The upstairs at my home is always has infinitely more dust than the rest of the house. Another post in this group gave me a thought. The attic fan is on a thermostat, and it runs quite a lot in the summer. Could that fan be creating a negative pressure situation in the upstairs area such that dust is being drawn into the room?
For hypothetical purposes, assume that the room IS negatively pressurized. How do I solve the problem? Better seal the scuddle hole?
Is the dust only in the summer or is it year-round. Where do you live, Arizona will be different from Maine
just be glad you only have to dust half the house.
Do you really need a fan, id guess more venting or a smaller fan. Is house closed up with AC on, the fan pulls alot of electricity, it costs alot to run, it might be making the AC work harder pulling in hot air and dust.
Yes! Only open the sealed "scuddle" hole every 18 months or so on average. Climb down and seal the leaks again after you get out.
If the attic fan has the proper amount of intake openings, ie soffit vents, gable vents, etc, then it's fine. The house is supposed to be sealed up and seperate from the attic. And having a small motor, I don't think an attic fan costs a lot to run either compared to overall typical household usage.
it might be making the AC work harder pulling in
Right, probably a few issues he hasnt researched for proper fresh air only venting. It probably pulls 300 watts or more from the ones I see,
300 watts for me is about 17$ a month 12 hrs a day, ive gotten a big house all lit up inside and out down to 45$ a month so percentage wise its alot. But I know in cooling season its a different ballgame, I could spend 500+ a month cooling and im in shade, some houses in sun are like ovens and I guess need attic fans.Dust THeory is Aerosol Theory, FLuidised Beds, Packed COlumns and such, usually found in chemical and mechanical engineering literature. Also look for the Lennard-Jones potential in physical chemistry - it has particle-shape factors which adjust physical properties for ordinary flow and thermodynamic equations.
- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
That assumes it runs 12 hours every day, which is probably a stretch even for Phoenix. Most places it's only going to run on very hot days while the sun is high in the sky, which is more like 7 hours or so. That's what mine does here in NJ. If it's July and hot, it will come on around noon and go off by 7pm or so. That would put it in the range of $10 a month, assuming electricity costs 17c a KWH and that it runs every day. If it only runs 3/4 of the time, which is what mine does, then it's down to $7.50 or so a month.
Wow, $500 a month to cool a house in the shade with a non-cooling electric bill of $45 sounds very high. What seer unit do you have?
Hi, If there is NP, then fan is running too fast or there is no suffcient air intake from down stairs. I don't need attic fan, I have good attic vent naturally.
My utility bill includes water, power and never saw a bill of 500.00 in any season. That is shocking to me. highest I got was ~350.00
The purpose of an attic fan being to remove hot air from attic', eh?
Not draw previously heated or cooled air from within the house envelope and chuck it outside!
BTW here, with no cheap or night-time rates domestic electrcity here averages just over 10 cents per k.watt/hr.
This seems to me to be rather reasonable; our electricity being 95% plus (soon to be 100%) hydro generated. The dams and generators being many hundreds of miles distant; for our total population of only half a million people!
Completely separate and within the next few years there will be a major new hydro project at the Lower Churchill in Labrador, Canada. Electricity from the existing Churchill Falls installation wholesaling now into the USA for something alleged to be around 2 cents per k.watt/ hr. So it does appear that future hydro electric power costs could be maintained at reasonable levels?
he rest of the
be creating a
ide quoted text -
13 seer condensor , but its Space Pack and the Space Pack unit is maybe 11 seer, it has a dark slate roof, and the house style is Normandy so it was a enginered style great for parts of Europe that benefited from solar gain in cooler climate, yes new glass would help alot but its all custom, so no time soon.500, then I said time for cfls everywhere and a new Energy Star frige, and the heat wave broke.
Middle North Carolina
You are referring to an attic ventilation fan to keep the temperature of the attic lower and not for ventilating the house?
TDD
It came with the house. I'm told that not ventilating the attic will reduce the life of the shingles. When my house was built, it did not have a roof vent. Since I put on a new roof, it does have one. Maybe I don't need the fan any more.
Requirement here for attic venting is 0.3% i.e. 3 sq. feet per 100 sq feet of ceiling space and arranged to provide cross venting. Fans can help that cisrculation. Attic vent fans should NOT draw air from the house itself.
My thought was that the attic fan could be drawing dust in from the outside and depositing it in the attic where it finds any little opening to infiltrate the upstairs room. Fine dust can stay suspended in air for long periods and this dusty air could be getting past the opening into the upstairs room where the scuttle hole is. The act of opening the front door to the house could pull dust in from the attic.
TDD
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