Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
Serving Salt Lake City, UT & Nearby Areas
(385) 438-3591
The insulation almost certainly buried your intake vents. Blown insulation piles up at the eaves. That's exactly where the attic pulls its air in. You added R-value and removed airflow at the same time, and in a Utah summer the airflow was doing more work than the insulation.
Check whether insulation is packed into the eaves where the intake vents are, and clear it.
Intake at the eaves feeds all attic airflow. So burying it stops the whole system rather than part of it.
Look along the attic's outer edges with a flashlight, where the roof meets the walls.
Adding insulation to a Utah attic without protecting the intake vents trades away the airflow that was doing the harder job.
Mattie Tueller, Master Roofing
By burying the vents that fed it air. Attic intake vents sit at the eaves, in the soffits along the lowest edge of the roof. That is exactly where blown insulation drifts and piles deepest. Cover those openings and the attic stops drawing in cooler outside air. So the heat that used to leave now stays.
You paid for insulation and the house got worse. That's no sense until you separate the two jobs. Insulation slows heat crossing from the attic into your rooms. Ventilation removes heat from the attic in the first place. They work on different sides of the same problem.
In a Utah summer, with long cloudless days loading the attic all afternoon, the removal job is the bigger one. Trade it away for more R-value and the attic runs hotter than it did before the work. The rooms below follow.
Go into the attic with a flashlight and look at the outer edges, where the roof deck comes down to meet the exterior walls. You are looking for daylight or a clear air channel at that joint. If insulation is packed solid into that corner with no gap above it, the intake is buried.
Stay on the framing rather than the insulation while you look. Come back down if the space is above about 110 degrees. Checking from the hatch with a flashlight tells you most of what you need.
Baffles are simple channels stapled into each rafter bay at the eave to hold an air path open above the insulation. They cost very little and they are the difference between insulation that works with the ventilation and insulation that smothers it. Not every insulation crew installs them, because ventilation is not their trade.
An insulation contractor is measured on R-value delivered. The crew hits the target depth, the inspection checks the depth. Everyone considers the job done. Nobody on that job is responsible for the attic's ventilating area, and in most cases nobody has been asked about it. Baffles are not on the estimate because ventilation was never in the scope.
That is worth knowing before you decide someone cheated you. The result is really bad, and it is usually a scope gap rather than bad faith. It also means asking one question up front prevents almost all of it. That question costs you nothing to ask.
Rarely. In most attics the fix is clearing insulation back off the vents, installing baffles to keep the path open. Confirming there is enough intake to match the exhaust. The insulation you paid for stays where it is doing good. Only the material blocking the eaves gets pulled back.
Expect this to be a short visit rather than a project. If the attic never had enough intake to begin with, clearing the vents restores what existed rather than making it correct. Adding intake is the real repair rather than an upgrade. That larger question is covered in what attic ventilation has to do with your roof.
This is one of the most common calls Master Roofing gets in a Utah summer. It almost always arrives as a complaint about the insulation. Someone spent real money to make the house more comfortable, the house got less comfortable. They assume they were sold something that did not work.
The insulation usually worked fine. What happened is that it landed on top of the intake vents. The attic quietly lost the airflow that was carrying the day's heat back out. Two trades, two scopes, and the gap between them sits in your eaves.
Adding insulation to a Utah attic without protecting the intake vents trades away the airflow that was doing the harder job. So if you are planning insulation work, ask one question before the crew starts: how are you keeping the intake vents clear. Are you installing baffles. If the answer is uncertain, get the ventilation looked at first. It is a cheap question now and an expensive discovery later.
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.
Often yes, and it is one of the more approachable attic jobs. Wear a mask and long sleeves, stay on the framing. Pull the material back so the vent openings are clear. What you cannot easily do yourself is confirm whether the attic has enough intake overall. That is a measurement rather than a judgment. Clear it, then get the numbers checked.
It creates a different situation rather than the same one. Closed-cell foam applied to the underside of the roof deck is part of an unvented assembly. That's a deliberate design with its own rules, not a vented attic with blocked vents. The problems arise when foam is applied in a way that half-seals an attic still designed to breathe. Ask which assembly you are getting.
Most Utah homes sit in a climate zone where ceiling insulation targets run around R-49, though the right number for your house depends on its construction and what is already up there. The more useful point is that hitting a target depth means nothing if the intake vents end up buried. Depth and airflow are separate requirements and both have to be met.
No, and it can make things worse. A powered fan needs somewhere to pull air from, and with the intake blocked it will draw conditioned air out of your house through ceiling gaps instead. That raises your cooling bill while doing very little for the attic itself. Clear the intake first, because most attics then ventilate properly without any fan at all.
Either can clear the vents, but ventilation is part of the roof assembly. So a roofing company is the one that can also tell you whether the attic meets the required ratio. If the insulation work is recent, it is worth calling that contractor first. That's because clearing what they buried is a reasonable thing to ask them to come back and do.
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.