What the heck is this ?

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

I found these ventilation ducts in a home I was inspecting last week. They are connected to plastic storage container boxes that are glued to the sheathing. The other ends of the ducts are connected to the soffit vents. There isn’t any air coming into the attic, it just goes directly from the soffits to the static roof vents via these ducts

Does anyone have an idea why someone would do this?

Thanks

Marty

[twitt (Thomas Witt, CMI MD. Lic. # 30933)]

Nope!

[ddagostino (Dominic DAgostino, CMI HI3957)]

Watched too many MacGyver episodes…

Dom.

[mraumikaitis (Mark Raumikaitis, CMI, NH Lic #133, NH Septic #12)]

New one for me…it is a hip roof…perhaps someone misunderstood the concept of adding passive vents for additional ventilation air.

[lkage (Larry Kage, CMI)]

@mleese

I found these ventilation ducts in a home I was inspecting last week. They are connected to plastic storage container boxes that are glued to the sheathing. The other ends of the ducts are connected to the soffit vents. There isn’t any air coming into the attic, it just goes directly from the soffits to the static roof vents via these ducts

Does anyone have an idea why someone would do this?

Thanks

Marty

Do you have a picture of the soffit vents from inside and a ways away from the outside that you can post?

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

I didn’t take any pictures of the static vents. They were pretty standard 10 x 10 vents. But I got 1 soffit vent.

Do you think they were not wanting the air in the house to vent to the outside for some reason or maybe the attic air as well?

Thanks for all of the responses

This is way cool

[ccurrins (Christopher Currins, CMI)]

Failed flashing repair, from the interior, the duct pipe channels the water to the soffit. :margarit:

[rcooke (Roy D. Cooke, Sr)]

@mleese

I didn’t take any pictures of the static vents. They were pretty standard 10 x 10 vents. But I got 1 soffit vent.

Do you think they were not wanting the air in the house to vent to the outside for some reason or maybe the attic air as well?

Thanks for all of the responses

This is way cool

Thanks Marty a first for me …

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

Here is a pic showing that the ducts are attached to the soffits

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

That would be twisted. No attic ventilation then

[lkage (Larry Kage, CMI)]

@mleese

I didn’t take any pictures of the static vents. They were pretty standard 10 x 10 vents. But I got 1 soffit vent.

Do you think they were not wanting the air in the house to vent to the outside for some reason or maybe the attic air as well?

Thanks for all of the responses

This is way cool

Did it reek of a grow house?

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

Didn’t notice any smell and I would have recognized it since one of my commercial real estate clients rents to a pot store

[sfetty (Dave Fetty, CMI)]

@ccurrins

Failed flashing repair, from the interior, the duct pipe channels the water to the soffit. :margarit:

My first thought too. More likely some homeowner nut… they did put a lot of work into it.

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

Yep. pretty creative

[jzehnder (Jeff Zehnder)]

Creative solution to nothing…

Maybe the roof vents leaked and these are fancy drains???

[wwilson3 (Wayne Wilson, TN 439)]

LOL You guys . It is a transmitter for the mother ship . The plastic box are amplifiers . you fellows need to study a bit .

[rfigliolo (Rich Figliolo)]

Now, That makes sense!
LOL
Thanks Wayne that’s a good one.

[jspencer (Jeff Spencer)]

They put a lot of time and money into doing something completely wrong.

[jjonas (Jeffrey Jonas)]

@jspencer

They put a lot of time and money into doing something completely wrong.

Care to share what the “completely right” way of doing this would be? :neutral:

[mleese (Marty J. Leese)]

I was thinking about this configuration being used for drainage, however the ducts don’t go directly down to the soffits. They go down to the joists and then back up a little before they go into the soffits. Plus why did’t they use a hose instead of ducting material? There would be all sorts of water sitting in the low spots and there wasn’t any. We just had a big rainfall too.
I think something else is going on here. I just wish I could speak with the owners who did this.

Thanks again for responding