When it’s hotter inside his house than it is outside, Matt Nordenbrock ignores the air conditioner and turns to his whole-house fan to cool things down.
“I love the breeze coming in, when the weather is nice and dry and there’s no humidity,” said Nordenbrock, who also installs whole-house fans as the owner of Pristine Electric, LLC in Greenfield.
Most Hoosiers turn to air conditioners for their cooling needs, which generally causes a spike in their summer electric bill. Heating and cooling costs account for about 40 percent of the average homeowner’s energy bill. Compared to the ever-present A/C unit, a whole-house fan can cool you down at a fraction of the energy cost.
Whole-house fans cool by using negative pressure to draw cool air into the home through open windows, forcing it into attic space. That creates positive pressure that pushes hot air out of the home through vents. In the Midwest, a whole-house fan can replace an air conditioner for most of the warm months, keeping homeowners just as comfortably cool, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Whole-house fans operate at one-tenth the cost of an air conditioner, according to some industry experts.
“For people who don’t have air conditioning, it would be pretty cost effective to install a whole-house fan,” Nordenbrock said. “Some people don’t even know they exist.”
Whole-house fans aren’t for everyone, though. Because the unit requires fresh air to circulate into the home, pollen and other allergens brought into the home could increase allergic reactions. The units can also be noisy; typically require additional vents to be added to the roof; and can lead to heat loss through the attic during the winter if not properly installed.
“When you’re cutting into the roof, you want to make sure you get it right,” said Jason Rickel, of Rickel Home Improvement in Carmel.
As if that’s not reason enough to hire a professional to install it, there are safety precautions for having whole-house fans. The negative pressure from the fan can also create a back draft from open flames in appliances like your furnace or water heater, or it could pull toxic carbon monoxide into the home.
“It’s imperative,” Nordenbrock said, “that you have the ability to replace the vacuum you’re creating in the house with fresh air.”
Attic fans are often confused with whole-house fans, but they are a markedly different approach to keeping cool. Instead of cooling the entire home, attic fans can help your air conditioner be more efficient and reduce temperatures on your upper floors. They are designed to remove hot air from those spaces, where temperatures are often at least 20 degrees hotter than in the rest of the home.
“They circulate the air in your attic, which cools your upstairs, especially in a two-story house,” Rickel said. “It can make the upstairs 5 to 10 degrees cooler. It extends your roof life, keeps the temperatures of the shingles down, which helps them last longer, and helps you’re A/C unit work a lot easier, too, by keeping it cooler in your house.”
Rickel said he charges about $500 to install a whole-house fan, which typically is mounted in the ceiling below the attic, and about $300 to install an attic fan. Some solar attic fans are eligible for a federal tax credit up to 30 percent of the cost, if they’re installed in your home by 2016. Indiana also offers a state tax deduction of 50 percent of the cost of the materials and installation labor for some solar attic fans, up to $1,000. Check with your contractor and the product manufacturer to determine which products qualify.
“I’ve got (an attic fan) in my house,” Rickel said. “We have a lot of big windows, so in the east, when the morning sun came up it’d get hot in this back room of ours. It’s helping keep that a lot cooler.”
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