2..4...6...8...Ventilate!
I'm being pulled to look at patterns in the house, but...before I do...I've got to figure out the business of this ventilation meets insulation situation.
Dig?
Two things to know about ventilation in the attic...intake and outflow. All of this has to happen above the warm part of the house. Folks with other houses would have a soffit that runs down the length of their house for the intake part...like this:
(Courtesy of Royal Homes)
Instead of soffits, we have eaves and raftertails, like this:
Hmmm. So we need to get intake in somehow. We have a few outtake spots...some static roof louvers and a powered attic exhaust fan. But is it enough? There are equations for this kind of thing:
In a house with a vapor retarder (which we will have), the minimum requirement is 1 square foot of ventilation for every 300 square feet of attic floor space. (via AirVent)
Figuring out our attic floor space is a tad difficult, just because the construction of a bungalow roof has funny knee walls and dormers. It isn't completely square. All angles and slants. Darn.
Going under the eaves and THROUGH a super old stucco wall will be no picnic. Especially when we will have to work our way down bay by bay. Really high up there.
Since the inside of those bays look like this...
I imagine that those under the eave vents near the top of the wall in each bay will look like one of these:
(via Dixieline)
Perhaps get some passive gable wall louvers for the north and south wall...like this:
How ever we do it...it isn't going to be easy. Or pretty.
Any ideas out there?
Fine Homebuilding has a great online article about insulation, ventilation and old houses...check it out if you want to know more...
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Comments
Can't tell if these would work for you or not, but we used something like this on our house:
http://www.toolbase.org/tertiaryT.asp?DocumentID=2146&CategoryID=1014
http://www.airvent.com/homeowner/products/intake-ventedDE.shtml
Posted by: kim | July 21, 2004 8:26 PM
When looking at your picture of the eaves and rafters, I noticed that there are cutouts in all the rafters. Do you know if this is decorative or if there used to be something inserted there?
Posted by: Anna | July 23, 2004 1:34 PM
Those are our rafter tails! They are purely decorative...an inverted u-shape cut on a slight angle. The rafters in most houses would be cut back and an external soffit would be used for intake ventilation (covering up the rafters). But it was quite common in the Craftsman tradition for rafter tails and wide eaves to remain exposed. :)
Glad you like them! We think they're great.
Posted by: jm | July 23, 2004 1:48 PM
One word: Coravent.
It's layered coroplast, the corrugated polyethylene stuff they make yard signs from. You can sneak them into place without compromising your Craftman details. I was able to conceal them in an eave-less Cape Cod. The company illustrates several application suggestions.
This one is exactly the application you have:
http://www.cor-a-vent.com/PDF/COR-SOF5.pdf
Posted by: Paul | July 23, 2004 2:17 PM