LESLIE: Now we’ve got a call from Jaculine in Michigan who wants to expand her attic into some living space. Tell us about it.
JACULINE: It’s very large. It’s 35 feet long by 28 feet wide and it has a 14-foot peak ceiling at a 45-degree angle. Now it’s got plenty of room to live in. We’ve put rafter drop supports in at 10 feet across on the top so that we can lay – like have storage space on top. It does have two vents. We have put durovents in between each rafter and I’m having a little problem with mold trying to grow on the wood against the roofing nails where the durovent is. This is an uninsulated, bare roof to the board and we’re going to insulate it. But with the mold issue, I’m wondering can I put – I know there’s outside vents that are supposed to go underneath the overhang but how many should I have? Should I have one under each rafter or one in between each rafter or can I go like every other rafter? I can’t find any information about it.
TOM: The best venting you have is continuous venting. So you would want to replace your soffit material – which I’m presuming is probably wood right now – with perforated soffit material that’s going to be made of vinyl, so the entire soffit, the entire overhang is, in fact, perforated. Now viewing this from the street, you won’t see the traditional holes where they have vents installed. It’ll look like it’s solid but it’s really made up of thousands of little holes and that’s going to let a lot of air right in that soffit area.
The second thing that you need to do is to increase the ridge ventilation. I don’t know if you have a ridge vent across the peak but if you don’t, you ought to install one.
JACULINE: Thank you very much for taking my call.
TOM: You’re welcome, Jaculine. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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