On Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 10:25:33 AM UTC-5, Ralph Mowery wrote:
In article ,
says...

This is a townhouse, and it came with and still has a ridge vent that's
almost as long as the house is wide, and a full length soffitt vents
both front and back.

People in this group have told me years ago that I shouldn't have needed
a fan with all this ventilation, and all I can say is when I bought the
house in May, without leaving the AC on, I'd come home after work at
around 6 and the 2nd floor was too hot to enter. It was still too hot
at 10 and at 11. I'd eat dinner and sleep in the basement, and go up
stairs in the morning. This went on daily for weeks.

After I put in the fan, it was 10 or 15 degrees cooler upstairs, still
without the AC, and I almost never needed AC at all. So you'll never
convince me the fan isn't a great thing for my hosue.



Something does not seem right. If you have a ridge vent, the fans will
be sucking much of the air from the ridge vent and not the soffitt vents
and probably would not do much cooling unless the ridge vent was closed
off.

Cindy just brought up a good point. What if there are no soffit vents?
If Micky's house has no soffit vents, only a ridge vent and you put a
fan in the middle, part way up the roof, I can see that having a big
effect on cooling. Many houses have soffit vents and then the insulation
installers later shove insulation over them, blocking them. There are
plastic chute things available that you staple to the underside of the
roof between each rafter, down by the vents, extending up a few feet
to keep them open. Same are used in vaulted ceilings to keep the bays
open for air.