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Ventilating Cathedral Ceilings
By Steve Maxwell
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Back in 1990, a friend of mine moved into a stately old home built in the small town near where I live, and since then he’s learned first-hand about the importance of cathedral ceiling ventilation. The house was built in 1890, by a commercial fishing tycoon whose family pioneered the area, and like many old homes of that era, no consideration was given to attic ventilation. The place was sealed tightly, from eaves to peak, and that worked fine in the 19th century. Nothing else was necessary during the era when wintertime heating was minimal, and indoor humidity levels remained low thanks to leaky windows and limited domestic hot water use. But as electricity, running water and a whopping-big oil furnace were added to the house over the years, moisture production skyrocketed, and so did the need for attic ventilation.
This was pretty easy to add in most places, through the use of rooftop vents and gable louvres. But not so in one second-story sunroom with an insulated cathedral ceiling covered in vee-matched, tongue-and-groove pine. With the rafter cavities stuffed full of insulation and entirely sealed, there was no easy way to create an outlet for the moisture that condensed within the ceiling during long cold spells. And condense it did. So much so that every spring two or three gallons of brown, dripping water have to be collected in buckets as a winter’s worth of frost melts in a few days, runs down walls and drips through the board-to-board gaps. The problem remains to this day because it’s so difficult to fix properly.
If this sounds like just another old-house horror story, think again. Many Canadians still construct new cathedral ceilings in exactly the same way as in the bad old days, building headaches for themselves that go beyond just soppy ceilings on warm spring afternoons. Perennially-wet roof structures rot and encourage mold growth, promoting low indoor air quality as it does. I know from the spike in reader emails I get during warm, spring weather that poorly constructed cathedral ceilings are still being built and still causing headaches. The good news is, there's a way around the problem. You can have a frost proof cathedral ceiling as long as you're willing to understand the design features necessary for success and make them a reality. As usual, it takes a little more effort, but it’s all worth it in the end.
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Ventilating Cathedral Ceilings
By Steve Maxwell
|
|
|
Back in 1990, a friend of mine moved into a stately old home built in the small town near where I live, and since then he’s learned first-hand about the importance of cathedral ceiling ventilation. The house was built in 1890, by a commercial fishing tycoon whose family pioneered the area, and like many old homes of that era, no consideration was given to attic ventilation. The place was sealed tightly, from eaves to peak, and that worked fine in the 19th century. Nothing else was necessary during the era when wintertime heating was minimal, and indoor humidity levels remained low thanks to leaky windows and limited domestic hot water use. But as electricity, running water and a whopping-big oil furnace were added to the house over the years, moisture production skyrocketed, and so did the need for attic ventilation.
This was pretty easy to add in most places, through the use of rooftop vents and gable louvres. But not so in one second-story sunroom with an insulated cathedral ceiling covered in vee-matched, tongue-and-groove pine. With the rafter cavities stuffed full of insulation and entirely sealed, there was no easy way to create an outlet for the moisture that condensed within the ceiling during long cold spells. And condense it did. So much so that every spring two or three gallons of brown, dripping water have to be collected in buckets as a winter’s worth of frost melts in a few days, runs down walls and drips through the board-to-board gaps. The problem remains to this day because it’s so difficult to fix properly.
If this sounds like just another old-house horror story, think again. Many Canadians still construct new cathedral ceilings in exactly the same way as in the bad old days, building headaches for themselves that go beyond just soppy ceilings on warm spring afternoons. Perennially-wet roof structures rot and encourage mold growth, promoting low indoor air quality as it does. I know from the spike in reader emails I get during warm, spring weather that poorly constructed cathedral ceilings are still being built and still causing headaches. The good news is, there's a way around the problem. You can have a frost proof cathedral ceiling as long as you're willing to understand the design features necessary for success and make them a reality. As usual, it takes a little more effort, but it’s all worth it in the end. |
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