THEIR job. Soffit venting is a carpenter's job. Perhaps the PO was planning on insulating, and was doing it this way with that in mind...lots of 1/2 finished stuff with an old home, LOL! You'll be glad they did it if you insulate later.

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by phil »

I once had a neighbor who stole into the building trades with no formal training ,He knew how to swing a hammer and called himself a carpenter, but was not. he came by and looked up and tried to tell me all my soffits are missing! I just smiled.. ;-) they went and added them all around their old house for some weird reason I think he seriously thought they should be there.. . and they did a lot of other things to spoil the heritage look it once had. even destroyed the chimney so they can't have a fireplace and no you cant' build a new one , they don't meet code now.

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by vvzz »

GibsonGM wrote:Building science, and green building advisor, are great, but remember....they do NOT deal with our old homes.


There also isn't all that much consensus on many topics. Building science is always playing catch up with the new technologies and practices. For example, many in the building science community are now somewhat skeptical about attic venting as a solution to ice dams. The idea is that most effort should be directed towards air sealing and insulation.

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by Vala »

We only have ridge vents, they were put in when the place was re roofed in 2005, before we lived here. We don't have soffit vents (and not interested in cutting up the beadboard to add them) and thankfully no gable vents (we have fish scales) so I'm glad they're not needed.

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GibsonGM
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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by GibsonGM »

Yeah, VVZZ...that they do, wondering at each new tech, "this is the last word!" til something new comes up. At times, the 'great new tech' rotted peoples' homes. I appreciate what they're doing, and have learned a lot from the site, but I'm one who doesn't think our "ancient technology" is so horrible! Ex: spray foaming everything - wood shrinks, lets moisture in, or the roof leaks, and you can't see the leak due to foam. Extensive rot...no thanks.

But the premise is still the same....if the inside of the sheathing could conceivably receive moisture, it MUST be vented away. It's easy to check this in an open attic...you simply LOOK on a VERY cold day, see if any nails protruding thru the sheathing have frost on them from your interior moisture collecting up there. Same as a storm window. In worse cases, the wood itself will have frost too. This tells you that you don't have sufficient venting.

If you are insulating the roof itself, tho...that requires much more thought and attention to detail. You won't see the moisture/frost as its covered with plaster/sheetrock, and will only note the mold after there's a problem - sometimes within just a couple of years.

I'd be very hesitant to say they are "not needed", just because they're not there. If the underside of your roof deck is open to view, then probably the ridge vent is enough. If there's a room up there and the peak is plastered over, you may not have enough venting.

If the home has been there 100 years in this same configuration - the likelihood that there is an urgent problem is small, esp. if you have checked out the roof and its condition under shingles/what have you? Only real problems I've heard of with all things being as they were, are from someone doing something new like introducing a gas heat unit that outputs moisture into the home and so on....

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by Vala »

GibsonGM wrote:Yeah, VVZZ...that they do, wondering at each new tech, "this is the last word!" til something new comes up. At times, the 'great new tech' rotted peoples' homes. I appreciate what they're doing, and have learned a lot from the site, but I'm one who doesn't think our "ancient technology" is so horrible! Ex: spray foaming everything - wood shrinks, lets moisture in, or the roof leaks, and you can't see the leak due to foam. Extensive rot...no thanks.



You summed up my thoughts on these "modern fixing" home products quite nicely ;)

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Re: Wherefore art thou, soffit vents?

Post by phil »

the other thing you can do , depending how space is used up there is to just add a wall vent. I added a blower to blow the hot air out of there and installed a hexagonal vent with wooden louvers on one wall,. it doesn't look too out of place.

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