Installing fans on gable vents?

Brian · 2003-07-13T14:42:11+00:00

Hey all,I'm thinking of installing a couple electric duct booster fans onto my gablevents to help remove the heat thats building up in the attic. One on eachend, one pulling air from the outside on one side of the house andexhausting on the other side. Is there any drawbacks to doing this? AnythingI should be concerned with?Thanks all,Brian

Jul 13, 2003 22 Replies

Rate this thread:

meirman 23 years ago

If I were to do that in the late afternoon, most of the hot days it is still hotter outside than my house is inside.

If I didn't have the roof fan, it might be hotter inside, but it would be no less hot outside. So running the whole house fan would give me new air, but it would be very hot air. Other than AC, there would be no way to cool down the house until 10 PM or so when it was finally cool outside.

I'll bet. :)

With regard to time spent sleeping:

Another thing I do is I have a table fan on the window sill above my bed. Well, if it were a real table fan, I would have had to make a bracket or little shelf. This is a fan from some 30's to 60's machinery, I think, and it has a 4 or 5 inch square base.

I've added an external speed control, so I make it slow enough that I can't hear it, and

I've added an external thermostat, so if gets cool enough during the night, outside and then in the room, the fan turns off so that I don't get too cold.

Another thing I had a problem with was that I alwasys needed a cover, a sheet or a blanket no matter how hot it was. When I learned to sleep with no pajamas and no cover, it was like it was 10 degrees cooler.

Meirman

If emailing, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter.

Change domain to erols.com, if necessary.

Vote

meirman 23 years ago

P&M

With those numbers, the fan can run 22 hours a day for the cost of one hour of AC time. In fact my fan at max runs from 9 in the morning until 10 at night. Usually hours less.

Probably even less yet, now that I went two shades lighter on my shingles.

I don't have good numbers on my AC because I don't use it enough to know. I have a 1400 foot home plus bsement, and it runs about an hour the first time it is turned on, after being off for a day or more, and I don't know how much it runs during the rest of the day. but I have a roof fan. I'm sure it woudl run quite a bit more if I didn't.

Possible Anti-my-position arguments: 1) The fan removes air at 120 or

140 degrees, but may replace it with air that is 90 degrees plus, if that is the temperature outdoors. The AC... it has the same problem because the part outside also has to deal with 90 degree air which lowers the efficiency of the AC the hotter it is out. 2) moving air is harder than moving the gas in a pipe/liquid in the AC.

I'm not a conspiracy guy, and I generally think that most people are basically good. But if they can hide 100 billion dollars of receipts at Ahold company, and manipulate California oil prices and Enron statements and Arthur Anderson, I'm sure they can come up with reasons to say a roof fan isn't good when it is.

I would want some source other than the electric company.

And I don't know enough formulas or enough math or have enough data to know for sure. But I'm still convinced using a fan is more efficient

Meirman

If emailing, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter.

Change domain to erols.com, if necessary.

Vote