I am in the process of purchasing Vinyl Soffit material for my one story ranch. I have figured that I need approximately 180 lineal feet of material. The house is 54' long by 25' wide and the the overhang at the soffit is 19". My real question is do I want continuous vented soffit or is that overkill? I have approximately 8 roof vents and gable vents at both ends of the house. The reason I am replacing is there is several spots in the current soffits that have warped and the whole thing needs to be painted. Oh by the way, the house is made of brick if that makes any difference.

When I bought my 30 year old house in 2003, it had soffit vents but nothing to vent from the attic. In 2004 I had three 14" internally braced wind turbine vents installed. At the same time we changed all the windows and doors to the house, replaced the HVAC and worked hard on making the house energy efficient given that we live just to the West of New Orleans. Our electricity bills dropped by about $125 pr month with these changes. Hurricane Katrina (which missed us) still brought wind gusts somewhere between 100 to 135 mph. The 135 was the last number shown on a neighbors anemometer. In any event, we suffered minor damage but 2 of the 3 wind turbines blew off (I suspect they spun themselves into orbit) and left two 14" openings in our roof. Some rain came in until a neighbor was able to close the holes with the seat cushions from his boat, plastic garbage bags and the ever popular duct tape. Looking around the neighborhood, I noted that I was not alone in loosing these type of vents. However, I also noted that most of the vents still on roofs were either externally braced wind turbines or low profile power vents. So I'd like to change my internally braced 14" wind turbine to an externally braced type or a power vent. I'll need to do this myself because roofers around here are only doing entire roofs. In fact, I had to replace the 17 shingles and 2 whirlybirds myself. Fortunately, I only had to replace the top of the turbines as the bases were intact so I just bought the same model and screwed them back on. My questions are: Is an externally braced wind turbine made in the 14" size? If not, is there a power vent that has a base compatible with that of a 14" whirlybird? I would have no problem paying a roofer to replace the existing whirlybird/base, but that's not possible and I while I didn't mind (too much) replacing a few shingles I don't want to attempt to replace the base and flashing.