The Masters House

I debated when to post this or not because it is kind of a ghetto solution but man - it really works.

Our garage gets really hot during the summer so we would leave the garage door open a little bit to try to let the hot air out. This was better then leaving it closed but it still would get really hot since there was nothing to circulate the air. The garage also has the only access to the attic of the house.

I planned on getting a “real” attic fan sometime this year but then the weather go to hot so it was too hot to do it. The attic fan that I was planning on installing is the one that has a temperature sensor that turns the fan on when it gets hot. Anyway, it is too hot now to put one in the attic and plus the can be a little pricey (in the $100-$150 price range if I am not mistaken) compared to the solution I found.

About a month ago I was moving stuff around in the garage and came across a $10 box fan that I had bought from Walmart. My plan was to suspend the fan from the ceiling to circulate the air in the garage to hopefully cool it down.

As I was making preparations to hang it I noticed that that the height of the fan looked really close to the the width of the opening to the attic. I grabbed the ladder to check it out and sure enough the fan was the perfect fit! In addition the cord was just long enough to reach over to the second outlet in the ceiling that was for the garage door opener.

After making sure that the fan was secure I flipped it on high to make sure that it would not vibrate or wobble out of place. Then I closed the garage door so that it was open a couple of inches on the bottom to test it out. I came back an hour later and the garage was a whole lot cooler! For $10 I had myself an attic fan.

My theory is that this should help to cool the rest of the house also as the fan is sucking air from the outside that is then being pushed into the attic. I am not usually home during the day but my wife says that she can tell the difference in the house and that the air conditioner does not seem to come on as much. I guess the true test will be when I get my electric bill this month.

Anyway, I thought that I would share this since it is such a cheap solution that has the potential to save some money.

Technorati: Home Improvement, Attic, Attic Fan, DIY, Air Conditioning, Garage

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under Butler House, Upgrades . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.