This is a problem because this hot air transfers heat through your ceiling into your house, making it hotter and harder to cool. A hot attic increases your aircon costs and makes your home less comfortable to live in. A well-installed solar attic fan system replaces hot attic air with cool air, thereby cooling your home.
During cold, wet winters, your attic space is at risk of mildew, dampness, and other water damage. Also, ice can collect in the eaves of your roof and damage it through a process known as ice damming.
A solar attic fan deals with the damp by expelling humid air and drawing in dry air, reducing attic humidity. We measure the air venting capacity of a solar fan in cubic feet per minute or CFM. CFM tells you how much air per minute a fan can displace under optimum operating conditions. Your attic area is simple to calculate.
All you need to do is to measure the length and width of your home and multiply them together. This will give you your attic square footage. Attic fans can make a difference in a number of ways. In the summer, a properly installed attic fan can remove excessive heat build up, providing cooling to an attic space. This helps reduce the pressure on your insulation systems, preventing unwanted heat transfer into your living space.
This ultimately makes your home feel cooler, while also alleviating the work that your air conditioning system needs to put forth. In the winter, attic fans can also make a big difference by removing heat and moisture that escapes from the home.
This helps prevent things like mold growth and ice damming. Attic fans can help your house feel cooler on hot days. With that being said, they are not going to cool your entire house. To maximize the cooling benefit of an attic fan, make sure you have enough insulation in your attic and air seal all of the cracks and gaps.
Other cooling techniques such as running ceiling fans, switching light bulbs over to LED, installing energy efficient windows, and using smart thermostats are also good ways to help keep your home cool.
Attic fans are good at what they do: removing unwanted heat and moisture from an attic. They have earned a bad reputation because of poor quality products and installation. There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the benefits that they provide.
This has led to debate on their overall effectiveness. In general, a high-quality attic fan can provide ongoing active ventilation to protect your, support insulation systems, and help provide some cooling benefits in certain climates.
Running an attic fan all the time in theory is a good idea. You want your attic to be close to the outside temperature.
However, if you have a powered attic fan, you may not want it to run all the time because of the electric costs. In this case, setting a timer or thermostat might be worth consideration. Alternatively, a solar powered attic fan can provide constant air flow as long as there is sunlight to keep it running. This is a great solution to getting the most benefit from a fan without having to worry about operating costs.
Attics and More is an innovative, eco-technologies based company that helps homeowners conserve energy, save money, live more comfortably, and protect the environment. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. In simple words, it indicates the amount of air that a fan will displace every minute under optimal operating conditions.
Knowing the capacity of your fan, you can very well determine the number the fans required to cover the entire house. Next is the amount of energy or power consumed by the fan. Power consumption is always measured in watts.
You may decide on two fans with lower wattage than a single fan consuming more power as per the space to be covered. After all, the main idea of installing a Solar Attic Fan is to minimize energy consumption and its cost. The size of the attic space of your roof is one of the essential factors in determining the number of fans you require for your premises.
The size of the attic is measured in square feet. Determining the area of your attic is simple. All you need to do is multiply the length and width of your house.
I took sq. Do I need to install a gable vent? Thanks, PaulZ. I just had my house re-roofed and notice when I went into the attic that there the sheet metal pipes that vented to box vents in the roof were not sealed to the box vents. Is this normal, or should these pipes? I can see light coming through the underside of the box vents. This is particularly true if the ridge vent is your only means of venting the attic. If you have other vents such as soffit or gable vents to act as intake vents, it would lessen the amount of air pulled in the ridge vent by the power vent fan.
If you decide to install the power vent fan anyway, it should be located a couple of feet down from the peak of the attic to remove as much hot air as possible. Good luck with your project! I am going to install an attic fan in the gable. I have soffit and ridge vents. To minimize the problems should I reduce the size of the fan? Is the distance below the peak important? The area is sq. Thank you.
If you do put one in, it should be as near the peak as possible. I have a one story steel frame house, the rafters are also steel so it becomes an oven in the attic. I have no soffits, but there is a gable vent at each end of the house and four ridge vents. I was wondering if I could install a couple of fans in the ridge vents facing outward to exhaust the heat? Other options include adding a thermostat controlled power vent fan in the roof near the peak or a vent fan in your attic blowing out of one of the gable vents.
However, there can be problems associated with using a power vent in conjunction with a ridge vent. I have an attice without any soffit vents or a ridge vent, I just havbe two very small gable vents, one on each side at the top. I was told I should have 4 box vents installed acrossed the back of my roof and then two sets of gable vents installed on each side-down low to allow for the proper venting.
Is there any problem with this solution? I am replacing a sq ft hip roof with new shingles and the roofer wants to install a ridge vent and eliminate my existing 5 turtle vents and one power vent. I have soffit vents now but suspect that they may not all be clear due to blown cellulose attic insulation.
Any recommendations on the roof venting? Hi Rick, I have the same problem in my attic with blown insulation possibly covering the soffit vents. If you can find a way to see if the vents are clear, and you have enough soffit and ridge vents area combined 1 square foot of vent space for every square feet of attic area , then you should be fine without a power vent. To find out more about the amount of attic venting needed, see our article on Adding Soffit Vents. I just had attic foil barrier and more insulation installed.
I live in houston Tx. Any thoughts??
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