Valley can furnish and install three types of fans for your home:

• Attic Fans – Solar and Electric
• Whole House Fans – Increase the efficiency of your air conditioning unit
• Bathroom Fans

Attic Fans

Why should you consider an attic fan?
You may not spend much time thinking about attic ventilation, but if you own your own home, you owe it to yourself to give the subject serious thought.  Here is what an attic fan can do for you:

Suppress Heat Build Up
A hot attic acts like a giant radiator, transferring heat into your living spaces, sending both utility bills and temperatures soaring. In colder climates, heat build-up in an attic causes snow to melt and run down where it freezes at the eaves, causing destructive ice damming.

• Reduces heat build up.
• Reduces air conditioning costs.
• Prevents ice damming

Battle Moisture. Many of today's houses have insufficient ventilation and air exchange. This causes high humidity levels from everyday activities. This moisture migrates through the ceiling towards the roof where it comes in contact with the cold structure. Here, ice and frost form, causing damage to your roof structure. Additionally, moisture can saturate insulation, promote fungal decay and plywood delamination.

• Reduces damaging condensation.
• Protects insulation from moisture saturation.
• Fights mold and fungal decay.
• Reduces heating costs.

Attic fans are thermostatically controlled so they run only when they're needed. When you consider that attics can reach 150 degrees Farenheit and that attic heat accounts for 20 percent of the average cooling bill, these fans are a good investment.  The cost of installing and wiring an attic fan ranges from $300 to $800. Attic-ventilation fans are also available with humidistats as well as thermostats. A humidistat-equipped fan is a good choice for controlling excess attic humidity during the colder months.

Choosing Your Fan
There are two basic attic fan designs: those made for roof installations and those intended to be mounted in a gable wall.   Roof installations can be electric or solar.

Solar attic fans
Solar Star's Roof Mount Attic Fan is the ideal ventilation solution. Solar Star, the leader in solar powered attic ventilation, brings you the most technologically-advanced, environmentally-friendly, ventilation solution today. Best of all, Solar Star brings you the solutions that cost nothing to operate. Imagine the savings.

Electric attic fans
Roof mounted fans are mounted on plastic or sheetmetal bases that serve as flashing. To install your new fan, we will cut an opening in the roof, typically near the peak, and install the fan over the opening. 

Whole House Fans

A whole house fan is a simple and inexpensive method for cooling homes, improving ventilation and reducing energy bills. The fan works by drawing cool outdoor air through your home and exhausting hot indoor air through the attic to the outdoors. The result is lower temperatures, lower energy bills, better ventilation and improved evaporative cooling.

The system can be used as the sole means for cooling in many climate zones or in combination with central air conditioning. When in use with air conditioning systems, seasonal use often increases efficiency.

Valley Heating, Cooling and Electrical installs whole house fans that are sized to draw adequate airflow through the house to exchange air within 10 minutes. All units are insulated and mechanically sealed when not in use to exceed Title 24 requirements (R-38).

Bathroom Fans

At Valley we furnish and install many makes and models of bathroom fans.  Once we evaluate your project, we will recommend the best fan fit for your needs.

Learn About Bathroom Fans

• How to Size a Bathroom Fan
• Why Use an Inline Fan for Bathroom Ventilation?
• Why Do I Need Ventilation?

How to Size a Bathroom Ventilation Fan?
As the trend to larger spa-like bathrooms continues to gain in popularity, the need for proper ventilation becomes more important.  While many people are tired of their noisy and ineffective bath fan - not many people know how to properly size a fan to their needs.

Example:  Bathroom measures 10 feet wide and 12 feet long.  It has 8 foot ceilings.  So 10 x 12 x 8 = 960 cubic feet.

We take the cubic feet and divide by 60  - which is the number of minutes in an hour.  We take the result and multiply by 8 (remember, our target is 8 complete air changes each hour).  The complete equation is as follows:

• STEP 1
  10 ft X 12 ft X 8 ft = 960 cubic feet.        
• STEP 2
  960 divided by 60 = 16.                 
• STEP 3
  16 x 8 = 128

So - we need 128 CFM of air movement to properly ventilate this bathroom.  Assuming there is not and excessively long or twisting duct run to the outside - we would select a fan that moves somewhere around 130 CFM or higher. 

METHOD 2
This method is a simple one for bathrooms under 100 square feet.  According to guidelines of HVI (Home Ventilating Institute), baths 100 square feet or smaller require one CFM per square foot of bathroom - with a minimum of 50 CFM.

So - if you have a 7 foot by 9 foot bath - you need 63 CFM.   It doesn't get any simpler than this.  Most conventional ceiling insert fans, however, are rated either 50 or 80 CFM - so you will have to round up or down (rounding up preferred).

