Your home’s roof is the most important portion of your home’s exterior shell, offering protection from the elements and pests, as well as improving your home’s curb appeal and resale value, and helping to keep your home insulated. Considering how many benefits a well-maintained and installed roof provides for your home, it is essential to ensure that it is kept in good repair! One of the most important parts of proper roof maintenance, and one that most homeowners tend to overlook, is ensuring that your roof has proper ventilation! Plenty of homeowners are unaware that your roof even needs to be ventilated, which is why our team put together a blog discussing the importance of proper roof ventilation!
Why Do I Need Roof Ventilation
To begin, let’s discuss why roof ventilation is so important. Since heat rises, and your home’s roof is the peak of your home, heat collects in your home’s roof. This can be destructive in more ways than one.
In the summertime, as heat collects in your attic, it can begin to damage your shingles. Without proper ventilation, your attic can begin to accrue moisture damage, damaging both your roof deck and shingle system. This makes it essential to ensure that your home’s roof is able to ventilate properly, otherwise you could be damaging your roofing system and impacting your home’s energy efficiency!
Ice Dams
However, perhaps the most damaging issue that can occur without proper roof ventilation, particularly in a snowy climate like Massachusetts, is ice dams. Any homeowner who has lived in the Massachusetts area for at least a few years has experienced ice dams.
Ice dams form in the wintertime when the snow on your roof begins to melt due to the heat escaping out of your attic. The heat coming from your home can become trapped in your roof where it begins to heat the shingles and causes the snow to melt. As the snowmelt runs down your roof and reaches your gutters, it eventually refreezes, no longer heated by your roof. Over time, water will back up on your roof and begin to seep into your roof deck, causing significant damage!
This is where roof ventilation comes in. Many homeowners are unaware, but one of the easiest ways to combat ice dams is with proper roof ventilation. By having your roof properly ventilated, you can stop heat from building up in your roof. The idea here is that if the temperature in your roof is the same as the outdoors, the snow won’t be heated and melt, protecting your home from destructive ice dams!
Contact Us Today
If you need to replace your home’s roof this summer, our team at E.M. Snow Inc. is ready to assist! Give our team a call at (781) 893-4546 or by filling out our team’s online contact form! We look forward to hearing from you and assisting with your roof replacement needs!