Stone Coated Roof Vents

Roof ventilation comes down to moving air, and a house moves a good deal of it through the roof.

Plumbing vents are the pipes that come straight up from the drain lines. They let air into the system so the drains flow, and they carry sewer gas up and out above the roof instead of into the house. Attic vents deal with heat and moisture. In a typical setup, air comes in low at the eaves and leaves high, through vents up on the roof or at the ridge, so the attic is never a closed box. Bathroom fans and kitchen hoods push their air out through a vent cap or an elbow vent. Gas appliances like a furnace or water heater exhaust through the roof too, often through double wall vent pipe.

How many vents a roof gets, and where they go, is decided by your roofer and the other trades on the job. We stay out of that. What we change is how each vent looks once the roof is done.

Our photo set doubles as a catalog, so here is what is in it. O'Hagin low profile vents sit close to the roof plane. Ours show up in shadow gray on gray shingles, as a pair on a tan roof, and in red in a close shot of the louvers. Dormer vents are shaped like a small dormer with the opening on the face, and one of ours sits beside a pipe on a light gray roof with the neighborhood behind it. Elbow vents, the gooseneck shape, hook their opening back down toward the shingles.

We also coat double wall vent pipe, and a red one on red blend shingles is in the set. Heat pipes and vent caps round it out, including a harbor blue vent cap shot up close.

If the vent on your roof has a shape that is not listed here, call and describe it. The pipe jacks, valley metal and other pieces we coat are on our stone coated roof flashings page, and every product is side by side on the products page.

A vent straight out of the box is galvanized steel, bright silver against a roof that is charcoal, brown or gray. On a brand new roof it is often the shiniest thing on the house.

The usual fix is a spray can, and it does not last. Paint on galvanized fades in the sun, flakes at the edges and leaves overspray on the granules around the base. Then somebody has to do it again. The contractor section of our old homepage said it without dressing it up: "Spray painting can be a tiring process, unappealing and prone to deteriorate."

The before and after on our Why Stone Coat page shows the difference in one frame, the same vent in weathered bare metal on the left and stone coated on the right. Stone coated, those unsightly vents blend in and complement the roof and its color instead of fighting it.

Stone coating gives the metal a granule surface, so a vent takes on the texture of the shingles around it as well as their color. Match any color is the rule, with custom color blending for anything unusual, and the shades in our photos run from shadow gray to browns, red and harbor blue.

"Enhance your home with our stone coated vents and flashings." That line opens our homeowner brochure, and the next one reads, "It is quality that you can count on." Once the vent is on, it is maintenance free. You can be assured of never having to clean, prep, or paint your pipes, vents, or other flashings. Our brochures mark the products Low VOC and Super Green, and the vents carry the same 25 year product warranty as the rest of what we make.

The finish is rust resistant and built to withstand extreme heat, which suits roofs near the Bay in Oakland as well as roofs sitting through a hot Tri-Valley summer in Pleasanton or Livermore. The service areas page covers the rest of the towns our vents are made for.

Two of the captions on our Why Stone Coat page tell the story on their own: Before Heat Pipe and After Heat Pipe. The before shot is a tall heat pipe in bare galvanized. The after shot is the same heat pipe, stone coated with its cap, standing on gray shingles where it reads as part of the roof.

Stone coated vents are not only for composition shingle, either. Two photos in our gallery show them on a new wood shake roof, one with hills in the background and one close in, with a flat vent next to the pipes. The finish is there to complement any roof or color, and shake is no exception.

Homeowners who want this look on their own roof should raise it with their roofer before the job starts; our homeowners page explains how. Roofers can find the case for putting stone coated vents on every job on the contractors page. And if the vent stack on the roof is a plain plumber vent pipe, the Rapid Sleeve slides over it.