Importance Of Home Ventilation During Winter Months – Family Roofing

Posted on by David Reid

 

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Importance Of Home Ventilation During Winter Months

Proper attic ventilation is important to the protection of your home and your comfort throughout the cold months.  Attic ventilation in winter protects your roof structures from damaging moisture.  Improve your attic ventilation to keep your home in good condition and maintain good indoor air quality this winter.

Why Is Attic Ventilation Important?

Proper attic ventilation protects against many troublesome home problems, making your house more comfortable indoors.  It protects your roof against damaging moisture problems, including:

  • Moisture variations that can warp roof decking

  • Mold growth

  • Frost

  • Wood rot

  • Popped shingles

  • Ice dams

In the winter, heat in your home rises – to the attic.  With it comes moisture.  When attics are not well ventilated, moisture collects in this area of the home.  This moisture can seep into the structure of your home, affecting roofing materials as well as framing and contents of your attic.  Adequate attic ventilation allows cool, dry air from outside to come into the attic, while warm, moist air inside the attic can escape.  Good attic ventilation helps keep temperatures even, preventing hot and cold spots that cause damaging ice dams where water can back up and freeze beneath your shingles.

Proper attic ventilation in winter prevents mold and mildew growth, safeguarding your family against these harmful contaminants.  Eliminating moisture problems through attic ventilation works to improve indoor air quality.  It also prevents the warm, damp, and dark environment that pests love, keeping rodents and insects from nesting in your attic.

Attic Ventilation Solutions

For good attic insulation, one square foot of ventilation is recommended per every 300 cubic feet of space within the attic. A 1:1 ratio of intake and exhaust vents is needed to ensure proper airflow through your attic.  Roof vents allow for natural attic ventilation, but mechanical solutions are also available.

Intake Vents

Intake vents allow air to move into the attic. There are three main types of intake vents for attic ventilation in winter:

  • Gable vents: Gable vents are installed at the roof peak’s highest point in the gable.  They can be painted and a number of styles are available to blend with your home’s exteriors.  Depending on wind direction, gable vents can serve both intake and exhaust purposes.

  • Under-eave vents: An under-eave vent is a continuous, perforated vent that is installed under the home’s eave.  These vents can be easily covered by attic insulation, so make sure insulation is not installed over the vent.

  • Rafter vents: Rafter vents work with under-eave vents to provide clear airways to the under-eave vent.  They are installed along the attic’s rafters, located at the point where ceiling and attic floor meet.

Exhaust Vents

Exhaust vents allow warm, moist air to move out of the attic space.  Types of exhaust vents include:

  • Ridge vents: These vents run along the roof’s ridge.  They are easily disguised by shingles, integrating nicely with the roof line.

  • Turbine vents: Turbine vents have a distinctive look, and contain a small fan that turns with the breeze.  This sucks warm, moist air out of your attic, expelling it outdoors.  Turbine vents are installed on or close to the roof’s ridge.

Attic Ventilation Fans

Attic ventilation fans offer mechanical ventilation, using a fan to draw in cool, outside air and force out warm, moist air.  Air is drawn in through the attic fan and air is expelled through the roof vent system to keep your attic cooler and drier, preventing ice and moisture issues throughout the winter.  Attic fans do require electricity to operate, which makes this attic ventilation solution more costly to operate than relying on natural attic ventilation through vents.

Have you ever think that insulating and sealing homes up during winter can affect negatively our health?  During winter months, we prepare ourselves to draw the curtains, to warm the home space, to close the doors and windows and to stay inside as much as we can.  But doing these things we prevent our home space to breath and also give the opportunity to moisture and mold growth. So, home ventilation is an essential thing, in particular during winter months.

Upgrade the air of your home

The key to home ventilation is that it can prevent condensation, as a result, in-turn stops damp and mold. It also upgrades the indoor air quality of a property and prevents different health problems like asthma and respiratory problems.  Another important point is that can reduce Radon gas, which is a naturally occurring radioactive gas, which can enter your home from the ground.

Natural Home Ventilation

Making natural ventilation is the best option.  Ventilation is the decision you will take for yourself if you would like to stay in a warm home or having fresh air inside.  You can make natural home ventilation by opening doors and windows for a few minutes.  The traditional method of ventilation is by extractor fans. They help to extract air from your kitchen or bathroom and to extract heat too.

Be prepared

Exist some precautions you can take to limit the level of excess moisture and condensation in your property.  Easily examples are to keep bathroom and kitchen doors closed to contain the moisture, putting lids on cooking pots and wiping down cold surfaces.  Of course, that is difficult to determine how much home ventilation do you need.  Every house is built differently, as a result, it needs different home ventilation solutions in order to meet different demands.  So, be sure to use the correct ventilation.

How to Improve Ventilation in Your Home

Here are some ways you can improve ventilation in your home.  Using as many ways as you can (open windows, use air filters, and turn on fans) will help clear out virus particles in your home faster. You can decrease particles even more by continuing to ventilate after a visitor leaves.

Bringing fresh, outdoor air into your home helps keep virus particles from accumulating inside.

  • If it’s safe to do so, open doors and windows as much as you can to bring in fresh, outdoor air.  While it’s better to open them widely, even having a window cracked open slightly can help.

  • If you can, open multiple doors and windows to allow more fresh air to move inside.

  • Do not open windows and doors if doing so is unsafe for you or others (for example, young children or pets in your home, risk of falling, people in the home with asthma or other respiratory conditions, poor air quality).

  • If opening windows or doors is unsafe, consider other approaches for reducing virus particles in the air, such as using air filtration and bathroom and stove exhaust fans.

  • Use fans to move virus particles in the air from inside your home to outside. Don’t leave fans unattended with young children.

If your home has a central heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC, a system with air ducts that go throughout the home) that has a filter, do the following to help trap virus particles:

  • In homes where the HVAC fan operation can be controlled by a thermostat, set the fan to the “on” position instead of “auto” when you have visitors.  This allows the fan to run continuously, even if heating or air conditioning is not on.

  • Use pleated filters. Pleated filters are more efficient than ordinary furnace filters and can be found in hardware stores.  Follow the manufacturer’s instructions to replace the filter yourself or ask a professional for help.

  • Make sure the filter is installed properly (see figure).

  • Change your filter every three months or according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

  • Ideally, have the ventilation system inspected and adjusted by a professional every year to make sure it is operating efficiently.