Attic Fan Installation - Hot Attic made Cooler!

hey everyone I'm really pissed off about what's going on in my attic right now and it's my fault are you dealing with a hot attic like I am you know right now what I have is an attic that's probably about 135 degrees up there it's summer and you know the reason I say it's my fault is because I got a roof new roof put on a couple of years ago and all the roof installers said that I don't need an attic fan you know on the exterior I used to have one it used to keep the Attic you know fairly cool and they said hey we're putting a ridge vent in you know we'll have the proper airflow you don't need an attic fan and that couldn't be farther from the truth it's too hot up there and I have air flow I have a ridge vent it's still not helping what I want to do is take you through a solve that I think I have is to install a gable vent fan and then after I'm done with the install you can watch me do the install afterwards I'm gonna the the end of the video will occur about a week after the install and I'll explain to you the results and what I'm finding after the install so you can see up there we've got this vent that goes to the attic there's nothing behind it right now I'm gonna go into the attic and show you exactly where it is and we can see what we're dealing with and how we might manage the installation we're in the attic and we're in the inside of this vent that you saw on the outside of the house we have here it looks like some original an original spot where this old fan used to be installed and what we want to do is because we have the these things basically blocking the flow I'm gonna remove some of these and if I take this light out of the way you might be able to see an old screen here I want that screen out because it's kind of too narrow and I don't want all the dust and debris to clog it so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna remove this and then I'm gonna put some other mesh around here if you can see I'm gonna try to back up a bit I'm gonna put some other mesh around the opening I'm gonna put a piece of plywood over cut a hole the exact dimension of the fan I'm gonna mount the fan on the plywood facing this way and that's how we're gonna draw the air out so this is the fan we're gonna install and I'm gonna put a link down below in the description to link to one that's very similar to this it moves 1600 CFM and this will manage an attic up to 3,000 feet they should be fine for your house and so what this fan is going to do is essentially draw the hot air out of the attic and push it outside of the house okay so back up in the attic here I want to measure the dimensions of this box here because we're going to cover this with plywood and cut a hole where the fan goes and I wanted to have this thing completely sealed so we've got 28 [Music] by 22 now let's get out of this hot attic so we got this scrap piece of plywood that should work perfectly just want to measure it out 28 by 22 here [Music] okay we got it all measured out now we got to cut it okay we might be able to use the sliding compound miter saw I cut as far as I can here on this side then flip it over and get the other side okay so earlier you heard me mentioned that there was a screen up in that space and so I didn't want that screen because I felt like the openings and there were too too close together and I could see that from years ago when there was another fan in that spot it the opening in the screen got clogged so I bought this other screening at a local home improvement store and it is definitely not gonna clock the dust won't clog this so this is what I'm gonna use I'm just gonna measure it out here and just cut it the same size as the plywood okay once I have the spot marked I could then it's not important to hold it anymore because I can just follow the line you so now I just want to cut away a little bit more of this foam and get that screen out of here I'm gonna take the staple gun and the staple this guy up here now we're gonna go downstairs and cut the hole through the plywood but you notice it's not centered here it's up and to the left a little bit so what I want to do is measure the center point down looks like about 12 inches from the top and ten and a half inches from the left side 12 by 10 and a half all right what do we say with 12 by 10 and a half right 10 and a half across 12 down I think we said right there's a half and a half here let's go down 12 right here is a center point so here's how we're going to figure out the midpoint the diameter of the Fen is 15 inches so we're gonna go 7 and 1/2 here I'm gonna put some marks okay here and then at 15 and then do the same on the other side and then we'll just line up the fan that way hit those marks and then we should do this together yeah after the hole is cut the fan will get mounted with these brackets like this so we're gonna use a jigsaw to cut this out but first I just need to drill a pilot hole next I want to install the brackets that are going to attach the fan to the plywood before I mount this on the plywood I want to actually work on the electrical in the event that I need to make any changes and modifications I don't want to have already mounted it to the plywood so this unit comes with a thermostat essentially when the attic gets to a certain temperature it'll it'll kick on okay so I have it set right now at 100 that's where I'm gonna leave