Andrew Barss wrote:
I'm looking for advice and ideas for improving energy efficiency in
my house, especially heat from the roof and attic.

I own an older house in Tucson, and we are trying to do what we can to
decrease our electricity (mostly air conditioning) bills. The house
has
a peaked roof, with a low attic that has minimal access. The attic
has some blown-in loose insulation between the ceiling joists, and
nothing on the underside of the roof itself (and putting anything
there is essentially impossible). We have some degree of venting --
there are small
vents on the two end walls near the peak, and two passive vents
(rotary type) on the roof, about four feet down from the peak.

I've heard various things, some conflicting, about how to better
the situation:

a) blow in a lot more insulation.
b) increase airflow using soffet vents (aka birdboard).
c) do both
d) do both, but with some sort of a channel up from the soffet
vents to above the insulation.

e) tear the roof off, put a lot of money into a high-tech roof
treatment. The curent roof is light-colored shingles,
and in quite good condition.


Anyone living in the Southwest have advice on what the best move is?


In addition to the other wonderful suggestions, I'd offer the following:

1. Light-colored roof. A good idea, BUT... drive around your city. Do you
see any? No? Why not? The reason is that they discolor in a ghastly fashion
from the junk in the air. In places like Rome, they have permanent
pressure-washer crews prowling the city cleaning off the marble statues. IF
you're lucky, one side of the roof may be completely unseen by the
picky-public and you could get away with a white roof there.

2. You can't have too many soffit vents. If your ENTIRE soffit is a vent,
that's good. I'm not sure what birdboard might be, but if it's anything like
the perforated Hardiplank, it's probably insufficient. While the holy plank
stuff has a lot of holes, their total combined area is miniscule.

Experts agree that the unobstructed soffit vent area should be 1 sq in for
each 1 sq ft of attic space (again, more is better).