Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Ventilation is what protects your shingles from the heat underneath them. Granules on top reflect the sun. Airflow underneath keeps the asphalt from cooking. If you cannot get cooler air in and out, you are killing your shingles faster than you should be. That is why we inspect attics before we quote a roof.
Ask any roofer bidding your roof to show you the intake vents, not just the ridge vent.
Exhaust without intake moves almost no air. So the shingles keep cooking from the underside all summer.
Open your attic hatch on a hot afternoon and feel the air.
Ventilation is not an add-on to your Utah roof: it is half of what makes the shingles last.
Mattie Tueller, Master Roofing
A hot attic cooks your shingles from the side you cannot see. Asphalt shingles carry granules on top to reflect the sun and keep the asphalt from drying out. Nothing protects that asphalt from below except moving air. Take the air away and the shingle bakes from underneath all day.
Think about an old phone book. Put it in an oven for an hour and the middle is still cool. It cools off fast once it comes out. Now leave it in for fifteen hours. That is about how long the sun is up here in late June. It comes out hot and it stays hot.
That is an attic. The hottest one Master Roofing ever measured read 180 degrees, against a working target of about 20 degrees above the outside air. Utah sharpens the problem: it is one of the driest states in the country. Homes here are built with tall vaulted ceilings that press the roof deck close to the living space.
Yes, and in winter the damage is water rather than heat. Warm, moist air rises out of the house and meets the cold underside of the roof deck. With no airflow to carry that moisture away, it condenses on the wood and on every nail coming through it.
Homeowners call us in January saying the attic is dripping when it has not rained in weeks. Of every 100 houses Master Roofing goes into, about 90 have this problem to some degree. If your worry is mold reaching the living space rather than damage to the roof structure, that is covered in can my roof cause mold even though Utah is so dry.
Because attic ventilation is part of the roof assembly. It is a building code item the roofing contractor is responsible for. The vents live in the roof and the eaves. They get cut and flashed like any other roof penetration. An HVAC company sizes equipment. It does not size a roof's ventilating area.
When we quote a roof, we go into the attic. We are looking at what intake exists, what exhaust exists, and whether the two are anywhere near the ratio the International Residential Code requires. Utah adopted the 2021 I-Codes statewide, so the number is not a matter of opinion.
You can either have that checked now, or find out when the roof is already torn off. Two related traps sit beside this one. Insulation crews routinely bury intake vents under blown insulation, covered in I added attic insulation and it got worse. And a city inspection never measures the ratio at all, covered in my roof passed inspection but I am told it is under-ventilated.
Ask every company the same four questions and compare the answers, not just the totals. Ventilation is one of the most common reasons two Utah roofing bids do not match. It is invisible from the driveway, so it will not explain itself. Make each company put its answer in writing on the estimate.
If one bid is meaningfully cheaper and cannot answer question one, you have probably found the difference. You are not comparing two prices for the same roof at that point. You are comparing a roof with ventilation to a roof without it.
At Master Roofing we price the whole roof in Utah, ventilation included, where a lot of companies shortcut around it. So when our number does not match the one sitting next to it, that line is usually part of the reason. We count the intake vents. Most bids never mention them.
I want to be fair about why that happens. Ventilation is not glamorous and you cannot see it from the driveway. So it is the easiest line to drop when two companies are competing on price alone. Plenty of the crews leaving it off are not trying to take anyone. Utah licensing never required them to learn that the ratio is a code number rather than a judgment call. No inspector is going to stop them.
But you are the one who lives under the result for the next twenty years. Ventilation is not an add-on to your Utah roof: it is half of what makes the shingles last. So when the bids come in, do not just compare the shingle. Ask each company what intake you have now, what the ratio requires. What they are adding. The cheaper roof that skips it is not cheaper. It is shorter.
This article is general information about Utah roofs, not an assessment of yours. Every roof is different, and no article can tell you what is actually happening on your specific house. Have a licensed roofing contractor look at it in person before you act on anything here.
No. Insulation slows heat moving between the attic and your living space. Ventilation moves air and moisture out of the attic itself. A house can be heavily insulated and still have an attic that bakes all summer and drips all winter. The two jobs are different, they are usually done by different trades. Doing one well does not cover the other.
Usually yes. Intake vents at the eaves and exhaust up near the ridge can be added as a retrofit on an otherwise sound roof. It is measurement-driven work rather than a full tear-off. The exception is a roof already near the end of its life, where it makes more sense to correct the ventilation as part of the replacement you were going to do anyway.
Yes, and vaulted ceilings are harder to get right. There is no open attic to move air through, just a narrow cavity between the drywall and the roof deck. Utah builds a lot of two and three story homes with vaulted ceilings. Those shingles cook from the underside faster than shingles over an open attic. Vented assemblies exist for this, but they have to be designed in.
Not reliably. Age of the home is a poor predictor. That's because the ventilation ratio is not something a city inspection measures. Master Roofing finds under-ventilated attics in homes of every era, including recent construction. The only way to know is to have someone open your attic, count the intake and exhaust you actually have. Compare it against the ratio the code requires for your square footage.
Yes, on both counts. Utah is one of the driest states in the country and still produces heavy attic condensation in winter. That's because the moisture comes from inside the house rather than from the weather. The dry summer heat is the other half: cloudless days and long daylight hours load the attic with heat that has to go somewhere. Dry air does not remove the need for airflow.
We're here to see what's going on with your roof. A real assessment starts with your history and your attic, not a number from the driveway. You'll get a straight answer about what's up there, what it needs, and what it costs. Sometimes the honest answer is: your roof looks great.