Attic Ventilation on Cuyahoga Falls Cape Cods

Why are Cape Cods so hard to ventilate?

Because the upstairs is built inside the roof. On a ranch, the attic is one open space above a flat ceiling. On a Cape Cod, the bedrooms take up most of that space, and what is left is cut into three pieces.

• Two side attics. Low triangles behind the short knee walls, running along each eave.
• The sloped ceiling. A stretch where the bedroom ceiling is fastened right to the underside of the rafters.
• The top attic. A small triangle above the flat part of the upstairs ceiling.

Air has to pass from the first, through the second, to the third. The second is the pinch point. In the sloped section there are only a few inches between the drywall and the roof deck, and that space is usually stuffed with insulation.

Cuyahoga Falls has a lot of these houses. They are common on the streets between State Road and the river, where the typical house dates from the late 1940s or the 1950s, and they turn up near Broad Boulevard and on the south side too.

What does poor airflow do to the roof?

In winter, ice. Heat from the bedrooms leaks through the sloped ceiling and warms the deck. Snow melts, runs down to the cold overhang and freezes. The Akron area averages about 47 inches of snow a season, so there is plenty to melt. The ridge of ice at the eave is an ice dam, and the water that pools behind it can back up under the shingles.

In summer, heat. With no air moving under the deck, shingles on the sloped section run hotter than they should. They dry out, curl and lose granules years early. If the upper slopes of your Cape Cod look older than the porch roof, this is why.

All year, moisture. Damp indoor air that reaches the cold deck condenses. You see it as rusty nail tips and dark staining in the side attics.

Where should the air go?

In low and out high. Outside air should enter at the eave, travel up each rafter bay against the underside of the deck, and leave at the ridge. For that to work on a Cape Cod, three things have to be true.

1. There is an opening at the eave. That means soffit vents, or an intake vent at the roof edge where the house has no soffit to speak of.
2. There is a clear channel through the sloped section. Baffles hold the insulation back from the deck and keep an inch or two open.
3. There is an exit at the peak. A ridge vent does this far better than one or two box vents.

What can be fixed from the roof side?

Quite a bit, and some of it only when the shingles are off.

• A ridge vent. It is part of every replacement quoted here, and it can be added to a sound roof as a repair.
• Intake at the edge. Where the eaves are too narrow for soffit vents, intake can sometimes be added at the roof edge instead.
• Baffles from above. With the deck exposed during a tear-off, the sloped bays can sometimes be reached and cleared from the top, which is nearly impossible from inside a finished bedroom.
• Bath fan ducts. A fan that dumps steam into a side attic gets a proper hood through the roof.
• Ice and water shield. It does not stop a dam from forming. It stops the water behind the dam from reaching your ceiling.

Ventilation work on an existing roof is handled as roof repair in Cuyahoga Falls, with a fixed written price before anything is cut.

What can a roofer not fix?

The heat leak itself. Warm air escapes through gaps at the top of the knee walls, around the attic access doors, at light fixtures and along the floor joists that run under the knee wall into the side attic. Sealing those and adding insulation is inside work for an insulation contractor. It is not offered through this site.

It is worth doing, though. Ventilation carries heat away. Air sealing keeps it from arriving. A Cape Cod needs both, and the roof half is cheaper to do while the old shingles are off.

What should you look for this winter?

• Icicles thicker than your wrist along the eaves, especially over the front door.
• Bare stripes on a snowy roof, each one tracing a rafter bay that is leaking heat.
• Frost on the nail points inside the side attics on a cold morning.
• A water stain where the sloped ceiling meets the knee wall.

Take a photo if you see any of these. It helps the person who comes to look.

When is the right time to deal with it?

If the shingles are sound, the vents can be corrected on their own as a roof repair. If the roof is near the end, wait and do it all at once, because several of the fixes above need the deck open. A free roof inspection includes a look into the side attics and the top attic, and the photo report will say which case you are in. For how the eave ties into the gutters, see roof and gutters together.