I have an attic fan(whole house fan) I no longer use. I want to insulate it to keep the heat from the attic coming in. Minimum work space. I need a simple solution to this problem besides removing and boarding up.
Piddler
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You could foam it in place... :-P
Simply stretch a tarp across the opening below, then fill-er-up with non-expanding great stuff until the next owner can unearth this archeological monster. However, I'd make the thing safe before entombing it, i.e. disconnect the wiring, terminate it in a sealed junction box, etc.
On second thought, perhaps removing it and wall-boarding the hole shut is simpler...
Build a box to enclose it out of plywood and rigid foam. Caulk or can foam all joints.
Just build the box out of foam, with just enough wood (corner cleats, etc) to weight it down reasonably well.Or just lay a plastic tarp across it and then dump a coupla bags of cellulose insulation on top of that.
Once saw a nice cover. It was a fattish box built out of duct board assembled with foil tape and looked to be just lowered into place over the fan and motor in the attic. Given a loose piece of foil tape it appeared to be covered inside and out with duct board with the foil facing out. The space between the sides of duct board looked to be filled with fiberglass. It looked to be about 3" thick and had some foam tape at the edge to help maintain a seal with the framing around the fan.
It looked to be easily removable and of a size, about 4'square, that would make preparing the whole-house fan for operation as easy as lifting it up and moving it a bit farther into the attic away from the fan.