Attic venting
I am using Accuvent cathedral starter strips and extensions to vent my attic from soffit to ridge vent. I will be using Rockwool to insulate in front of this. I had gotten through about 25 out of 85 bays and I was reading in these forums about how to position the accuvent from soffit to ridge vent. I had been putting each extension piece over each other starting on the starter strip. I was thinking about air flow from soffit to ridge and keeping the airflow inside the space. However I was reading about overlapping the opposite way to allow any potential leaks to find their way back to the soffit. This is all new construction so I don’t worry much about leaks but it does make sense to me and I think I may change the remaining bays to this method. I wanted to get any feedback from anyone who has used this material before. I can also pretty easily pull each seam apart through the staples and redo them where they meet. It will leave some tears in the material though but I could spray some great stuff or use tyvek tape over it. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
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Replies
Hi Chris -
Pretty clever to "weatherlap" your vent chutes in case of a bulk water leak in your roof. I can't imagine that the air flow impact of that change in lap would be significant.
I am just now doing some air flow vent testing of cathedral roof assemblies, looking at variables such as roof pitch, depth of vent space, wind versus stack effect as driving force, etc.
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/wingnut-testing-soffit-ridge-roof-venting
Maybe I can test the impact of direction of vent chute lap!
On the other hand, AirVent has their own "smokehouse" so ask THEM to test this!
Peter
Thanks for replying Peter. In line with what you are saying about testing the air flow, the soffit panels I used on my home are Certainteed’s Triple Invisvent. They look like solid beaded panels but hide the intake holes in the creases. They claim 50% more air flow than standard panels. I’m curious if you know anything more about these. This is a link to their page.
https://www.certainteed.com/siding/products/triple-3-13-invisivent/