I swear we wanted to go solar. In fact, the whole reason I had come up with the attic fan idea in the first place was that it would be a solar installation. Our first truly solar initiative. It was going to be great… it was going to be green, the orchestral selection I would play upon completion was straight from Beethoven.
There were problems with this solar business right from the start. We really needed an attic fan. We live in Northern California where most of the time you don’t need air conditioning but when you do – holy moly. The past few days the temperatures were topping 107 degrees and us without air conditioning! The house, although remarkably cool in the morning, was a blood bath by 5:00 at night. An attic fan would help get the hot air circulating and pull it out of our top floor roasting room. The catch – this fan needed to be one serious big, bad puppy.
Clay roof – major issue! Clay does not work well with solar. We could cut only slightly into our roof and would have to use the existing venting/openings from our oven hood and chimney. The terracota tiles are from 1950 and high maintenance on the best of days: no walking, cutting or placing anything on top of these little whiners or the tiles crack.
In the end, after alot of online searching (this article was particularly helpful), we realized that the solar models would not work with our roof, let alone cool the house as effectively as we wanted. We headed off to Home Depot’s Attic Fan section and chose the fan that could move the maximum amount of cubic feed of air every minute (CFM). We knew that solar fans would not spin without sunlight and wanted our fan to continue cooling into the evening. Sadly, we bought and installed an electric attic fan. Still better than air conditioning someday I hope to have the fan and all other electrical equipment in the house running off a solar panel!
Oh and the installation? Easy peasy… follow the directions in the box… borrow a couple of tin snippers and vada-bing/vada-boom: one Sunday afternoon later – you’ll have yourself an attic fan!
Benefits of an Attic Fan
- average cost: $100-$300
- installation: easy … you should be able to do this one on your own in an afternoon or a day.
- lowers summer electricity bills by $30/month in air conditioning
- federal tax credit available for solar and electrical
- house 7 degrees cooler in summer on average
- pays for itself in 3 summers (on average)
What are the folks saying?