Sometimes attic heat can be an issue to get your house cool during the summertime

Sometimes attic heat can be an issue to get your house cool during the summertime.

We know that the electric bill goes high in summer because the air conditioning needs to work harder to reach the thermostat set point inside your house. Although the air conditioning is supposedly working properly, it never reaches the thermostat temperature setting. One of the causes could be the attic ventilation that this area can get very high summer temperatures. If the attic high-temperature air doesn’t have any path to the ambient, then it could reach the ceiling and walls into your home. At the same time, all the A/C ducts in the ceiling will be affected when some heat goes thru the duct walls making the cool air some degrees above the A/C air supply, turning the system inefficient. With inefficient air conditioning, the thermostat temperature setting never will be reached, and your unit will run 24/7.

What to do with an attic heat problem in summer

One of the issues that often come up during a cooling season is how you can cool down your house. Many people have attics, and this year, they are having trouble getting it cooled since when there’s so much sun outside, their houses become very hot inside. If you find yourself dealing with similar problems, then here are some ways on what steps should be taken into consideration:

Attic Ventilation

Usually, the air in the space attic is dynamic, i.e., it moves in and out of the attic with temperature differences between the surroundings and the attic’s air. This happens throughout the soffit vents located around the house’s roof.

Is the Attic Dynamic Air Working Adequately?

In many houses that I visited, I’ve seen that the homeowner painted the soffit. Those small holes (porous) that make possible an air movement exits in the attic are not happening because the paint sealed these porous with paint. Suppose you measure temperatures on the house floor, walls, and ceiling, and you see that the ceiling reads more temperature than the floor and wall. In that case, we can say that the attic is transferring heat into the house.

How to fix this?

There are many solutions to this problem, and calling a professional to discuss the options is the first recommendation.

Increasing the attic insulation is always part of the solution.

Closing all the openings in the attic that goes into the walls and sealing all those ceiling light cans and fans is another way to avoid warm air goes into the house.

If you can not open all the soffit porous, you can do some openings like 12” x24” on the soffits covering it with a grill that you can get at any Depot.

Although many techs don’t like attic forced ventilation, installing an exhaust fan (calculating CFM per attic square feet and having openings in the soffit to avoid negative pressure) can help cool down the attic A/C ducts and have reduced electric bills. If your home has felt hotter than usual and the thermostat has not been touch, don’t hesitate to give us a call and book a free in-home appointment to find out how we can help you! Call us now at (239) 878-5628.

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