Do Solar Attic Fans Work

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.

Do solar attic fans work.

The warm air escapes through the attic and to the attic vents allowing the circulation of chilly air from the windows. Solar powered attic vent fans usually don t move as many cubic feet of air per minute cfm as hardwired fans. Even if you install it yourself and take the tax credit it could still take you 15 years or. An attic fan is installed on the slanted side of your roof or on one of the gable sides of your attic.

Whole house fans work on the principle of removing the hot and humid air out of the house. Good insulation reduces fan effectiveness. 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. Attic ventilation fans whether hard wired or powered by their own solar panels seem like a low cost and effective way to help keep your house cool.

When installed properly on a roof with standard asphalt shingles solar powered attic fans do not require caulk roofing cement or any other product to prevent leaks. The whole house fan is installed inside the attic between the living space and ceiling. 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. If a cloud blocks the sunlight the fans slow or stop.

It helps to cool your home temperatures and the attic by approximately 30 degrees. But they re much easier to install since no wiring is needed. You will probably need two solar attic fans to get the results you want. How an attic fan works.

A great roofer will cut the shingles and lace the fan housing into the shingles so that rain will stay outdoors where it belongs. Danny s tests of solar attic fans showed that in florida where there s abundant solar energy yearly savings from installing two fans in a house with just over 1 000 square feet of air conditioned floor area amounted to only 460 kwh. Depending on what your utility charges that s about 40 per year. 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.

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. This pressure balance improvement and the cooling provided by the air flow are most significant in the case of a leaky. 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 fans exhaust hot air from your attic to the outside.

However the utility of attic ventilation fans is actually quite a controversial topic.