Best Practices for Installing a Solar Attic Fan
Tucked away at the top of your home, the attic is easy to forget about. While you don’t need to devote loads of your time to maintaining the perfect, healthy attic, a little attention throughout the year can go a long way. Luckily, most attics aren’t high maintenance, and the best way to maintain the attic is to use an attic fan to ensure round-the-clock ventilation.
Attic fans ensure your attic stays cool and dry, preventing the buildup of warm, humid air that can cause mold, mildew, and rot in the summer and ice dams in the winter. Using an attic fan will also keep the rest of your home cooler by preventing hot attic air from leaking into the rest of your home. If you use an AC, it’s a good way to make your AC work less hard at cooling your home, thus saving you energy.
If you want to go a step further and save even more energy, switching to a solar attic fan is the way to go.
Installing a solar attic fan isn’t hard, ensure you follow the manufacturer’s directions and keep the following best practices in mind:
Ensure adequate ventilation.
For optimal use, your solar attic fan needs enough ventilation space. Aim for about 1 square foot of ventilation per 300 square feet of attic space.
Check attic sealing.
The best attics are ventilated and sealed. If you install a solar attic fan in an unsealed attic, your energy-saving fan will be an energy waster by exhausting cool air from your home outside. Therefore, make sure your attic is completely sealed before installing a solar attic fan.
Choose the right location.
You should take some time to figure out where your solar attic fan should go. The solar panels should be on the spot of your roof that gets the most sunlight. For people in the U.S., this is usually on the south side of the roof (away from trees).
On the inside, you’ll want to choose a spot away from your roof ridge. Depending on the model of the fan, you’ll also want to place it between two rafters.
Replace shingles.
Once your attic fan is in you’ll want to replace any shingles you had to remove when you installed your fan. Otherwise, you’ll be replacing one problem (poor ventilation) with another (roof leaks).
Choose the right fan.
Go with a trusted company like Whole House Fan that can suit any attic whether you need Gable Solar Attic Fan or Wireless Solar Attic Fan that doesn’t require a gable.