Do Solar Attic Fans Help

Arguments against solar attic fans.

Do solar attic fans help.

This pressure balance improvement and the cooling provided by the air flow are most significant in the case of a leaky. And it s part of the reason that my state georgia has banned power attic ventilators unless they re solar powered which was a concession needed to get the grid powered fans banned. They can provide a cooling effect that reduces temperature significantly in your house. How an attic fan works.

Attic fans exhaust hot air from your attic to the outside. Do attic fans really help to cool a room. Other arguments for solar attic fans. The downside of attic ventilation fans.

Because solar attic fans operate with a lower power output they are unable to move as much air as some of the other options that are available. Using the simple physics principle of air circulation it can draw in cool air while letting out the warm air. But they re much easier to install since no wiring is needed. Ad the infrared rays from the sun are powerful.

However there is no statistical evidence of this being true. The solar attic fans all moved less than 1 000 cubic feet of air per minute cfm and they did nothing to lower the temperature inside my own attic. I have found other points that solar attic fans help keep attics cooler and therefore extend the life of your roofing shingles. It will offer you more benefits that include.

These fans are designed to remove excess heat from your attic which in theory is supposed to lessen the load on the air conditioning in your home. Good insulation reduces fan effectiveness. An attic fan is installed on the slanted side of your roof or on one of the gable sides of your attic. You will probably need two solar attic fans to get the results you want.

Exhausting moderate amounts of attic air as solar fans do can counteract this reducing infiltration my calculations show it to be about right for a vented attic but either do the calculations or measure the pressures. To determine the number of cubic feet per minute needed for a power vent fan multiply the number of square feet in your attic by 0 7. But there s really a more fundamental reason that power attic ventilators won t help a lot and for some reason i didn t mention that in the original article. Solar powered attic vent fans usually don t move as many cubic feet of air per minute cfm as hardwired fans.

Attic fans are intended to cool hot attics by drawing in cooler outside air from attic vents soffit and gable and pushing hot air to the outside. Now there are many articles that are against solar attic fans for many different. However if your attic has blocked soffit vents and is not well sealed from the rest of the house attic fans will suck cool conditioned air up out of the house and into the attic. That means you will need to double up your investment in this area.