There are three reasons for which I put together this Whole House Fan ShutterCover Trim to Fit Review;

1. The ShutterCover Trim to Fit manufacturer contacted me with some information about his product and I decided that it is worth to mention it on my website.For your information – I’m not affiliated with the manufacturer, nor I’m profiting from you reading this fan Shuttercover™ Trim to Fit review – it’s my personal opinion without any influence, even if it sounds like a sales pitch .
   
2. During the cold season, I inspect many homes with black mold contaminated attics and in some of them, a simple thing like a whole house fan Shuttercover™ Trim to Fit I’m going to review would have prevented most of the house’s conditioned air from penetrating shutters.
   
3. Installing the whole house shutter cover appears to be an easy task to perform and a valuable item to put on your house maintenance schedule list.

I have always suggested that my clients purchase or “manufacture” a cover (box) that you can install over the whole house fan from the attic side. I still highly recommend this solution, but it sometimes requires a lot of effort, and for many home owners, it might not be even possible to implement.

Because of the size and/or location of the attic access hatch, transferring an assembled whole house fan box cover or assembling one in the attic is simply not an option. There are, of course, flexible/soft types of whole house vent covers, but you are still required to enter the attic before and after the cold season.

The whole house fan Shuttercover™ is a completely different story. It really can’t get any more simple than it already is. Let me just list some of its benefits:

• Easy to trim so it fits any size whole house fan (up to 48”x48”)

• Easy to apply / install over the fan shutters from within your house

• Simplicity of the Shuttercover™ allows you to install it in seconds, and not only during the cold season, but also between the whole house fan without even entering the attic

Despite the fact that whole house fans use significantly smaller amounts of energy than air conditioners, the entire assembly provides very little insulating value. During the cold months, while you are heating your home, the whole house fan shutters allow the heated air to escape into the attic, which sometimes results in condensation and attic black mold growth. At the same time, cold air from the attic migrates into your home.
During the warmer months, whenever air conditioning is running, or even without the system operating, the whole house fan shutters become very hot. They either transfer the heat into the much cooler house or let the cool/conditioned air out (usually into the attic). Don’t believe it?

Touch the whole house fan shutter surface (assuming that there is no insulating cover installed in your attic) during the summer and during the winter.

• Another huge benefit – by covering your whole house fan shutters with Shuttercover™, you’ll reduce your energy expenses.

Look at it this way – what’s going to happen when you open your window during the winter, or while operating an AC on a hot day? You’ll be dumping your money through that window, dollar after dollar.

An unprotected whole house fan shutter is the same as that – an open window into the attic. For every proud whole house fan homeowner, they are just increasing the energy usage and cost.

Let’s get into some Shuttercover™ Trim to Fit cover details:

• It is made of ¼-inch thick, Low-E reflective foil insulation.  This type of insulation adds significant energy savings by stopping up to 97% of radiant heat transfer.

• To fulfill your aesthetic expectations, one side of the Shuttercover™ has a white coating that blends in perfectly with the surrounding ceiling.

• The square piece of insulation can be easily trimmed to fit any whole house fan shutter size up to 48 inches by 48 inches.

• A trimmed-to-fit Shuttercover™ section attaches to the whole house fan shutters frame with a self-adhesive Velcro tape. That allows you to easily remove the cover before turning on the fan and re-apply it after it has been turned OFF – no more duct tape, plastic foil or (the most convenient part) more trips to the attic…

However, I’d still highly recommend to examine your attic periodically, or have someone do it for you.

• One more benefit of having the whole house fan Shuttercover™ installed – In many of the homes I’ve inspected that included a whole house fan installation, the heating/cooling system thermostat was installed in a very close proximity to the fan. Without some type of a cover installed over the whole house fan, this area will always have a “micro-climate” – hotter or cooler than the rest of the house, affecting the thermostat directly and resulting in a false activation of the system. Shuttercover Trim to Fit can help prevent it from happening.

Since I personally don’t have a whole house fan installed in my house, all that rambling above is based on observation of many attics, conditions that resulted from uninsulated fans / fans shutters, and information from the Shuttercover Trim to Fit manufacturer of this product.

I think, that you can’t really go wrong with such a simple “gadget”, and my Whole House Fan Shuttercover™ Fit to Trim review will help you a little, but let me know if you already have one and how is it performing. 

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Bathroom exhaust fan general requirements

Every bathroom without an openable window (min 1.5sq. ft) requires an exhaust fan.

The bathroom ceiling exhaust (or wall) should be discharging to the house exterior, not into the ceiling / wall frame cavity, or another room, crawlspace, attic, etc. This is extremely important if your bathroom contains any significant humidity source like a shower stall, bathtub, steam shower, etc.

Discharging moisture from your bathroom fan into some enclosed and/or poorly ventilated areas is often responsible for the crawlspace and attic mold growth. By the way, have you ever checked your attic ventilation?

• Bathroom ceiling exhaust fan requires a damper to prevent back-drafts
• Bathroom exhaust exterior vent opening should be screened with a ¼” to ½” mesh to prevent birds from building nests inside the vent pipe

GFCI protection for bathroom ceiling exhaust vent

NEC (National Electrical Code) does not require bathroom exhaust fans to be installed on a GFCI protected circuit. However, you should be following the manufacturer’s installation instructions. In most, or should I say in all, cases concerning a bathroom exhaust fan installation directly above the bathtub and / or shower stall (or any other moisture sources), the bathroom fan must be listed as suitable for such locations and must be installed on a GFCI protected circuit.

