Onondaga County
Roof Leak Diagnosis in the Town of DeWitt
The cheapest cause of a wet DeWitt attic is a bathroom fan that was added years after the house and ends in the insulation instead of outdoors. The town's median build year is 1963 and 75.8 percent of its 10,996 homes went up before 1980, which is most of a town's worth of houses that had their fans retrofitted rather than built in.
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What a 1963 median build year means for a wet attic
In the Town of DeWitt the median year of construction is 1963. Of 10,996 housing units, 18.7 percent were built in 1939 or earlier, 24.5 percent before 1950, 75.8 percent before 1980 and 24.2 percent in 1980 or later. 69.5 percent are single-family detached and 73.6 percent of occupied units are owner occupied.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, tables B25034 year structure built, B25035 median year structure built, B25024 units in structure and B25003 tenure, accessed 2026-09-14
The Town of DeWitt has 10,996 housing units of which 69.5 percent are single-family detached, 6.2 percent sit in two-unit buildings and 2.6 percent are mobile homes, with 73.6 percent owner occupancy. 75.8 percent of the town was built before 1980 and only 24.2 percent since.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, tables B25034 year structure built, B25035 median year structure built, B25024 units in structure and B25003 tenure, accessed 2026-09-14
The Department of Energy guide requires that a bathroom exhaust fan be ducted to discharge outdoors and not into an attic, crawlspace, garage, interstitial floor space or wall cavity, that the first three feet of duct leaving the fan be straight, that joints be sealed, that the duct be insulated to limit condensation, and that where the housing sits in an attic it be covered with an airtight insulated box sealed to the ceiling drywall.
Source: US Department of Energy, Building America Solution Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, accessed 2026-09-14
The Department of Energy guide records that to meet the local exhaust airflow requirements of ASHRAE 62.2 and Section M1507 of the International Residential Code, bathroom fans need a mechanical exhaust capacity of at least 50 cubic feet per minute for intermittent operation or at least 20 cubic feet per minute run continuously, and notes that ductwork and termination choices reduce measured airflow below the factory rating.
Source: US Department of Energy, Building America Solution Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, accessed 2026-09-14
Jamesville has no Census place-level housing data because it is neither an incorporated village nor a Census designated place. Housing figures for it can only be read from the Town of DeWitt, which contains it, or from ZIP Code Tabulation Area 13078, which the Census does publish and which covers Jamesville and the rural land around it. The two give materially different pictures, and the ZCTA is the closer one.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, tables B25034 year structure built, B25035 median year structure built, B25024 units in structure and B25003 tenure, accessed 2026-09-14
Several places on this site are villages inside towns of a different name, so their Census figures are not interchangeable. Liverpool village sits in the Town of Salina, Solvay village in the Town of Geddes, East Syracuse and DeWitt in the Town of DeWitt, Minoa and Fayetteville and Manlius village in the Town of Manlius, North Syracuse spans Cicero and Clay, Baldwinsville spans Lysander and Van Buren, Camillus village sits in the Town of Camillus, and Marcellus, Skaneateles, Elbridge, Jordan, Tully and Fabius each have a village inside a town of the same name.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates, tables B25034 year structure built, B25035 median year structure built, B25024 units in structure and B25003 tenure, accessed 2026-09-14
Is your shower going into your attic?
Send the DeWitt address and where the mark is. We will arrange a visit that traces the duct before anyone talks about the covering.
Where a retrofitted DeWitt bath fan actually ends
Federal guidance is blunt about this. A bathroom fan must discharge outdoors and never into an attic, a crawlspace, a garage, a floor space or a wall cavity, the first three feet of duct leaving the fan should run straight, the joints should be sealed, the duct should be insulated so it does not condense on itself, and where the fan housing sits in an attic it belongs inside an airtight insulated box sealed to the ceiling drywall. Almost none of that is true of a flex duct pushed into the blown insulation and left there. The same guidance puts a number on whether the fan is doing anything at all: at least 50 cubic feet per minute running intermittently, or 20 running continuously, and a long crushed duct can halve the airflow the factory rating promised. So at the hatch in a DeWitt house the first thing worth finding is where that duct goes, and the second is whether air is actually moving through it. One point of geography to keep straight, because the numbers are not interchangeable: Jamesville sits inside this town and the Census publishes no place-level housing data for it at all, so a DeWitt town figure is not a Jamesville figure, and East Syracuse village inside the town has numbers of its own. We name the geography every figure came from for that reason.
Roof and attic work we arrange across DeWitt
Roof and Attic Leak Diagnosis
Find out where the water is actually getting in before anyone prices a covering, including whether it came through the roof at all.
Leak Diagnosis in DeWitt →Flat and Low-Slope Roofing
Find out whether a nearly flat porch, addition or garage roof leaks because it has the wrong covering on it, and what may lawfully go up there instead.
Low-Slope Roofing in DeWitt →Flashing, Chimney and Skylight Repair
Rebuild the joint the water is actually using, at a chimney, wall, valley, vent or skylight, without re-covering a roof that is still doing its job.
Flashing Repair in DeWitt →Gutters, Downspouts and Roof Drainage
Get the water that leaves the roof away from the house properly, instead of over the gutter, behind the fascia or straight down the foundation wall.
Gutters and Drainage in DeWitt →Attic Ventilation and Air Sealing
Stop indoor air reaching the cold roof deck, and get the vent area and the vent split right, so the attic stops making its own water.
Attic Ventilation in DeWitt →Tell us what the ceiling above your DeWitt bathroom is doing
Where it sits, when it shows, and what the fan sounds like. If it is a duct and an insulated box, that is small work and you will hear that from us.