GREENVILLE Blog

WTK About Attic Fan Benefits for Northern South Carolina Residents

Most homeowners rarely visit their attic, reserving this adventure for storing boxes and potentially checking for pests. If you’ve ever tried to take a look around the area in the summer, you’ll know as a Greenville area resident that the heat rising to the attic makes the space uncomfortably stuffy and humid. It’s not unheard of for the temperature in our attics to climb up to 140 degrees!

While you don’t necessarily need to make your attic as comfortable as the rest of your living space if you’re hardly ever there, the excessive heat can damage your building envelope and insulation. When left uninspected for too long, it can even increase the risk of health hazards. How can you improve the temperature regulation in your home without raising expenses?

What is Temperature Regulation?

In order to maintain a comfortable environment, your home needs to be temperature-regulated throughout the year. The HVAC unit, ventilation, insulation, and air sealing are all areas that help to maintain a comfortable temperature evenly around your house. Each of these systems works to support each other to improve the building's climate control capabilities.

The Importance of Attic Fans

An attic fan helps to reduce uncomfortable temperatures and take off some of the brutal heat in the summer. As ventilation tools, they keep air moving through the uppermost part of your home. The attic fans circulate hot air from inside with cooler outdoor air in the summer. In addition to traditional vents, modern versions may also be solar-powered, an energy-efficient upgrade that can reduce your expenses even further.

To find the best type of attic fan for the needs of your home, our experts at Koala Insulation of Greenville have broken down the most important things to know about attic fans.

What To Know About Attic Fans: How Attic Fans Work

• Ventilation Systems

There’s a common myth that too much insulation or air sealing can create an uncomfortable or stuffy environment because your home needs to “breathe”. However, sealing the building helps improve temperature regulation by reducing air leaks. Your home “breathes” through ventilation systems that allow for proper airflow to prevent stuffiness and humidity.

The primary purpose of an attic fan is to ventilate air in a building, exchanging indoor and outdoor air so unwanted heat is circulated for cooler air from outside during the summer. Air leaks, which are unsealed gaps, cracks, and holes throughout your home, let in more than just outdoor air; pests and pollutants that enter through these openings reduce indoor air quality and negatively impact the airflow in your home.

• Reduced Moisture

An attic fan contributes more to comfort than just swapping indoor and outdoor air. These vents also dissipate humidity and moisture to prevent mold growth and water damage. This makes attic fans just as helpful in the wintertime, especially in northern South Carolina: when heat rises to your attic, it competes with cold air outside of your roof and creates condensation. Moisture build-up from the contact of two different temperatures is reduced by regularly circulating air with your attic fan.

Unfortunately, mold is a common problem for homeowners because of infrequent visits to the attic and hidden damages from leaks or condensation. When you schedule regular evaluations of your insulation and air sealing, you can catch potential problem areas before they grow into health hazards and excessive property damage. However, prevention is often the best practice: reduce moisture in your home with upgraded attic fans.

• Insulation Support

Even though there are types of insulation that are made to last up to 15 years, the lifespan of these materials can be drastically reduced by damage, deterioration, and neglect. Because attic insulation typically sits "out of sight, out of mind", pest infestation, natural weathering, and moisture are all hazards that need quality prevention. The ventilation of attic fans helps to significantly lengthen the lifespan of your insulation.

Efficient insulation coverage is responsible for regulating heat transfer, the rate at which heat travels through structures like your walls, ceilings, and even floors. Installing attic fans in your attic reduces the need for maintenance, removal, and reinstallation of your insulation.

Do Attic Fans Provide ROI For South Carolina Homeowners?

Attic fans seem to have an endless stream of benefits, which means Koala Insulation of Greenville gets a very common question: What’s the catch? While they may seem like an extra expense, these tools provide a great return on investment for South Carolina residents.

Your attic fan helps to reduce energy waste by assisting your HVAC system. Because the vents contribute to temperature regulation, the unit doesn't need to stay on as long to reduce or raise the temperature. While this improves energy efficiency, it also reduces the need for other maintenance costs, like insulation upgrades, weathering damage, and replacing burnt-out HVAC parts.

The primary cost will be the installation process; this is a necessary expense for most homes because they aren't designed to easily install and run a new attic fan, which needs to be inserted into the roof of your house. To safely and efficiently install the new equipment, consult your local industry experts at Koala Insulation of Greenville. We're dedicated to providing cost-effective and energy-efficient solutions to improve comfort without disrupting your daily routine.

Finding Quality Attic Fans With Greenville Area Experts

Our team of professionals at Koala Insulation of Greenville is trained and experienced in installing new attic fans that don’t impact the integrity of your environment, increase costs, or create discomfort. To learn more about how attic fans can improve your environment, contact your local industry experts at Koala Insulation of Greenville and schedule your free evaluation.