How To Take Advantage Of The Heat In Your Attic

In warm climates it is common practice to run heating and air conditioning ducting through attic spaces simply because it is easy to do.

How to take advantage of the heat in your attic.

Don t let a contractor talk you into it. 4 ways to reduce attic heat in your home. Install radiant barriers in your attic to improve heating and cooling efficiency. But by adding powered attic fans you will draw more air into the attic.

Seal spaces around plumbing recessed lights and vents. If you want to put a powered attic ventilator in your house fine. Installing your hvac unit in the attic can free up space for these uses. You d be better off insulating and air sealing your ceiling.

This way the dryer does not have to do as much heating of the air. If you want the heat out of your attic a reflective roof or radiant barrier are better ways to get there. You won t ever pay an energy bill for that unlike you do with your pav. One idea is to figure out a way to draw intake air for the clothes dryer from the attic area when attic temps are high.

Using insulation only keeps the attic s heat from traveling through your home. An attic radiant barrier is made of a highly reflective material mounted on one or both sides of a substrate. Your attic can get as hot as 150 degrees in the summer. While it does help to reduce the heat in your attic putting these fans in your attic costs more because of the loss of conditioned air.

The air you lose from the attic is then drawn into your home from the outside which will cause your cooling bill to go up. This seems like a potentially good idea to me if one can figure out a workable ducting arrangement. A radiant barrier in the attic helps prevent the electromagnetic transfer of heat such as from the photons in sunlight. In my experience heating ducts that run through attics cause serious problems in snow country.

Properly sealing these leaks can save as much as 10 every month on your power bill. Keep that super heated air from seeping into your living space. Unfortunately this practice is all too common in our northern cold climate putting air conditioning ducts in the hottest.