Exploring the attic and roof as well as our home cooling issues
Today I started exploring the attic space in our home to begin figuring out what the best approaches for dealing with our home cooling issues. The main issue is that we don’t have air-conditioning but I definitely wanted to start looking into what we have currently so that I could get a rough idea as to where to begin.
On our Instagram account @createdimperfectly I started a couple of different highlights to help me keep track of the different projects that I’m working on to make it easier for our followers as well as a reference for myself. I’d much rather watch a video about our attic then have to climb up there and take a look yet again. Here is a video that I took of this exploratory project.
We’re working with a HVAC company but I wanted to explore a little myself to see what all was going on up there. At the start of the video above I was checking the temperature of our den which doesn’t have an attic above it it’s just a flat roof and this was in the middle of the day today most likely at its hottest and I wanted to see what’s the temperature was like on the surface versus the rest of the house. From there I climbed up into the attic to do some tests there and also this being the first time me poking my head up there I was shocked at how small of a space it actually is. So I found some old Christmas presents up there LOL.
After looking in the attic then walked around the property to take a look at the various sections of the roof and also educating myself on the vocabulary used in the roofing industry. The first part of the video shows the gable of the roof as well as me looking under some of the eaves and the rake of the intersecting roof. I later went up on the roof and kind of walked along the ridge and hips to see any of the vent pipes that are up there and I was very curious if we even had some sort of fan.
While I was up on the roof I was looking around at the turbines to see how many we had and what condition they were in. If you’re unfamiliar like I was here is what a turbine does a turbine is installed directly on the top of a roof and uses wind power to suck hot and humid air out of the attic. A turbine has a series of vanes that spin as wind passes through them. A ridge vent runs across the top of the roof’s peak.
Now knowing that I want to explore that a bit further and take a closer look at the one on our garage to make sure that it’s being properly maintained. As you can see from the video as well as this photo it looks like it’s seen better days.
Did a little bit of YouTube searches and found a guy who took one of these apart and applied some lubrication as well as tighten up a few things which seem to have helped him out I may give that a shot as well Just replace it since it looks like it’s pretty easy to take off and are less than $30 at Lowes – 12-in Galvanized Steel Externally Braced Roof Turbine Vent
The part I was concerned about was the electric fan that we have on the roof as well. Since I’m afraid of heights I’m gonna have to muster up some bits of bravery to make my way over that direction and take a look at it a little bit more up close. It’s my understanding that there’s a light switch in one of the hall closets that controls this which seems a little odd to me but then again I don’t have much experience with this stuff.
Searching around online I found this about attic fans. When you turn on the fan and open the windows in the house, outside air is drawn in through the windows and up through the attic where the hot inside air is vented out of the home. Attic fans work best at night when the outside temperature cools and that air is drawn into your warm home to cool it off.
Have you replaced either of these? What maintenance have you done on them? Let me know in the comments I would love to learn a little bit more about this subject.
