Attic Fan Question - 06/15/21
So I noticed my attic fan that vents hot attic air out through the rooftop did not seem to be running. Been dreading going up there for a week. Assembled all the tools suited up head to toe with resperator and crawled up there today at 6:30am. Bent over at the waist about 3 feet to work in while stepping across and balancing on the ceiling joists under 18" of rock wool. Good news no foot thru the ceiling today. Set attic thermastadt to lowest seting no go on fan. Checked voltage and have power. By passed thermastadt wire direct to fan still no love. Son of a bitch. Totally disconected hand spinning fan it has some drag so its toast. No way to pull just motor from attic side. The way it is assembled i have to remove big sheet metal screws from the roof and attic side to get it out. I installed it +- 15 years ago. Home Depot unit. Can't remember if the mount was one or two pieces. Hoping it is two piece and a new one can slip into the old round sheet metal mount otherwise I gotta rip shingles tear it off and re tar and shingle basically about the same amount of work that I did installing when I was in my 40s. Did I mention it ws 103 in SLC yesterday. It pisses me off but I may hire somebody because I just don't want to deal with it.
Question there is a lighted switch in the hallway. When it is in off postion it is reading 88 volts at the fan. It reads 120 when on. That seems like a pretty high phantom voltage. I wonder if that problem is in the switch or if it the could be running paralel to a live wire or is there a ground issue?
This is old 3 wire(black, white, bare copper) white sheath romex. Maybe a 30 foot run unforteneately under insulation so I cant see it. It was servicing a swamp cooler origionally and I repurposed it and swapped the hallway swamp control switch for a lighted rocker switch. It has run fine for +-15 summers but may have always had this phantom voltage. (which if attic went above 110 temp could have fed that to the fan and maybe toasted the motor )
I have not looked at my breaker pannel yet to see if it is on its own cicut and the feed is grounded. Will do that tommorow.
I have plenty of yellow 12/2 so I may swap the switch and run new romex for the next unit. The gift that keeps giving.
Question there is a lighted switch in the hallway. When it is in off postion it is reading 88 volts at the fan. It reads 120 when on. That seems like a pretty high phantom voltage. I wonder if that problem is in the switch or if it the could be running paralel to a live wire or is there a ground issue?
This is old 3 wire(black, white, bare copper) white sheath romex. Maybe a 30 foot run unforteneately under insulation so I cant see it. It was servicing a swamp cooler origionally and I repurposed it and swapped the hallway swamp control switch for a lighted rocker switch. It has run fine for +-15 summers but may have always had this phantom voltage. (which if attic went above 110 temp could have fed that to the fan and maybe toasted the motor )
I have not looked at my breaker pannel yet to see if it is on its own cicut and the feed is grounded. Will do that tommorow.
I have plenty of yellow 12/2 so I may swap the switch and run new romex for the next unit. The gift that keeps giving.