How does roof ventilation work? Well, that is a good question. The answer to that is to allow the ambient air to enter and leave the roofspace by doing this it is desirable to have an inlet and an outlet with a pair in each area of the roof.
For many years, for almost 100 years actually, turbine vents and other more static ventilators have been available, these have mostly relied on inlet air from vents in the eaves.
Whilst being used for many years these types of ventilator have not been able to remove the heat overload from the roof cavity, in order to either cool the home or even make any difference to the moisture laden air within the roofspace in winter.
More recently powered fans and solar fans have been introduced however these don’t even really do the job effectively, quite the contrary. See this Blog “Roof Vents Versus Fans”
There is another problem that compromises the removal of stale air in unventilated roof cavities – insulation – that is right insulation has made effective roof ventilation a necessity what is that you say I thought insulation was meant to keep us warmer and cooler?
This is true it will keep your home warmer and cooler, however without an effective roof ventilation system you could be hotter in summer and wetter in winter. See this Blog “Warning! Read Before You Design Your Next Housing Project”
SO HOW DOES ROOF VENTILATION WORK
The basic rules for how effective roof ventilation will perform are for a drier roofspace all year and a cooler home in summer.
So how do we do this – we have an opening in the roof to admit fresh air into the roofspace and another opening for stale air to leave the roofspace. These openings should be of the same volume as each other to equalise the ambient airflow and for each section of roofing however your roofline is laid out, you should have a pair of these ventilators to provide enough fresh ambient air to move the moist stagnant musty air trapped in between the enclosed unventilated area between the ceiling insulation and the roof covering – tiles or corrugated colorbond.
If you have read “Warning! Read Before You Design Your Next Housing Project”
you will know why you need to remove the putrid air from the roof cavity (or ceiling space if you prefer).
The fact is you can have too much ventilation or not enough the wrong kind of ventilator or two different kinds that don’t work well together.
So, what are you to do for the right kind that work well together – use our Smoothline Ventilation System for your corrugated colorbond or zincalume roofs or our Universal Tile Ventilators for tiled roofs, anything else is a compromise. That’s not to say we are right and everyone else is wrong however much thought has gone into the design of our systems to give a measured ventilation system that induces the right amount of air into the roofspace and allows the putrid air to leave the roofspace.