Anyone ever fitted roof ridge vents to tackle a hot loft?

Should work to cool the house, especially in winter...

So the optimum solution would be ridge vents that can be closed in the winter.

Your loft is unconditioned space. If you have decent loft insulation then it shouldn't matter what temperature your loft is. If you keep stuff up there that needs to be temperature controlled then you need to make your loft a conditioned space, eg with insulation at the rafter level.

In the winter, when condensation and rot may be an issue, and the air can't evaporate much moisture to take away damp, you want more ventilation not less.

Ridge vents are a good way to get airflow, but if you have a gable end then an air vent high up can also help hot air convection and may be easier to install.

If you are boarding at rafter level then soffit and ridge vents are a handy way to get airflow behind the boarding, to keep the roof structure dry.

Theo

If you are concerned about fitting ridge vents which I think I would be wary of, you can get roof vents that replace tiles and putting several in some of the rows near the ridge will have the same effect.

Richard

Many of he new-builds round here have the replacement vent tiles, but oddly some are not near the ridge, but much further down. Is that for air-flow in to and out of the loft?

Are you sure that's not for other purposes eg venting a soil pipe? You don't need large upstands for those nowadays.

Theo

My daughters new build has vents in the roof to vent the en-suites and the bathroom which are windowless and have no exterior wall to vent through. They could easily have vented through the ridge since the roof is all trussed without a ridge board but preferred tile vents.

Richard

For some years now ,for summertime, I replace the plywood loft access panel with some expanded metal sheet. Stops biggest bugs and any abseiling vermin. The hot loft air does not descent through the mesh but joss-stick test only shows upward air movement, not how much. Last year I decided to wedge open the upper level sarking sheets, knowing there is a lot of air gap on the down slope edges of the tiles. Still s hot loft. So when it gets cooler I'll remove a brick from a redundent chimney stack in the loft and put in a fan. At lest with that I can take measurements fan on and fan off on similar days of an established future heatwave. That and will be painting the rendered elevations brilliant white rather than the dirty dingy, heat grabbing surface its become.

My 40yo house has one of these where the garage roof was extended over the cloakroom and hall, which I am convinced is the reason why those two areas are several degrees colder in the winter. I'm inclind to replace it with an ordinary tile as I don't see any reason for ventilating the garage loft in this way. (There's a smilar, much smaller, loft over the utility room at the back of the house that doesn't seem to be suffering by not being ventilated.)

I have done it - but only as a part of a loft conversion[1] where I was partially filling the space between the rafters with insulation and needed to maintain some airflow behind the insulation to keep the timber's dry. Combined with the insulation it did reduce the temperature in the loft in summer - but I expect the insulation was largely the cause of that.