It was a beautiful fall day in Shell Knob, Missouri, but the roof Ridgeline Roofing & Solar inspected wasn’t holding up quite as well as the weather. Tim Yates walked the roof of a 20-year-old home and quickly discovered that while the structure had some decent bones, improper ventilation, granule loss, and repair shortcuts were working against it.

Ridge Vent Confusion Leads to Deck Warping

One of the most critical issues? Poor ventilation. The home had multiple ridge vents installed—each at different elevations—but none of them were properly isolated to create effective airflow. While the soffit vents were present, the mismatch between intake and exhaust ventilation created confused airflow, leading to condensation buildup and warped decking.

Ridge vents only work when the space beneath them is continuous and correctly sealed from other roof zones. Without that airflow path, the attic becomes trapped with heat and moisture—especially damaging over time in the Ozarks’ humid climate.

Shingle Wear, Delamination, and Patch Repairs

In addition to ventilation problems, the inspection revealed:

• Granule loss and algae growth, common signs of UV and weather exposure
• Delaminating shingles, a sign the roof has reached the end of its service life
• Improper valley lacing, where older shingle layout methods weren’t followed correctly
• Excessive roof sealant, showing a history of leak patching rather than long-term solutions
• Buried protrusions, where a cosmetic shingle was placed over a power vent without proper layering—often seen in recover jobs rather than clean installations
• Corrugated metal roofing transitions with nail-down panels, secured with ring-shank nails that can cause damage when removed

These conditions highlight the importance of a full roof replacement, especially when multiple issues overlap: aging shingles, failed ventilation, and temporary patch jobs that won’t stand up to seasonal extremes.

Let’s Evaluate Your Roof Before Winter Hits

From Shell Knob to Springfield and everywhere in between, Ridgeline Roofing & Solar delivers ventilation upgrades, structural repairs, and full system replacements using industry-trusted materials like Tamko Titan XT and Polyglass silicone coatings.

Think your roof may be showing signs of failure? Let’s find out. Contact us today!

Hear Tim’s Thoughts

Video Transcript: "Hey Tim Yates, Ridgeline Roofing and Solar. I'm on a roof today, a shell knob and it's a pretty one today. I wanted to talk a little bit about ventilation on this one. This is about a 20 year old roof. It's got some algae on it. You can see where it's shiny, where the granules are coming off, especially see it around towards the front there. Losing some granules. So this roof has ridge vent and the problem with this ventilation is it's all at different heights. So in order for this ridge vent to work, that area underneath for this ridge vent actually needs sealed off and that needs to be its own section. And the same with this one down here. And you can actually see, let me jump down
here real quick, you can actually see what it's doing to this deck. And I looked and it's got, if you look down here, it's got soffit vents under there. So it's just not creating any type of a draft because  it's confusing here. But you can see the warping in the decking here. And these valleys are a real one way lace. And they run this shingle all the way halfway under and then actually pop a chalk line. You get it about the center at the top and you're supposed to come, depending on how long it is, a couple inches out the bottom, pop the line and then cut it. You don't see that it's becoming extinct because all the valleys are doing now are more of a pointed valley where they run a sideways shingle. So there's been some repairs up here. See some sealant, some replaced caps. Some of the caps been replaced down there as well. And you can see a missing shingle there. And there's a couple of pans that they've had trouble with. There's a lot of sealant on this roof. So they've had some issues over time. And then somebody put a cosmetic shingle over this power vent and it really shouldn't be there. It should have another shingle running underneath it. And this part isn't really needed. I usually see, call that burying a protrusion. You usually see that if somebody's too preoccupied to take those protrusions off when they're recovering a roof. So you see those a lot more recovers than you do just a one layer. I've got a corrugated roof down here that's actually nailed on. And the metal in the transition down there is screwed on. And some of the couple of the shingles are delaminating. Those nails that are that corrugated, it's nailed on with this ring shank nails. And they're really tough to get out without tearing stuff up. Anyway, that's all I got. So you guys have any questions about your roof, residential or commercial, please give us a call. Thank you."