Do any of you have thermostatically controlled attic fans? Do they help? (house)

[69Charger]

The heat is back

My home has two, thermostatically controlled attic fans, mounted on the side of the house toward the roofline. They are not working.

I've read articles that say they help and I've read articles that say they do not. What are your experiences? Should I get them fixed? I'm not in a beach city, I'm a little bit inland, so the air is nice from sunset to sunrise. But regardless of that the outside air should always be cooler than trapped attic air right? Do these lower the electric bill any?

[pcw57]

When we replaced our HVAC system in the attic a number of years ago, the guy suggested re-purposing the old squirrel cage fan from the old furnace to be an attic exaust fan.

He mounted it on the inside of one of the louvered attic vents, installed an inline thermostat switch (about $6 at Home Depot or wherever), and set it to about 90 degrees.

It activates automatically on hot days, is very quiet (a low hum is all we hear in our one-story house, and does a tremendous job of keeping the attic temperature (and therefore our ceiling) much, much cooler.

It's essentially a whole-house fan for the attic, and boy does it work well!

[LuvSouthOC]

I have solar panels and have no place to put one. I wanted to add one. It is like 78 here now -- hot, windy and muggy. Wish I had that whole house fan.

[sourdough]

My attic fan is on a manual wall switch. If/when the high temp gets above 80* we turn it on in the evening after the sun has gone down, the A/C is off and we open up the house. It really cools down the whole house quickly.

[orca17]

I grew up in Florida, and we had an attic fan set up much like sourdough is talking about. We turned it on using a wall switch, and it made a big difference in the temperature in the house. We used ours mainly at night to help us sleep.