Attic Ventilation Alternatives

Continuous ventilation products are all static devices. This means that they are powered by Mother Nature. They are either wind driven or simple heat convection which pulls the air from your attic. You can also remove air from your attic mechanically, that is, by fans.

But be careful about putting too much faith in many continuous ridge ventilation products. The way they are designed is that hot air must flow down the ventilator to exit under the cap shingles. I don't know about you, but hot air rise, it doesn't want to naturally flow down.

There are powered roof ventilators, whole house fans and solar powered roof ventilators. The requirements for these are quite different than the continuous ventilation products.

In fact, some powered ventilators can pull air-conditioned air from the inside of your house into the hot attic. This is a bad thing. If you decide to install powered attic ventilators, you must have superb soffit ventilation so cooler air flows into the attic space from the outside of your home, not the inside.

The Home Ventilating Institute has a great booklet available for free download that gives an overview of the entire subject. It is called the HVI Ventilation Guide. Keep in mind that the powered attic ventilators can actually suck air conditioned air from your house into your attic if they do not have adequate soffit intake vents. If this happens, then they actually can cost you lots of money to operate by making your air conditioner work harder and longer!

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