Garage Attic Exhaust Fan Installation

[hobie1dog]

Instead of freezing my ass off with the garage door open, I decided to install an exhaust fan in the attic, so I mounted the 12x12 ceiling exhaust grille in the garage ceiling, centrally located.

It is a Greenheck CSP-700 which is a 700 CFM rated fan and I'm installing an in-line speed controller as well. I made a platform up in the attic for it. Got the 4 rubber vibration isolation pads ready to put under it which you can see on the lower LH side of the photo.

I got the fan free at work, as well as the grille, and 8x6 reducers I needed. Now I'm waiting for the sheet metal shop to make the square to round adapters I need for both sides of the fan so that I can connect R-8 flex to it. I;ll post up some more pictures when I get the sheet metal on the fan and the flexible duct installed.
It should be capable of 9 complete air changes per hour at full speed. I figured I'll be running it at about 70% capacity for reduced noise levels.

 

[ohin3]

Right on ! ! !

 

[igloo]

Hobie you need to come to my house for vaction .

 

[nsfisher]

now i just feel guilty, sittin in front of puter with coffee , pipefull of baccy and my bathrobe on.

 

[chispa]

Won't it just suck cold air into the garage?

 

[igloo]

To remodel of course and he can smoke inside where it is warm as payment . :D

 

[mluyckx]

Dude ! Thanks for this idea !
I have an old but fully functional AC blower sitting in my garage not doing anything, you just gave me an excellent purpose for this thing. 3-way speed too... All I need is just what you said and I know a sheet metal shop close by. Square to round, some ductwork and a 3-way switch... Sweet !
Thanks for sharing. Great idea !

 

[hobie1dog]

Won't it just suck cold air into the garage?

Excellent question my friend. I also have a Mitsubishi heat pump installed in my garage, and it only takes 10 minutes or so to bring the temp inside up to 74 degrees.

with a remote control, pictured on the RH side.

The small amount of air that will infiltrate around the garage door gasket will help make up exhausted air, but will also be conditioned by the heat pump. I also have attic stairs, so more air will come in around the opening for the door for that. I use to work at Owens Corning Fiberglas Technical Center and if you could see a infra-red thermal readout on how and where cold air enters your house, you would see all the places new air will come in at. Having a 15 SEER rated heat pump in the garage should heat things up nicely to compensate for that cold air.

I'm still working on the Audio/Video system. Recently sold my 7 foot theatre speaker that had 2- 15" woofers in it and have just had built 2 smaller cabinets that will go in each front corner. Each cabinet has 2- 15" woofer in it. They will put out in excess of 120db continuous of SPL at very high quality. The design is the successor to the Klipschorn, takes up the same footprint, 2X the output.

Then still have to get a projector mounted up in the loft area for the 110" projection screen which you can see in this picture, (the old theatre speaker is under the screen)

One of these days, I'll finish the garage, only been working on it for 5 years now.

 

[ssjones]

Wow, fabulous work! I smoke in my heated, but not ventilated garage. It gets pretty smokey in there...the wife complains the smoke smell gets in her new truck. I say no way, but am not so certain. I'm up to my neck in car work this winter, but will have to add a fan next year.

That is some fine work you've completed so far, impressive on all accounts. Take some more pix as your job progresses.

 

[chispa]

Heeeeeey now. That's not a garage! Much too clean for a garage.

 

[hobie1dog]

Some garage! I take it that cars are not allowed?

For now, just 2 race Karts that I just bought. The Honda VFR750 is sold and gone and the laydown kart was just traded for a sit-up kart last month, but this picture is what 1/4 of the garage looked like.

 

[revs]

He sold the VFR750 to buy more Penzance. :rofl:

 

[hobie1dog]

Well I don't know what happened to my Photobucket pics listed above, as I haven't moved anything around, but anyway the sheet metal shop finally got my square to round adapters done and I got the fan installation finished.
Speed control mounted on the side of the fan

Fan is mounted on the platform, extra motor is off to the LH side with the one side of the motor shaft going into a hole drilled in the platform.

Flex duct goes over to the gable vent opening

I'm not 100 % happy with it as I tried out a Smokey cartridge and some of the white smoke hung around the ceiling longer than I would have liked. I'm glad I didn't use anything less than a 700 CFM fan for the application. The fan had some vibration in it due to an unbalanced squirrel cage wheel, so I installed a bicycle inner tube under the fan so that it would have an air pillow for elimination of structure borne transmission.

 

[ssjones]

Pretty crafty with the air pillow from a bike tube! I need something like this for my garage/workshop, it gets too smokey in there and that can't be good for me.

 

[hobie1dog]

Here are the original missing pics...The 12x12 ceiling mounted grille

The in line cabinet fan

Last night I thought the fan sounded like it was moving slowly, so I went up there in the attic and found out that the out of balance blower wheel that causes the vibration in it, had slowly rotated the fan speed controller back to the slowest speed. So now I'm going to take the controller out of the circuit as I need all 700 CFM pulling the smoke out of the garage. I do like having the garage door down, stereo on, mood lighting emitting a warm glow, puts me to sleep. :?