Attic – Home Inspection Insider

Few people give more than a couple of seconds of half-hearted thought to the attic. This is a crucial part of a house - it can completely ruin your home's structure and significantly increase the energy bills you pay each month. Attic temperature is one of the most underrated things to consider in house-care. Thus, we'll be discussing it in today's article for that very reason. What temperature should an attic be? The ideal temperature in your attic should be no less than 60 degrees in the winter and no more than 10-20 degrees hotter than the outside temperature in summer. If you can't manage to keep your attic at these temperatures, it can cause a heap of problems, from simply increasing your energy bills to developing mold that will eat through your house over the years. This is why, even though it's underrated, more attention should be paid to dealing with this fundamental aspect of a healthy attic: its temperature. Read on to find out more! What Temperature Should the Attic Be? Maintaining a stable attic temperature isn't always the easiest thing to do, but it is an absolute must if you want to keep both your house and your bills in shape. There are a couple of steps to achieving this, the first being to start taking better care of your attic. Attics are very often looked at as the most unnecessary part of a house. It's used as "an old warehouse," and you just throw in things you might need in the future (but never actually use again). This article is for you if this is the case; we will help you realize just how important the attic is. If you look at basic physics, you'll see that hot air moves upwards while cold air moves downwards. Once you understand what this means, you can already see the implications your attic might have when it comes to keeping your house in order. If the weather is really hot outside, your attic will be the hottest part of the house - all heat travels upwards and, usually, attics have some sort of insulation that intensifies the heat. On the other hand, your attic is probably the most exposed part of the house when it's cold. This means your attic will supply your house with a constant stream of cold air from above. Neither of these is situations you want to find yourself in - and that's just the beginning of what can happen if you don't pay attention to your attic. So, the first and most obvious question is: what temperature should an attic be? As we answered earlier, when it's hot outside (or at least not below 40 or 50 degrees Fahrenheit), you should make sure your attic temperature doesn't go above the outside temperature by more than 10-20 degrees. If it does, this will cause many problems, which we'll talk about in more detail later on. Just remember the golden rule of staying no more than 10-20 degrees above the outside temperature and act accordingly. On the other hand, the golden rule would be not to let your attic drop to a temperature below 60 degrees in wintertime. The reason for this is a little different. It's not because some sort of catastrophe would befall you if the temperatures dropped below that, although you would have trouble heating your house if it was for prolonged periods. Rather, you want to maintain a higher temperature to ensure your heating system can work properly. According to regulations in many countries, manufacturers are only supposed to make heating systems that can keep an attic at a 68 and above steady temperature. So, if your heating system cannot do that, it might be time to get it evaluated by a professional. Is a Hot Attic Dangerous? Now, we've mentioned that you need to watch out for your heating system's performance in cold climates, but there are far more problems that might occur due to an unregulated temperature in hot climates. Here's a breakdown of some of the more important ones. As we all know, water evaporates when it's heated. The same happens in hot climates. It doesn't have to boil (that's very unlikely to happen from the hot weather alone), but the heat increases the evaporation of any small amount of water. For this reason, hot weather tends to be more humid—the problem with humidity in an enclosed space, especially somewhere with lots of wood. Well, you can see where this is leading: mold. A lot of humidity due to unregulated heat and a poor ventilation system (more on that later) is bound to create mold, which will eventually literally eat at the structural elements of your attic and destroy them. This won't only cost you money in terms of those wooden planks and other building materials, but it will also compromise the general structural integrity of your home. Another, less likely threat is the one you probably first associated with the word heat: fire. Not all homes are built with quality. Quite a few aren't. Usually, a poor quality home shows itself in a couple of different ways, such as cracks in the walls due to bad structural and foundation jobs, wet and soggy walls from poorly installed water pipes, etc. However, in some places in the world, houses can catch fire from the outside heat. This often happens because the attic isn't properly ventilated or temperature-regulated, increasing the temperature in the attic to dangerous levels. In the case of a more open build, where the moisture and humidity can escape, but the heat stays in, some elements can dry out and heat up so much that they catch fire. We don't need to explain why that isn't something you would want. Do Attics Need Ventilation? The short and clear answer: yes. However, that doesn't devote enough respect and attention to this very important topic. One could even put forward a pretty solid argument that ventilation is more important than controlling the temperature. In this part of today's article, we will talk about why that's so. In practical terms, ventilating your attic means creating some sort of airflow that doesn't allow humidity and heat to stay in the attic space for long enough to build up. Unfortunately, some houses have attics with absolutely no sort of ventilation. We'll