To deal with heat in the attic, consider adding extra vents and a roof exhaust to improve air circulation, and installing a solar fan for more active heat reduction.
Consider adding gable vents or roof vents. Use Fans: Place box fans or oscillating fans to circulate air. Exhaust fans can help push hot air out. Insulate Properly: Ensure that the attic is well-insulated to keep heat from penetrating into your living space. This can help maintain a cooler temperature.
There's a wealth of advice on how to cool an attic, such as getting passive vents like ridge vents and switching to a light-colored metal roof. But the big four hot attic solutions are: installing a radiant barrier, attic insulation, attic ventilation, and sealing cracks & air leaks.
Contact a professional to add extra vents and a roof exhaust to enhance the natural circulation of air throughout your home and reduce the temperature in your attic. For a more active way of easily reducing the heat in your attic, a solar fan is ideal.
A better option is to place a fan in your window, pulling more cool air in quicker. Open the door of the room to create cross-ventilation with your single window, pushing stale air out the room, and allowing more air to circulate throughout your home.
Bathroom fans and kitchen exhaust fans draw heat and humidity away from your house. Use exhaust fans more regularly (not just after a steamy shower or a long day of cooking) during the summer months to cool your home by turning them on during the day to draw hot air out of your home.
Creating a cross breeze with fans is the best way to circulate cooler air and push hot air out. Find the coolest part of your house (either the coolest room or outside air from a window in the shade) and angle the fan towards the hottest part of your house.
The primary function of attic fans is to promote airflow within the attic, which can help reduce temperature and moisture levels and provide several valuable benefits.
If your room has a ceiling fan, start by changing the direction of its rotation to warm up the room. The wintertime fan direction is clockwise at a slow speed. This pulls the cool air up and moves warm air from the ceiling to the floor.
While not a substitute for traditional attic insulation, radiant barriers may reduce your air conditioning bill by 5% to 10% (according to the U.S. Department of Energy) if you live in a hot climate. Radiant barriers have little or no effect on winter cold air or heating bills.
Recommend a Roofing Contractor
Even if the HVAC contractor identifies a problem with the attic ventilation system, it may be best to allow the roofing contractor to step in.
Note excessive heat – if it's 90 degrees outside, the attic temperature shouldn't be more than 110 degrees. More often than not, attic temperatures will be in excess of 125 degrees on a 90 degree day. This will overwork your air conditioning equipment, run up your utility bill and shorten the life of your roof.
Ventilation. Ventilation is key to releasing heat trapped in your roof, and by installing ridge and soffit vents along the peak of your roof, at the tops of your sidewalls, and on the underside of your roof overhangs, you can cut the temperature by as much as 10 degrees.
Install electric ventilators and attic fans, which remove hot air from an attic. They have thermostats that turn the fan on at a recommended preset temperature of 100-110 degrees. Alternatively, install passive vents such as gable, soffit and ridge vents, which are openings in the roof that allow hot air to escape.
Step 1: Turn off your central heating and wait for around 20 minutes for the system to cool down. Step 2: Lay a dry cloth or towel beneath the radiator you want to bleed, just in case any water escapes. Step 3: Use your radiator key to slowly open the valve, turning it anti-clockwise to do so.
Heat rises to the top of the house and gets trapped under the roof. Roof windows also mean plenty of sun throughout the day. All this can cause an uncomfortable attic temperature, especially during hotter months.
By changing your ceiling fan direction to clockwise, its blades can push that warm air down towards the floor. It also brings the cool air from the floor to the ceiling. When your ceiling fan is moving clockwise, run it at the lowest speed.
Ceiling Fans
They help improve comfort year-round by effectively circulating air throughout a room. Summer Use: Run ceiling fans counterclockwise to create a cooling breeze. Winter Use: Reverse the direction to clockwise and set to low speed to circulate warm air from the ceiling down to living spaces.
Why are attic fans not used anymore? Due to inefficiencies in relying on existing attic vents for air intake, attic fans have lost popularity. These vents often aren't designed for this purpose, resulting in inadequate replacement air supply.
Installing Rafter Vents
Complete coverage of the attic floor along with sealing air leaks will ensure you get the best performance from your insulation. Rafter vents ensure the soffit vents are clear and there is a channel for outside air to move into the attic at the soffits and out through the gable or ridge vent.
To cool down a room without AC, make sure to use window fans, ceiling fans, or tower fans. Keep your room cooler all day by covering windows to prevent heat from sunlight coming in. You can also reduce humidity, block air leaks, and ventilate out hot air to cool your entire home.
The warmer portion of this air will naturally rise to the top floor, so place a window fan up there, too—on the other side of the home, facing out—to expel the heat. To assist the process, put standalone fans, ones that are capable of tilting, on the lower levels, pointing upward if possible.
A powerful fan draws cooler early morning and evening air through open doors and windows and forces it up through the attic and out the roof vents. This sends hot air up and out, cooling your house and your attic.
Open windows on opposite sides of the house to take advantage of natural airflow patterns and create cross-ventilation. This air flow pushes hot air out and lets cooler air in. To enhance the effect, put fans in the windows during the night to pull in more air.