Whole House Fan

On Thursday we got heat in the 100s. It was 84 degrees downstairs, hotter upstairs, and even hotter outside. So we drove down to Lowes and picked up a whole house fan. Sam started in the morning on Thursday and hoped that he could be at class by 1pm that afternoon. Ha!

 Welcome to our attic. What the...? Why is there a fan up here? After a good cleaning it actually became a new best friend in this heat!

Hello broken duct work. No wonder the kids' room was so cold during last winter!

Not sure that those wires should just be sticking out there.

After assessing the layout for possible placements of the fan, we decided to go with the ceiling in the hallway outside the bathroom upstairs. That was the easy part. Actually installing it there was a whole other story. 

Our joists were not the standard 16 inches apart, nor were they parallel. So Sam needed to build a frame first. I could go on and on about all the issues we had. The lumber used to build our joists were not standard measurements. Electrical wires in random places. Duct work needing to be torn out (just created another job - but needed to be done anyways). And the heat just added to it. It was about 500 degrees up there. 

This job was my least favorite we have done. AND I WASN'T EVEN DOING ANYTHING...mostly just there to help Sam. It was just hot, messy, and frustrating. I much prefer being outside doing hard yard work. Once Sam opened the ceiling opening, the house got about twenty degrees hotter. I felt the heat wave rush in.  That and all the drywall and insulation dust...yuck. That dust was everywhere upstairs!

That was about as far as we got after day one. Sam was so hot and exhausted. Needless to say, he did not get to class.

We were blessed with better weather (cooler) the day we completed our house fan installation. Sam had to make a platform for the fan to sit on, put some insulation stripping on it, put finishing nails in the drywall up into the frame, and do the electrical.

The electrical required that we first figure out how our electrical is set up. Flipping breakers on and off, walking all around the house, we finally decided where the switch should be placed. 

View from inside

Sam even bled for this project

Cutting into the wall in the upstairs closet, switch installed

After a practice run, it was time to finish everything up. 

Woohoo! That was a killer. I am glad it's done and can't wait to actually try it out. Of course it has cooled way down since we installed it. :) Good job, honey!

Side projects: Since Sam was up in the attic, he also put a new junction box for our bedroom fan. Now we can actually turn on our ceiling fan in our bedroom without it falling down on us. Yay!

I also finally finished the stairs (caulking the side trim)...that only took forever.

 Next project: Order and install baseboards upstairs! And tile bath/shower, install new floors, finish bath and wall construction in upstairs bathroom.