What are attic fans and ventilation? When it comes to attics, most people just pay attention to their roofs. However, the roof is not the only thing that needs regular maintenance in order to function properly. The insulation system of a home plays an important role in regulating temperature (keeping heat out).
What You Need To Know
1. Why you need attic fans
2. The importance of ventilation in your home
3. How Attic Fans can help reduce the heat on your roofing system and how it will lower your air conditioning bills
4. What to do if you have a leaky roof
Why you need attic fans
It’s less expensive to cool your house than it is to heat it. In the summer, up to 50% of cooling costs can be used just to remove excess heat from the roof. To help reduce this unnecessary cost, you should consider installing an Attic Fan. An attic fan helps remove hot air in two ways: It pulls cooler air into the attic from outside, and pushes hot air out through the roof.
An Attic Fan can also reduce summer cooling costs if it is installed in a vented unconditioned space. Without ventilation, these spaces get so hot that they are often times hotter than the exterior temperature. With an Attic Fan pulling fresh air into your home and pushing hot air out, your attic will be much cooler allowing you to need less air conditioning.
The Importance of ventilation in your home
For many years, houses were built without any thought of how heat or cold would move through the building envelope. With today’s energy-efficient homes and proper insulation, the structure is now a very efficient insulator. The biggest heat gain for any structure results from the sun shining through windows and heating up the interior surfaces (floors, walls, windows).
Another way heat moves into your home is through ventilation. If you don’t provide proper ventilation to remove moist air, this moisture laden air gets heated up in your attic and provides a path for heat to enter your home.
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How Attic Fans can help reduce the heat on your roofing system and how it will lower your air conditioning bills:
The simplest way is perhaps opening windows in the upper story of a house during night time hours so that the cool night air blows through the house, displacing the hot stuffy air that has stagnated during the day.
However, this is not a very efficient way of cooling down since hot air would still enter every opening in the house and no cold air enters from outside to replace it.
Successful air conditioning is usually achieved by using a system that cools the air (a refrigeration system) to remove heat from the space and then re-circulate this conditioned air. The drawback of this solution is that such systems are very energy demanding and make up for large portions of residential electricity consumption in hot climates.
This info will help you more efficiently cool your home; save you money!
A more efficient way of providing cooling is the use of a heat exchanger that transfers heat from the house air to (relatively) cool outside air. This way, no additional energy is needed, and almost all the cooled air stays inside the house. The only concern about this system is that it needs sufficient ventilation in order to work properly.
What to do if you have a leaky roof
If you have a leaky roof, there are many ways to fix it that don’t involve tearing off your roof and replacing the old shingles. However, if you are having persistent problems with leaks or want to avoid a possible issue in the future by installing some extra protection against moisture call us at Pro Home today!