Replaced roof 2 years ago. Last December my son climbed on roof for christmas lights and took a picture of a toilet vent, seems broken. It seems just a vertical pipe with some imperfection cut 4 inches tall. Is that normal, or I need to purchase a PVC U bend and press on top?
What does the vent on your neighbor's house look like. If you can't see it from the street, maybe from a second floor window.
I've never seen a bathroom vent that was more than a pipe. I suppose it can rain in, but the rain would end up in the toilet drain, right?
Mine were always straight up, no bend. Not sure of the height if that matters.
Just looked at my house. The pipe extends about 15" above the shingles. These houses were built about 6 years ago and a straight vertical pipe.
I've never seen a U-shaped one. Have you? Sure, it rains in but where does the rain go? Down into the toilet drain pipe.
Mine is about 6" tall and straight. What do your neighbor's have?
micky wrote on 5/7/2024 12:59 PM:
Wouldn't a pigeon or a squirrel dive into the open roof drain and get stuck inside when evading capture by a hawk or an eagle?
Has not happened yet, but I did have a each of those down the chimney before I put a cap on it.
When my furnace was replaced, the PVC exhaust pipe needed to be replaced and I questioned why it was left sticking straight out of the wall outside with no down-elbow on the end. The answer was "not necessary". About 2 years later my neighbour told me that he saw birds going in & out ... swallows had built their nest about 6 feet in ! Lucky the heating season was done - I let them hatch & leave. ... which reminds me - to replace the little mesh cover that I installed at that time .. The one time that I had a squirrell in the fireplace - as I tried to devise a way to capture him - all I could think about was a crazed sooty rodent loose in my house ... As it turned out, I got a pair of long leather gloves and simply reached in and gently grabbed him - he wasn't wild & crazy at all. John T.
When we had the squirrel I was not home but a neighbor came over and helped. The chimney was for a woodstove in the family room and the clean out was on the inside. They closed off the door tot he rest of the house, opened the sliding door to outside, then opened the door on the clean out. The squirrel came out, looked around, saw the open door. Good chance he is still running away.
I have actually seen a few with the inverted "U" vents - no idea why
Every house I every owned had the vent pipes straight up. Just make sure that if you have any chimneys nearby that the top of the chimneys are higher than the top of the vent pipes. Otherwise you run the risk of sucking carbon monoxide and/or smoke into your house. I only had a problem with the vertical vent pipe once, when a lot of blowing petals from a flowering tree landed in the vent pipe and clogged it. I prevented a recurrence by covering the opening in the vent pipe with window screening. However, I couldn't do anything about a persistent woodpecker that loved broadcasting its location by hammering on the vent pipe. Inside the house it sounded like someone was using a jack hammer on the roof.
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