Every house I've lived in, I've learned something new to watch out for when renting (or, recently, buying) the next one. For example, the otherwise nice house up Aro Street that I lived in for my third year at University turned out to be in shadow for about 23 hours a day, and consequently grew mould in the bathroom like nothing I've ever seen since.
So I have a tip to pass on to you folks. It's a strange one, though, involving basements. Finished basements, in particular. Because a basement is underground, it's surprisingly important that the basement be heated and cooled separately from the rest of the house if people are to live there.
The situation we have right now is that my mother-in-law turns into an icicle (not necessarily a bad thing, I'll grant you) when the air conditioning is on in our house. Upstairs in my office, I'm sweltering. Down in the basement she's freezing. The main floor is comfortable. Now we can remove a lot of the heat from the office via the window with a fan, but the basement problem can't be fixed. The fan vents aren't designed to be airtight seals, they push a little less of a cold draught into the already-cold basement. The fan circulating air in the house only slightly ameliorates the problem.
So ... separate heating and cooling. Now you know.
--Nat
For every home improvement problem there are two equally suitable solutions. Some homeowners tend focus on the one that involves hundreds of dollars, a new/replaced appliance or a team of contractors. The contractors see the one that involves about $2.00 (or less) in materials, and about 15 minutes of labor.The fan vents aren't designed to be airtight seals, they push a little less of a cold draught into the already-cold basement.
Have you thought about sealing off the vents in the basement with some weatherproofing? It won't solve the problem as well as separate heating/cooling for the basement, but it doesn't cost as much either.
Re:Weatherproofing
belg4mit on 2002-06-12T02:28:44
Ermm, sealing off too many vents
can create back-pressure. Not a
good thing.
If the roof sits in sunlight for any decent stretch of the day, get a powered attic vent on a thermostat. A fan that blows the hot air out of the attic when it gets to, say, 105, will make an ASTOUNDING improvement in the temperature of the third floor in the summer. A friend of mine just had to replace his attic vent fan. He knew it had gone bad when his otherwise nice and cool second floor suddenly became unfomfortable in midday despite a constant air conditioning flow.
If you need more than that, an actual vent in the ceiling of an upstairs hallway, often on a manual switch, can change the climate in the house very quickly. They're usually big enough to recycle the air volume of the house several times an hour. Flip it on, open window vents in the basement, and within minutes it will have vented stale warm air from the second floor out, pulling cooler air up from downstairs. You'll end up with a house that is fairly close to one temperature.
Re:Backwards.
ziggy on 2002-06-12T03:01:58
I saw something like this on a This Old House many, many moons ago. They were renovating a colonial house in Georgia that had some a form of air conditioning in the 19th Century[1]. How'd they do it? By installing a ring of propane burners around an open vent in the center of the roof (at the top of the central spiral staircase, IIRC). When it gets hot, just fire up the burners and watch the air rise and circulate. Same basic principle.:-) [1] You can date the technique to the introduction to gas line service. Should be pre-Civil war in any case. Not a cheap modification at the time, but certainly required given the climate.
Re:Backwards.
ct on 2002-06-12T14:17:58
Convection cooling. What's good enough for a G4 cube is good enough for a house:)