METHOD 3
This method of calculation is designed for bathrooms over 100 square feet and factors in the number of fixtures in the bath (toilets, showers, tubs).  The rules are:

• Allow 50 CFM for each standard toilet, shower or tub
• Whirlpool and jetted tubs need 100 CFM

So - if you have 1 toilet (50 CFM), 1 shower (50 CFM) and 1 whirlpool tub (100 CFM) - you will need a 200 CFM Fan.

Static Pressure and Duct Run:
A ventilating fan must overcome resistance when pushing air from the inlet, through the duct, to the outside of the building. This resistance is known as static pressure. The amount of static pressure depends on the duct length, type of duct, elbows and the roof jack or wall cap.  Essentially, the more elbows, turns, duct length, etc. that you have - the more static pressure will be present and less effective CFM you will get out of your fan.

Panasonic provides some tools to calcuate the model needed to ventilate properly after factoring in duct length, duct type, elbow, type of exterior vents, etc.  As you might suspect - the end result of the calculations only leads you to select their fans.  While it is possible to use air duct calculators and other tools to precisely determine effective CFMs you will get out of a fan - it is probably OK to simply round up to a larger fan if you know you don't have a straight duct run to the outside. 

Why Use An Inline Fan for Bathroom Ventilation?
There are many options when replacing an old, noisy, ineffective bathroom fan.  It’s possible to replace a traditional ceiling-mount bathroom fan with a new fan just like it, or you can replace the old fan with an inline fan system.

An inline fan does not rest directly on the ceiling of the bathroom.  Rather - the fan installs in the attic space above or slightly away from the bathroom.  An inline fan has several advantages over a traditional bathroom fan:

• POWER - because the fan can be mounted anywhere in the attic - the power of the fan is not limited by the space where it is installed
• SOUND - because the fan can be mounted many feet away from exhaust point on the ceiling - fan vibration and noise is kept to a minimum.  The insulated ductwork used in an attic will protect from condensation and provides an excellent sound dampener
• MULTIPLE EXHAUST POINTS - in a larger bathroom, it is possible to create multiple exhaust points in the ceiling and only install one fan.  This is done with a WYE connector, some flexible ductwork and multiple grilles.  Grilles are available in many shapes and sizes and can also be purchased with lights.

Why Do I Need Ventilation?

With new technology, homes today are designed to be airtight and more energy efficient than ever before. While this results in fewer drafts and lower heating and cooling bills, the airtight design does not allow for proper ventilation of harmful pollutants that can accumulate in a home.  Over time, stale air contaminated daily by a collection of pollutants, has proven to be harmful for the people and animals living in the home.

Sources of pollution extend far past the obvious chemicals like paint fumes, asbestos and pesticides. Cleaning fluids, building materials and preservatives used in furniture and carpets can all contribute to poor indoor air quality. Also, everyday items like hairspray, oven cleaner and bug spray can add to this toxic mixture of trapped pollutants.

To some degree, biological pollutants such as mold, mildew, pollen and dust are found in all homes. These biological pollutants thrive in moist, humid environments. These minor hazards, when in large quantities, not only create poor air quality, but can also reduce the structural integrity of a home. Proper ventilation can nearly eliminate these threats and create cleaner, safer air conditions.

Improving indoor air quality is a two-process job, but with a little information, it doesn’t have to be a difficult one. The first step in creating fresh, clean indoor air is removing as many of the sources as possible. Remove unnecessary pollutants from the home such as paint or other chemicals and place them in a shed or garage. With attached garages, be sure there is an airtight seal between the garage and home so that efforts to remove the sources of pollution are not offset.

The next step in improving a home’s air quality involves mechanical ventilation. Experts agree that passive ventilation through vents is not a reliable method of replenishing a building’s air supply. Mechanical ventilation removes moist, stale, polluted air and replaces it with air from the outside to insure clean, fresh, safe air for the home.

More About Home Ventilation

Continuous and intermittent mechanical ventilation are two types of approaches commonly used for combating poor air quality. Each kind of ventilation has a specific purpose depending on whether you are ventilating a specific room or the whole house.

Intermittent ventilation, sometimes called spot, local or secondary ventilation, is used to capture and remove moisture or odors quickly at the source. The purpose is to exhaust pollutants before they can spread to other parts of the home. Areas that might require this type of ventilation include the bathroom, kitchen, utility room, exercise room, workshop and home office.

Continuous ventilation, also referred to as general, central, whole-house or primary ventilation, removes stale air and may provide fresh air to all rooms on a slow continuous basis. A well-designed airtight home should include a mechanical continuous ventilation system.