Attic Ventilation: What New Homeowners Need to Know

Every new homeowner has to deal with a host of new information concerning the maintenance of their home. As every veteran homeowner knows, keeping up a house takes a lot of work and a lot of money, especially if you don’t take the right steps and precautions.

One of the most overlooked aspects for new homeowners is the attic. Especially if you have an unfinished attic, you probably don’t spend much time up there and it can be easy to forget about it. But a neglected attic can cause serious problems in a home including mold, mildew, rot, and roof damage—all because of poor attic ventilation. However, with the right ventilation, you can avoid these problems altogether.

Below, we’ll go over what new homeowners need to know about attic ventilation.

Problems with an Unventilated Attic
Because the attic sits at the top of your home, an unventilated attic acts as a trap for heat and moisture. Whether or not you live in a hot or humid region, heat and humidity will naturally rise up into the attic and stay there if it’s not ventilated.

Even during dry and cold winters heat from our home and humidity produced from our daily lives (cooking, living and breathing, showering, etc.) will accumulate in a sealed or poorly ventilated attic.

An unventilated attic faces the following problems due to trapped heat and humidity: 

• Rot: When warm, humid air meets cooler surfaces like the floor, walls, and ceiling of your attic, it will condense and can cause wood and other surfaces to rot, resulting in costly repairs and structural damage.
•  Mold and mildew: Warm and humid environments are the perfect conditions for mold and mildew growth.

• Ice dams: Ice dams occur in regions where it snows. If there is snow on your roof and warm air in your attic, the warm air can heat up patches of your roof and melt the snow. This snow melt will refreeze on your roof creating dams that trap water on your roof and cause roof damage.

• High heating costs: If you live in a warm region or experience hot summers, you probably use AC, heat pumps, or fans to keep your house cool. If your attic is unventilated it will be filled with heat and warm up the rest of your house, forcing you to spend more energy cooling down the home, effectively wasting money.

Use Attic Fans for the Best Attic Ventilation
The answer to attic ventilation is simple, all it involves is installing and periodically running an attic fan. Attic fans pull in fresh air from outside and exhaust the trapped indoor air to keep your attic ventilated and to prevent rot, mold and mildew, ice dams, and high heating costs.

From solar attic fans to gable attic fans to smart energy saving attic fans, here at WholeHouseFan.com we offer a variety of attic fans for new homeowners.