Repairs - attic fans

Arkansas is very hot place in summer, so basically every roof has one or more fans to help to reduce the accumulation of heat and humidity.

It is very important structure for the health of the house.

Few important points to have these fans on the roof :

• Keep Attic Moisture Free
  Excess moisture is never a good thing when it comes to an home.
  Mold, bad odors, bacteria that can destroy wood and other material, insects .. you name it
• Extend the Life of the Roof
  The roof is the most vital feature of any house.
• Lower Room Temperatures
  Removing excess heat from the roof allows the HVAC to run better and thus keeping the room temperature comfortable without spending too much, thus
• Reduce Your Power Costs

But like all machinery, sometime these fans just broke down.

Like the ones described in this article.

Let see what is going on.

The fans

The specific fans described in this article were installed back in 2014, when I had the roof re-done after a heavy hail storm.
So the fans had quite a nice run, about 9 years !
Considering the harsh environment is not bad.

This kind of fan is divided basically in two unit, a thermostat that controls when to turn on and off the fan and the fan itself (a 1.5 HP electric motor connected to the blades of the fan).

This kind of fan is made by company Air vent Inc.

The repair

The repair is conceptually easy, just change the motor.

The problem is purely logistic.

First of all finding the motor alone is quite expensive, so I opted to buy a new attic fan from the same company and harvest the motor and the thermostat from the new unit.
Amazingly I saved about 50$ and plus I had a lot of others spare parts.

Then is the matter to remove the motor from the braces and this is not easy.

OF COURSE ... REMOVE THE POWER BEFORE TO DO ANYTHING !!!!

There are 3 screws that keep together the braces and is easy to access them, however the motor has a metal blade (like a "propeller") and that need to be removed in order to remove the motor.
The blade is connected to the shaft with a screw, not an easy position to reach, small space to operate.

Then the opposite operation is needed.

i.e. slide the new motor in the braces, reattach the blade and then screw the braces back together.

It would be really easier to do that accessing from the roof, removing the attic fan unit cover, remove the blade, go down and remove the motor from the braces, etc.

But it imply to go on the roof and take apart basically all the unit, lot of extra work not mentioning the danger to go on a roof in July with 45 C !!

After changing the motor to both the fans,  one of the two fans broke again.
A brace that hold the motor on place, broke down, probably due the vibrations, old age of the brace and the small bending when the motor was substituted.

Fortunately having bough an entire unit rather than only the motor, I was able to cannibalize also one of the 3 braces of the new one.
Voila' !   Now the fan is happily back running removing humidity and heat from my roof. 

Note

Although I think to be able to do this repair, I did prefer to hire an electrician to do it, for many reasons, like avoiding to go on the roof (vertigo) and having someone with more practical experience on this kind of works.
I did hire Crow Electrical Services  and I have to say this guy rock ! :)
He changed both fans in less than an hour and repaired the broken one in a jiffy.
Yeah, is maybe little bit of advertisement, but this guy deserve it :)