LESLIE: Chris in Pennsylvania is on the line and has a question about snow coming in some venting. What is going on?
CHRIS: When it snows, for whatever reason our ridge vent seems to let snow get up inside. And then we pull anywhere from a small bucket – you know, like a snowball size – to many, many buckets depending on how much snow and how much wind we get. And I’m trying to figure out what can I do to stop that from getting inside the house.
TOM: So there’s a type of vent that’s called a “filter vent.” And it’s made by CertainTeed. And it’s a good-quality ridge vent but it has the added addition of a filter material that is in the baffle part of it – in the porous part of it – so that that stops the snow from doing exactly what it’s doing in your case, which is blowing in. Because it’s nice that you have a big, wide, open vent that’s letting all that warm, moist air out in the summer and the damp air in the winter but it’s going to blow – let some snow get in. So if you were to replace that with a filter vent, I think that that would solve the problem.
CHRIS: So they have to replace the whole ridge vent? There’s not anything I could stick inside of it?
TOM: Unless it happens to be the same product; it’s just missing the vent. But no, you would have to replace it.
CHRIS: OK. That’s fair enough.
TOM: It’s pretty straightforward because it’s from the outside. It’s easy to kind of take that off and put a new one on.
CHRIS: Right.
TOM: It’s not like a major roofing project but it is going to take some work and some expense. And it’s also going to take somebody that is not afraid of working on a roof. So if that’s not you, hire a pro to do that, OK?
CHRIS: Yeah, there’s a couple pitches that are pretty tough, so probably would be a pro job.
TOM: Yep. That’s hard to work on a place like that. Yeah. Definitely want to be careful.
CHRIS: Alright. Yeah. That’s really all I had.
TOM: Alright. Well, good luck. Hope that helps you out. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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