Electric Attic Fans but No Thermostat

[Datwood2009]

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I moved into a house about a year ago. I noticed over the summer that the upstairs would get pretty hot (we live in Alabama). Well I finally noticed we had two electric attic fans. I've been researching them over the fall and winter months and remembered back to the house I grew up in. We had an electric attic fan but there was a thermostat in the upstairs part of the house. I knew we didn't have a thermostat in our new house but I double checked instead. I was right, there is no thermostat. So I was wondering how in the world would these fans ever turn on? I have two light switches at the top of the stairs but both control the lights. I would like to get these fans working before summer, what should I do?

[Crazed fan repairman]

Buy a new house. Don't mess with the fans, or you may blow yourself up!

[John Grabowski]

*The small attic ventilator fans normally have their own attached thermostat. Look closely where the feed wire enters and you should see a small knob (Smaller than a pencil) that gets rotated with a screwdriver. There should also be a small temperature chart around it.

[A. Baum]

I have a Broan Gable fan that has its own built in adjustable thermostat. I have it set to come on at 110F.

[mm]

Is the fan running now? If not, how come?

If the switch is off, turn it on.

Is the fan running now? If not, it probably has a thermostat. If yes, maybe it has a broken thermostat.

My roof fan has a thermostat connected to it, about a foot from the fan. I also installed two switches in the second floor hall. One to turn the fan on when the thermostat would turn it off, and one to turn it off when the stat would turn it on. I don't take hot showers so I never use the first, but I use the second in the spring and the fall with the hope that the hot attic will warm my house a bit.

For a while it seemed to be on all the time, and I thought I needed a thermostat. The cheapest way to get one seemed to be to buy a whole new fan, which would come with a stat and fan with a motor. The motors have broken for me every 3 to 12 years, so if I get an extra one, I'll surely use it eventually. But I think I was wrong. Later it went on and off like it used to.

[trader4]

The ones I've seen have the thermostat on it's own small box a couple feet back from the fan. That's where they should be, in the attic so they respond to the attic temp, not the temp of the upstairs house. Just start tracing back the wiring from the fan, which in the typical attic, should not be hard to do.