Thoughts on Solar Powered Roof Vents

[hammersley]

What do you think about these units????



Solar Attic Fans & Roof Vents: > SunRise 1250 cfm

 

[kenny61]

If it lasted 10 years it would might pay for itself. Does it got hot enough and do you get enough direct sunlight all day long to require the fan, a ridge vent along with soffit vent will give you plenty of convection cooling for both summer heat and against ice damning in the winter



Improve Attic Ventilation: Introduction | Reader's Digest



Calculating Ventilation Area of Attic

If you choose not to use continuous ventilation, guess what? The required ventilation area doubles! This means that you would not have any soffit ventilation. It then means that you would need a total of 10 square feet of ventilating area. How many metal pot vents you may ask? Believe it or not, you would need 29 of those individual metal pot vents to meet minimum requirements. Have you ever seen that many on a roof before? I know I haven't!

 

[SHobbs]

Down here in Texas you need all the help you can get. Before the summer hit I made sure the folks had all the soffit vents cleared of obstructions, turbines worked and even added a couple for extra measure. One thing I would consider in place that does not see the heat we see and cool nights would be a whole house fan ( attic fan ).



One thing about the solar powered I would wonder is durability and reliability. Would hate to spend that kind of money for them to last just a couple years.

 

[JLEONARD]

I live in Ct in a brick ranch, no shade between 10 am and sunset. I have a whole house fan I love the cooling it does, but it's noisy plus I'm running a 1/2 hp motor all the time, and I know that costs a few shillings.



I would think a solar powered vent fan would be perfect in my case if it would do 1/4 of the cooling the house fan does.