Why you don’t want a powered attic vent

There are a lot of reasons why you don’t want a powered attic vent or a powered roof vent on your house: nine times out of nine, they’re going to pull air from the wrong places.

If you’ve got a problem and you’re trying to solve it with powered attic ventilation, you need to solve the problem first. We see powered attic ventilation getting added before checking things like air sealing between the living space and the attic, or if all the bath vents in the house are venting to the outside.

Plus, those powered attic vents have a motor, and guess what motors do? They break, and guess where they break a lot? In unconditioned space, in a hot and humid climate.

There are some circumstances where powered ventilation can be useful when there’s not enough surface area for passive ventilation to work, but there’s almost always another way that doesn’t have a motor you have to worry about. And yes I am well aware this is not a good test of the ridge vent but the smoke looked cool. Kbyeluvu