This is a paragraph from the bathroom exhaust fan installation instructions:

“If this bathroom exhaust fan is to be installed over a tub or shower, it must be marked as appropriate for the application and be connected to a GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) protected branch circuit.”

To test if a bathroom exhaust fan is GFCI protected, turn the fan ON, and push TEST button on a bathroom GFCI receptacle or GFCI breaker dedicated for this bathroom. If the exhaust fan is still running after the receptacle or the breaker tripped, it is most likely not protected (there are occasionally some hidden GFCI receptacles installed).

Learn How to Install GFCI Receptacle

You should always check manufacturer tag before attempting to install a ceiling exhaust fan directly above the bathroom tub or shower stall.

Bathroom exhaust fan TIP

For those who always forget to turn ON the bathroom exhaust fan (or forget to turn it OFF), I highly recommend one with a humidity-sensing switch. I’ve been using two of those in my bathrooms for almost 4 years, and I am very happy with their performance. One of the humidity sensors failed during the first year, but manufacturer replaced it without any problems.

Bathroom humidity sensing fan (at least the one that I have is made by BROAN) can be wired like a 3-way switch – it means that you can turn the fan ON/OFF using a regular wall switch or it will be automatically activated by an elevated humidity level.

Controls on the bathroom humidity-sensing fan allow for the time of operation and humidity level adjustments.

Let me know if I’ve left anything unanswered about bathroom exhaust fan …

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Many of my clients ask me about the big square box in the center section of the house’s upper floor ceiling behind a set of self-closing louvers. It’s a whole house fan and it can either benefit home owners or make living conditions worse.

Where and when it makes sense to use the whole house fan

• Preferably mild climates with cooler and less humid nights
• Use the whole house fan only if the temperature and humidity outside is more favorable than the conditions indoors. If your air conditioning system has been operating during the day, and the temperature outside drops lower (but the humidity is still high), don’t turn the whole house fan on. The vent will suck all the humid air into your air conditioned house
• The best time periods to use it would be, of course, early morning and evening

Who shouldn’t use the whole house fan?
If you suffer from allergies, it might not be a good idea to bring all the pollution into the house. The window screens will stop some of it, but whole house fans are very powerful and will make you sneeze more than ever.

Physics of the whole house fan operation!

1. Before you turn the fan on, open as many windows and doors as possible, close fireplace damper and / or glass door, and shut the furnace / water heater room doors (if they are louver type, it won’t matter). The suction of the whole house fan (at least at the highest speed) is so great, that without open windows / doors, it will draw air from the outside through any possible openings like, for example, from the chimney. If it is a fireplace chimney and you don’t remove the ashes… well, it’s going to be a mess. If it is a water heater / furnace chimney, it might blow off the pilots.

2. When everything is ready, you can turn on the whole house fan and usually within the next few seconds you should feel plenty of exterior air flowing around the house. Unless…

3. This part is equally important as opening the doors and windows – both have to be balanced to function properly in order to really benefit from the whole house fan operation. The air drawn by the whole house fan has to be discharged through the attic vents to the exterior. Otherwise, pressure created in the attic area will cause the air that was just pulled out of your house to return with dust and insulation particles through any possible gaps in the attic floor and the whole house fan itself.

Regular attic ventilation might not be enough to support the whole house fan operation; you might need much more to carry all that extra volume of air to the exterior. And the formula to calculate the square footage of the attic vents required to discharge that air is very simple. All you need is the dimensions of all your rooms:

Example: your ceilings are 8’ high and you have four 10’ x 14’ rooms, one 15’ x 17’ room, and a 10’ x 3’ hallway (this is just a sample, calculate all the rooms in your house you think should be covered)

10’x14’x8’ = 1120×4 = 4480
15’x17’x8’ = 2040
10’x3’ = 30

Total – 6550 cubic feet

Now you have to divide 6550 by 750, which equals 8.73 sq feet – this is the area of the required attic vents (all of them combined – soffit, ridge, gable, etc.)

4. If the house you’re moving into has the whole house fan already installed, lets hope that it was properly sized up for its purpose (there might be a tag on the unit itself), which is to replace your house air within just a few minutes.

5. If you’re the one installing the whole house fan, consider 3 or 4 minutes as an optimal time for the house air exchange. To achieve that, you’d need to divide your house total air volume (6550 cubic feet from our sample) by 3 or 4 minutes. That will give us 1810 CFM / 1357.5 CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute).

6. One more important thing: louvers of the typical whole house fan are not air tight and have no insulation applied on their surface; they leak air between the house and attic. I would highly recommend installing a cover in attic area or Whole House Fan Shuttercover™ to prevent air drafts during the cold season – don’t forget to remove it before you decide to use the fan again.

Whole house fans are noisy and many people never use them, but they might benefit your wallet if you apply all of the above. There are currently other types of house ventilation systems available: they are more expensive (2 – 3 times) but very quiet, more efficient, and provide air circulation for extended periods of time.

Have a cool summer next summer.

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