I had my roof replaced recently. Before I had both a ridge vent AND an attic fan, one installed in the roof.
The roofers told me that having both doesn’t work. I understand that as the fan can just pull the air through the ridge vent and not up from the attic. The roofers suggested just keeping the attic fan and close off the ridge vent. I guess there was some misunderstanding as they took out my old fan and installed a new ridge vent.
In asking around I’ve gotten differing opinions, the roofers say to put in a fan, while a lot of other places say just use the ridge vents. The roofers know they made a mistake and are willing to replace the fan, but I don’t know if I should take them up on their offer or just leave the vent in place.
I live near DC so we do get hot summers, but I’m not sure what to do. I could leave it like it is and see how the summer works out. Any suggestions on what will work better?
Go with the ridge vent. You also need soffit vents so there is a path for the air flow. A ridge vent does more then just cool the attic it keeps the moisture level down all year.
By attic fan are you referring to a whirly birdor an actual powered fan? Ridge vents and turbines are pretty common here, and both work pretty well as long as you have sufficient air flow from the soffit vents.
When I did my roof, they wanted to put in a ridge vent. From what I had read, in order to put in a ridge vent they’d either half to cut in a ton more soffit vents or only to it for about half the ridge. The reason being that if the ridge tries to pull out more air than the vents can supply, it’ll start drawing the conditioned air out of your house…or at least that’s what the theory is.
Personally, I’d probably just leave the ridge vents in at this point. If you’re in an area that gets an actual winter, you’ll be able to tell pretty quickly if you need to change something when all the neighbors have snow on their roofs and you don’t.
I had an actual powered fan in the roof. The problem is that the person who owned my house prior to me, 15 years ago, did all sorts of crap work to the house. I’m guessing he was the one that installed the powered fan as there’s a box in the attic that he pulled the power from. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought the fan would work.
I have a townhouse, and it’s close to 50 years old now. I will have to go look at the rest of the houses, but I think they all have ridge vents currently so they were probably all built that way. I should also look to make sure there’s good airflow up there. I will have to crawl out over the edges to see if there are soffit vents and if they are covered over by insulation.
If you’re in the attic you should be able to see daylight through the vents without having to get near the edge. different story if they got covered by insulation though. The ridge vent should work just fine as long as it has airflow to draw up as noted above. The nice thing about that is that passive ventilation just works and you don’t have to worry about fans failing without power or mechanical issues. The turbines are another cost effective method and work passively as well. we get summers in the mid-80s and winters below -40 and they work fine. More insulation probably wouldn’t hurt either while you’re at it.
I was going to bring that up before. If you use an attic fan, I’d suggest putting in several. Both for redundancy and so when they (or all) fail, there’s still somewhere for heat to escape. And, they will fail. And, you’ll find yourself trying to repair or replace it on a hot day, on a hot roof or in a hot attic.
I’ll say it depends on location and climate. Ridge turbines were just fine down in the greater SF Bay Area. Up here in the mountains, where roofs must withstand heavy snow loads, we went with two attic fans in our post-9/11 2400 square-foot modular. I’d advise the OP to see what’s common in their locale.