How Attic Fans Help in the Summer (And in the Winter as Well)

Keeping your home cool during a summer in Chicago often means paying steep electrical bills. A central air conditioning system must draw a great deal of power to operate the compressor that’s at the heart of its operation. There are a number of ways to reduce your AC costs without having to make major sacrifices in comfort, however. One of these is to have attic fans installed.

Why will attic fans help?

You might immediately wonder why putting a fan in the attic will benefit your air conditioning system. Ceiling fans makes sense, as they help provide a cooling breeze in living spaces. But why would fans in the attic help with keeping people comfortable in hot weather?

The reason is that attics exhaust the heat the collects in an attic to the outside. During a typical summer day, the sun on the roof of a house creates radiant energy that can easily raise the temperature in the attic above 120°F. (Try going up into the attic on a sunny day and you’ll see what we mean.) This massive heat sink will raise the temperature elsewhere in a house, even with insulation in the attic to slow down the movement of the heat. With the attic that hot, you can expect the rest of a house to be about 8 to 10° warmer—and that’s often the difference in whether the air conditioner comes on or not.

Professionally installed attic fans vents out the heat to balance the temperature in the attic and remove this source of temperature rise. You won’t need to rely on your AC as much when the attic fans are at work.

There’s a winter benefit as well

Winter is still a long ways off, but you should know that attic fans will also help during this time of the year. The fans exhaust the moisture that rises toward the top of the house, preventing it from creating ice dams, cracking in the roof, wood rot, and mildew. Your roof will last longer with attic fans on the job.

To arrange for attic fan installation, call Brilliant Home Services in Chicago, IL.