Permies solution to venting an attic?

Proper attic ventilation is important to prevent rot / mold. Most diagrams/designs show an attic that is not actually habitable, it has blown in insulation on the floor and some sort of soffit vents on the eaves for air intake with a ridge vent for outtake or some sort of gable vents on each side of the attic for ventilation.

The house I am brainstorming is going to be 20 x 24' with a 45 degree roof, the attic will be a loft / living space accessible likely by a ladder. Exterior sheathing will be plywood for the roof and walls. Tar paper will be nailed over the plywood for the walls and roof. The roof will be made of metal on top of the tarpaper. Downstairs walls will have sawdust insulation with borax, havent decided what I want for interior walls yet, but it may too be plywood, the attic I may not even make an interior wall or insulation and will have the rafters / exterior plywood exposed, I feel this is something I will decide how I want to modify it over time as I live in and experience house the house feels. I plan to have 2 windows in the attic area. I have no intention of using membranes or moisture barriers (expect the tar paper).

Heat will be RMH or a metal wood burning stove or in emergency propane camper heater. Likely wont have any AC (will only have solar) and for cooling down its back to the olden days of cracking windows to make a draft.

Come to think of it, "venting" may not even be required, the two windows in the attic can be cracked during the day to create a draft which would act like gable vents. However, this wont be possible during the winter.

What is permies thoughts on attic venting, in particular like the house I am describing with a livable attic / loft area.

House location: Tennessee. TN is sub-tropical with humidity but still has four seasons still with freezing during winter months.

Hi Cameron,
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by a permies solution to venting. I think venting in and of itself would align with permaculture values, depending on the materials used.

One thing you might consider researching is the difference between a "hot roof" and a "cold roof" as pertaining to insulation and design. Those terms will bring up lots of good information. Personally I think ventilation is a really good thing for getting rid of moisture problems, so I tend toward the cold roof idea.

One design I saw used soffit vents and roof vents, but allowed the use of the attic space. They achieved this by not filling the insulation cavities completely. If the roof was using 2x6, then they would use insulation meant for 2x4. If the roof was 2x8, then they would use insulation for 2x6. Keeping the insulation towards the inside leaves a 2" (approx) gap between the insulation and the roof. This allows air to move into the soffits and exit the roof vent and keeping things cooler and dryer. Depending on the insluation used, some people would build or buy a spacer between the supports so the insulation would not get into this air gap. This method gives you ventilation, insulation, and a usable attic space. On the other hand it is somewhat a hybrid between a "hot roof" and a "cold roof", and hybrids don't always work as well as one or the other.

Just my two cents.

We bought someone else's dream, an unfinished passive solar house.

The idea was similar to your using windows in the attic on the east and west sides of the house.

After a while, it was too hard to climb into the attic to close or open those windows.

Our roof has an exceptionally large overhang so we put our vents in the overhang.

After ten years we have had no problems with doing that.