talk more about the types of ventilation available, but the main thing you should know is that ventilation is necessary for most places when building a new residential home. If you've bought your home rather than built it yourself and haven't yet checked whether or not your attic is ventilated, we advise you to do so. Alternatively, call a professional to do so - it might cost you a lot down the line if you don't. You might not even be aware, but it could have already cost you a pretty penny by significantly raising your utility bills. What's the Best Way to Ventilate Your Attic? Now, let's talk about attic ventilation types. There are two (and a half) main types of attic ventilation systems, called passive and active (sometimes also referred to as powered ventilation). In the next couple of paragraphs, we will go through what these mean and why they are better or worse than the others. First, we will talk about basic attic ventilation, which is called passive ventilation. This is how attic ventilation works for most homes. It consists of two parts: the intake vent and the exhaust vent. The intake vents are placed at the lowest parts of the attic, under the eaves, where cold air can come into the attic. The exhaust vents, on the other hand (sometimes called hot air exhaust vents), can be found at the top parts of the roof or the peak. We've talked before about how cold air moves down, and hot air moves up. This also means that air lower will also be colder. In contrast, the air higher up will be hotter (this works only until a certain altitude, though, since oxygen levels and air density tends to thin out as you travel up, eventually becoming colder and colder). The hot air travels upwards and out through the hot air exhaust vent, while the lower air pressure created by this movement of the air sucks in colder air from the intake vents. This is why it is passive; there is no human or machine involvement, relying purely on physics. This process can be affected by weather conditions, the condition of the vents, and many other things, but it is a functioning system that has been in place for a long time. Active systems, on the other hand, rely on some form of ventilation fans. What this does is nothing more than speed up or force the same process of the passive system. There isn't much more to be said about active systems since it's the same concept but with a machine to help. However, these two systems can be connected - and usually are. Take a passive intake vent and an active intake fan, then put these two work together to push colder air into the attic. You can then either add an active exhaust fan or just stay with a passive exhaust vent. You can combine these in any way that works most productively for your attic. Many people consider the active systems a waste of money since they don't do much of a better job than the passive systems unless you pay a nice sum. You could always set up a high-quality fan system that won't clog, stop, malfunction in any way, or cause an electric blackout – but if you do, best believe you're going to see your electricity bills start to soar. For this reason (and some people just don't need the fuss), passive systems are generally more recommended and more common than active systems. What Temperature Should an Attic Fan Be Set at in Summer? Some types of higher-end active fan systems combine temperature control and ventilation into one, although these are technically air-conditioning systems for your attic. If you're planning on installing one of these systems - or perhaps already have one of them installed - you might be thinking, what's the optimal temperature to set the machine at? Contrary to intuition, you should set your attic fan in a hot climate at a temperature between 90 and 110 degrees. Most attic fans have a thermostat that signals the fan to turn on and off once the attic reaches a certain temperature. Since you don't want your fan going all the time due to utility costs and the system's lifespan, the best option is to set it to a temperature that isn't extremely hot but hot enough that your fan isn't always on. You can also set up a humidistat, which can measure the humidity levels in your attic and turn on the fan when the levels reach a certain limit, regardless of temperature. This helps prevent the formation of mold and other moisture-related issues. This is particularly useful because it doesn't take ridiculously high temperatures for a lot of humidity to build up in the attic. Suppose you have your fan set to 100 degrees, but your attic's internal temperature stays near 90 for prolonged periods. In that case, that's still more than enough for humidity to start the slow demolition of the structural integrity of your attic. Should You Use Radiant Barriers in Attic? Radiant barriers add a layer of insulation and work by reducing radiant heat energy transfer from one side of the barrier to the other. Although this is generally considered useful in most places, it's a particularly productive choice if you happen to be living in a warmer climate. Some studies show that radiant barriers in the attic can cause a decrease of up to 10% in utility bills in particularly hot climates, associated almost exclusively with keeping temperatures down. This can be quite a significant difference over time. So why does this work? Radiant barriers are made up of a material that doesn't transfer heat easily. This way, the heat coming in from the Sun won't heat up the attic air as much as it would otherwise since there's an extra layer of insulation in place. Radiant barriers work better when the temperature difference on the two sides of the barrier is larger, which is usually the case in summer. So, in short, yes, radiant barriers do help, but especially in warmer climates. However, if you do happen to be living somewhere colder, then it might just be an added expense that doesn't help as much as it could. The best choice is always to consult a professional, as they can evaluate your home and will know exactly what they're talking about.