Roof Vents for Dummies

Roof Vent with Flashing

One dead giveaway that our DotD candidates are merely cribbing information from somewhere else is the omission of critical steps – either because they run out of room, have met their minimum word count, or because they just don't realize that the omitted steps are important. Take, for example, eHow.com contributor Carson Barrett, who thought he was helping when he posted "How to Install Bath Vents Through a Roof"¹ at HomeSteady.com. Never mind that Carson misinterpreted "bath vents" to mean "exhaust fan vent"...

Trust us when we say that there must be about a bazillion online references that tell you how to run a new vent through a roof – there seem to be at least half a dozen at eHow (and Hunker) alone. So it's no surprise that Barrett was able to find some straightforward instructions, copy-reword-paste them, and collect his fifteen bucks. His instructions are no better or worse than any others we've seen... until he gets to the last steps.

Carson manages, with only minor problems, to reword instructions for how to cut a hole in a roof (nail, drill, reciprocating saw, etc.) and lift the shingles for a roof vent's built-in flashing -- which he identifies as "the flat area around the vent hood," rather a... nonsense definition. To place the vent with its flashing, Carson says to...

"Slide the top edge of the flashing underneath the shingles on the top and sides of the roof so the shingles overlap the edge of the flashing..." ...which seems a little awkward to us. Next, the reader is supposed to "Drive galvanized nails, through the edge of the flashing every 4 inches, [sic] to secure it to the roof." We don't know how those commas made it past the crack J-school grad content editors at DMS, but the idea's OK (except perhaps he should have said "galvanized roofing nails")... Carson then instructs his readers to caulk the edges of the flashing and the nail heads. So far, so good. It's now that he gets lazy, with these stellar instructions for completing the vent installation:

"Lay the shingles on the top and sides of the vent hood, flush against the roof."

Ummm, dude, that's pretty sparse. And shouldn't you do something to, we dunno, fix the shingles in place again? Like nails? Roofing cement? Whatever? Sure you should! And you should also finish running the ductwork to the vent, for that matter!

But no, Barrett had met his minimum word count, and neither he nor his content editor knew any better, so he left his instructions incomplete. Now any idiot who follows his instructions ("idiot" meaning someone who thinks eHow is a reliable source of DIY information) has a leaky roof. Talk about your Dumbass of the Day...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_8673500_install-bath-vents-through-roof.html

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DDIY - ROOFS