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Rick II. What is the trick you want the attic fan to perform? GeneL
*just wondering if that would be enough to pull hot air out of the attic. i do have ridge vents.
*I put an attic fan in my house, then found this website.The attic fan is useful for me if I want to do work up there and want a breeze. It also helps me by exhausting the dust kicked up by me when working in the space.What it was not useful for was any of the things I expected it to do: - it did not help to lower the house temperature by exhausting the hot air out of the attic (adding insulation to the attic floor did. alot.) - it did not reduce moisture in the attic (if anything, it increased it by pulling in a LOT of humid outside air) in the summer. - it did not reduce my cooling bill (see item one above), it maybe increased it by exhausting some of the cooled air thru leaks in my ceiling, plus it used electricity to run too.Regardless of any of the details of your situation, you will benefit from two things (based on my own experience): - First: search the archives on this website, and others you find (many are referred to here, for instance). I recommend to search for "insulation", "venting", "attic", "moisture", etc. When you look at an archived message, scroll all the way to the bottom and pick "All Messages" and read the string all the way through (many times I was mistaken at first, seeing one message out of its original context, until I realized this feature existed). Also, you can learn a lot by hanging out in your bookstore "home fixit" section - looking through the books before choosing, to find the ones that speak to you at your own level of experience / ability. - Finally: make up your own mind about this matter. No one here can responsibly decide for you, although the advice will be free-flowing, it may not all be correct for your own situation. There are contratictory opinions about some topics, not all of it backed up by facts, some of it clouded by bias (each maker presents their product from their point of view, don't they?), but all of it worth considering so that you make the best decision.I am not sorry that I installed an attic fan, I just use it now for only one specific function. I am still suprised at just how wrong so many of my original assumptions were about insulation, venting, moisture, etc. That there is so much to learn about buildings was not a suprise, but that there is so much that requires careful consideration and expertise was.
*Rick II. Norman Kerr has pretty much said it all. The main heat transfer mechanism in an attic is radiation. Fans and attic ventilation cannot not and will not flush radiation out of the attic. Attic fans may reduce the attic temperature by 20 or 30 degrees. And if you have a leaky ceiling--attic floor-it will pull heat out of the rooms below. But the penalty is it will also pulll heat out in the wintertime. Thus, the fans lower the attic temperature and simultaneously raise your electric bill, and have litle or no effect in lowering the house's air conditioning load. Gable end fans will short circuit the ridge vent. Again, Norm's advice is good. GeneL.
*I put a cheap thermostatically-controlled fan in our Cape's crawl space with the intention of sucking air out of the house. The second floor was unbearably hot because of the inadequacy of the insulation, so i used the fan as a stalling tactic until I could do something about the roof. It really did this quite well, and helped bring A/C air upstairs to compensate for the inadequate HVAC ducting. So, as you can see, the fan was a band-aid for more serious problems, but it did work. In the long term proper radiation-opaque insulation makes a lot more sense.
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