Tell-Tale Summer Signs Your Attic Needs More Ventilation
Attics are like the unsung heroes or villains of the house. If kept in good working condition they will help keep the rest of your house healthy and well ventilated. However, if your attic needs attention and you ignore it, it can cause a whole host of problems. One of these problems is ventilation.
If your attic isn’t kept dry, properly insulated, well-ventilated, and cared for, it can create ice dams on your roof, mold on your attic surfaces, a home for pests, and a stuffy household.
Luckily, avoiding a hot attic, keeping preventing ice dams in the winter, and stopping mold growth, can all be fixed by taking some time to improve ventilation in your attic.
Here we will discuss some tell-tale signs your attic needs more ventilation and how to fix it.
Summer Signs Your Attic Needs More Ventilation
It’s important to check your attic both in the summer and winter to see how it is holding up in the extreme cold and heat. Below are some ways you can determine in the summertime whether or not your attic needs more ventilation.
Going up into your attic on a hot summer day can be a daunting task. You know that you will be greeted by scorching hot temperatures and high humidity. Well, if that’s the case for your attic, that’s the best sign that your attic needs better ventilation.
If you go up there and you’re immediately greeted by painfully high temperatures and humidity, that means your attic isn’t well ventilated. While slightly higher temperatures than the rest of your house and the outdoor air isn’t necessarily a red flag, if it’s 70 degrees outside and your attic feels like a hundred with high humidity, that is definitely a sign of a ventilation problem.
If this isn’t the case for your attic, that doesn’t mean you are definitely in the clear. Another, less obvious way to check your attic ventilation in the summer is by checking the ceiling of your attic. During a very hot summer day, you can go up there to check your attic ventilation by placing your hand on the ceiling. If the ceiling is warm, you need to improve your attic ventilation.
How to Improve Attic Ventilation
Although improving attic ventilation isn’t the easiest project, it is a necessary one that will save you from worse problems in the future.
- Add soffit vents: Soffit vents are a passive ventilation system installed on the tallest part of your attic that allows hot air to escape and fresh air to cycle into the attic from below.
- Add roof vents: Roof vents are like little metal chimneys attached to your roof that connect to your attic. Like a soffit vent, roof vents allow that hot, trapped, and humid air to escape.
- Add attic exhaust fans: Attic exhaust fans are exactly what they sound like. They are fans that actively ventilate your attic, pulling fresh air from below and pushing the hot and humid trapped air out of your attic.
If you believe your attic needs more ventilation, check out the attic fans from WholeHouseFan.com, including this solar attic fan and smart energy saving fan.