it and as far as the wiring diagram is concerned is pretty simple you've got your black and your white wire and then inside here this is the ground okay now one benefit I have is this well ordinarily you'd get your romex wire and you would wire this to to your panel or to some other area you can jump it off of someplace else where you might have in the Attic the good thing for me though is I have an electrical outlet up there so what I did was I bought an extension cord and they sell these for appliance replacements where you have the plug and then the other side just has the bare wires remaining and I was gonna buy that but they didn't have in the length that I needed so I had to buy an extension cord this is a 14 gauge extension cord and I'm gonna I'm gonna cut this off here okay and then I'm gonna strip it I'm gonna get the wires out and I'm gonna wire the extension cord to the fan now we got to get it open okay that should be enough there so now we've got our white or black in our ground I'm going to strip this and want to install this collar on the on the box here and then you're going to run the wire through here okay so now you just want to cut a couple of wire nuts I'm gonna join the light wires together the black wires together and then we've got the ground here just need to get a flathead screwdriver I'm gonna turn the thermostat all the way down to sixty me tell you what I'll turn it up I'm gonna plug it in see what happens okay we're gonna turn the thermostat down to sixty and let's see if it turns on [Music] works trying not to let this thing spin out of control here but we got it blowing in the right direction so good news is it's working I'm gonna unplug it and now I'm gonna mount everything after I put the cover back on here and we're gonna get it upstairs here's what we're looking at I'm pretty sure that I want the thermostat here on the left hand side that's what I'm gonna likely do is there's a spot there's a 2x4 up here I'm gonna mount it here on the left-hand side so I'm going to get some short screws and go through here mount these up right now I'm putting this silver face duct tape on here doesn't want to make this as seal this as much as possible I don't want any air escaping out of here this is the way the brackets were made there's a gap I want them covered up and if for whatever reason if it's too much stress on that exterior vent or gable vent and I'll remove it for now I'm going with it it's gonna finish this up all the way around the exterior just like this all right we're ready to take this up into the attic and screw this board up into the its place and then plug in the extension cord and let it go we're gonna hoist this fan up here in the spot line it up I already have a couple of the screws pre-drilled into here so I can just zip it in couple more and then we're gonna attach the thermostat Mattson thermostat up high because it wouldn't reach back here and this 2x4 which you probably can't even see in the dark but mounted it up here it's gonna be hot up there so that thing's gonna be running constantly now I'm just gonna snake the extension cord over to where the outlet is and we're gonna give it a shot okay let's plug it in see what happens [Music] I can already feel the air going past me so this is working well I'm hot so the span is running on the outside you might not be able to hear it but you can see these little hosta plants moving here and all of that is from the airflow coming down out of this vent all the way down the side here so we're getting very good airflow outside of the attic a couple more of these moving slightly Here I am back here now it's about a week later after the attic fan install and there's good news the attic is definitely a bit cooler a noticeably cooler and the attic fan runs during the day after the Sun Goes Down I noticed that the attic fan is turning off and I have the thermostat set at 95 degrees so it's getting below 95 the other thing is is that prior to the the install you know some spots of the on the ceiling we're very warm to the touch so if you put your hand up by the ceiling you could you could feel the heat radiating down that's not the case anymore so even though it's not you know cool up in the attic where you would you wouldn't want to live up there it's definitely creating a positive impact on the overall temperature in the rooms below which obviously is going to save on electric bills with from running the air conditioning so this is definitely a good project it's moving the air through the attic and out and hopefully that this helped you and you might take on this project yourself install a gable vent or a gable gable fan over by your gable vent and this help again hit that subscribe button and bail notification icons and get updated on new videos that I post have a great day

Channel: Flannel Guy DIY

Views: 856,204

Keywords: attic fan installation, attic fan, install attic fan, wire attic fan, gable fan, gable vent fan, how to install attic fan, how to wire attic fan, attic fan with thermostat, attic fan replacement, hot attic in summer, hot attic solutions, gable end fan, ridge vent, roof vent, roof ridge vent, hot attic, attic fan thermostat replacement, whole house fan, whole house fan installation, cooler attic, installing attic fan, attic ventilation, how to cool attic, attic vent, fan

Id: Ejoirktke2U

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 19 2019