Roof fan

Hi. I grew up in a big old colonial house in northern Jersey and we had a large fan in the attic that cooled the whole house wonderfully. You’d open windows on the lower floors and turn that on, and there’d be a pleasant breeze through the whole house despite the humidity.  I’m thinking the same thing should work for the townhouse (brick & brownstone) we bought recently in Crown Heights. Something like this: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007X5IR5U We’re redoing the roof very soon, so now would be the time to do it. We already have two skylights and a hatch that they’ll be replacing. I guess we’d have to add a new hole for this one, but I would expect the roofing contractors know how to handle something like that. This one comes with a curb. It appears similar questions have been raised here in the past, but the threads I see in the search results are several years old and the pages don’t come up anymore. Not sure if this is so uncommon or not. Thoughts? Thanks, Rick

crownheights12

in Roofers 12 years and 1 month ago

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GoodProspect | 12 years and 1 month ago

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Oh yes, and I should have mentioned that our skylight works best with many windows open, and that we have a ceiling fan on the ceiling of the central playroom just a few feet away from the skylight….

Master Plvmber | 12 years and 1 month ago

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I grew up in a house with an attic fan when I was a kid and we loved it, too. Later, as I got deeper into the heating part of the family’s plumbing business, I discovered a problem with the way we were using it. The fan creates a negative pressure (not quite a vacuum) in the house and that’s what draws all that air in through the windows.  If you don’t have enough windows open, and the boiler/water heater are not isolated from the living space, exhaust from those appliances will be drawn into the home because instead of flowing up and out, air will be drawn in and downward through your chimney.

Watch out for that if you get the fan.

GoodProspect | 12 years and 1 month ago

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When we renovated our brick rowhouse we put in a mechanical, operable skylight pretty much over the stair well. When it’s hot (but not raining, as it has a rain sensor that closes it when there’s water) and hot we open it up and whoosh, the hot air goes up and out, and with the ceiling fans on there’s a nice breeze.