Did I just dodge an expensive bullet? [View all]
Seems forever I've wanted a solar attic ventilator. Wow, what could be neater? When I was finally ready to shell out for one and started serious shopping, I also came across an article by some professional builders-type association that warned against it. I figured they might just be fossil fuel fossils but was curious what anti-green lies they might be spewing. (Un?)fortunately for me, what they had to say made sense, at least to me at the time. I offer it here for general consideration.
They claimed that very few attic ceilings are airproof in the first place and if they are, you don't need a ventilator. But if they're not - as likely - then an attic ventilator would draw cold air up from the house - air that you'd just paid to cool. So you'd have to cool even more air. More expensive than not having a powered attic ventilator in the first place. Now I'm sure it would be cost effective when I'm only using the whole house attic fan that DOES pull hot air up out of the house, or at least in that case it wouldn't be detrimental.
My house is extremely well insulated and also has a deep wraparound porch, so even in extremely hot humid summers, I don't even need a box fan before it's at least 85 outside. Don't need the whole house attic fan until the outside reaches upper 90's. But come August, that AC has to go on and stay on. Since it would be cost prohibitive (to me) to have an electrician run a wire downstairs where I could shut off the attic ventilator - and that might be hard to do with a solar unit anyway - it sounds as if that 4-6 weeks of 24-hr AC might cost even more.
So it sounds logical to me under my circumstances to skip the solar attic ventilator, although I still pine for solar panels.
What do you think?
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