You need holes in your roof.
You might think that having a hole in your roof is a bad thing, but this is not always the case. In fact, local San Antonio building codes actually insist that you have some. Of course we are not talking about the kind where the sun shines down and the rain pours in, but are instead referring to the various bug-and-weather-proof vents that are built into your attic for the purpose of roof ventilation.
Naturally, most people understand that they need to let some of the heat out of their attic unless they want to feel like they are living in the basement of a blast furnace. If all the heat that accumulates above your ceiling is not given some method of escape, it will simply stay up there and get hotter and hotter.
By placing a series of vents either at the peak of the roof, at the peak of the gables on the ends of the structure, or with a combination of both, heat has a way of flowing out of the house at the highest point. This allows cooler air to come into the attic at the lower end. This is accomplished via a series of vents placed on the underside of the soffits. Hot air rises out the vents at the top, cooler air gets sucked in through the vents lower down, and your attic becomes less of a burden on your cooling system.
Yet there is another reason for having roof ventilation in your home, one that is even more important than cooling down your home. Without some amount of airflow in the attic, the atmosphere inside it becomes a stagnant, hot, muggy mess. This in turn leads to condensation from that moist, hot air onto the inside surface of the roof plywood overhead. That plywood, if left exposed to this kind of treatment for a period of time, will amber (sweat) and eventually rot from the inside out.
When the next roof replacement or repair rolls around, you get a huge, expensive surprise when you find out that your entire roof underlayment structure will have to be ripped off the rafters before you can actually replace the roof on top of it. You could also find out at Christmastime, when you go up on the roof to string some lights or set up Santa’s sleigh and suddenly drop through the rotten plywood and land on the kitchen table in a heap. Yes, it can be that much of a problem.
Given San Antonio’s particularly warm climate, there are a number of special roof vents which can be retrofitted to keep your attic even cooler and drier than normal venting would achieve. Particularly with the spread of solar power technology, it is possible to install large fan-style vents that kick on automatically when the heat rises. With solar power, these units not only run at no cost but actually save you money by cooling off your attic without running the AC.
Make sure your roof is properly ventilated. Contact Cloud Roofing today!