Attic exhaust fan suggestion?

[Peter Langevin]

I have a finished attic/loft which is a bedroom in a 3 story home. It is used as a bedroom, and suffers terribly from exhaustive heat in the summer. The house has A/C, but it seems to really work hard to cool that room. The whole room is insulated on all sides, except under the floor since it is finished below - but walls and ceiling are insulated well.

Some of the homes around me have attic exhaust fans. Not the whole house type, but rather the small 1' x 1' square 5" high fans that exhaust the heat from the attic. I'm wondering what the general consensus is on how much this would help? Would it be a worthwhile purchase, or is there another way to increase the comfort in the room?

Thanks all for suggestions and wisdom.

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

I have two of them on my house and when i just had 1 of them and it stopped working. My 3.5 ton cooling system would not keep up in the 100ºF + weather. I put two back and the unit does fine now. Worth every penny they cost and Low's or other store cost about $39.00 to $69.00 .

TURTLE

[Joseph Meehan]

If you are talking about venting the finished area, then I would suggest a fan would be in order.

If you are talking about venting a non-living area, not part of the finished area, not insulated from the outside, I suggest that you may be better off talking a good look at the passive ventilation that is there and deciding if that can be improved. Most of the time a better passive system is to be preferred over an active system. That would include increases in both high exhaust openings and low inlet openings.

There are exceptions to this. I some areas, generally of high heat, even the best passive system needs some help. I do suggest that you take some time to engineer the active system. Adding a fan that is just going to pull air from a near by high vent and exhaust it, may actually decrease the efficiency.