well, it's finally summer here in DC. Yay. House has no A/C. Yeah, I know, but I loved the place and there's lots of trees for shade. Here's the problem; it gets up over 90 degrees outside during the day. With the windows closed and blinds drawn it gets up to about 80 in the upstairs (rest of house is comfortable when I get home from work.) As soon as the outside temp drops below the inside temp, I will open all the upstairs windows and turn on the cheap floor fan that the PO's left for me to try to blow some outside air through the house. It doesn't seem to be working - outside temp will drop to 65 degrees or cooler overnight but the bedroom will still be 75 degrees or so when I wake up in the morning. I suspect if I could get the ambient temp. of the upstairs down to the same temp as the outside and then shut everything up when I left for work, it wouldn't even be as hot when I got home, but I seem to be getting little or no cooling from having the windows open.
To those of you who also persist in living without A/C, what's the best way to deal with this - get a bunch of window mount fans to try to set up an artificial cross breeze, or would installing ceiling fans provide enough circulation? (the girlie wants to do the latter anyway, and the only reason I haven't done it yet is because I still need to get up in the attic and install the heavier boxes and drop some 14/3 switch legs to the wall boxes.)
I've also thought about tricking the furnace fan into running to circulate cool air up from the basement, but I haven't really dug into it that much yet. Would that be a worthwhile modification?
Insane. Previous owners got almost too jiggy with the insulation. I do believe that the walls are uninsulated however, not a big deal up to the
2nd floor (all masonry) but probably ought to be insulated at some point above that (sticks covered with asbestos shingle)
yeah, just put up heavy curtains in the bedroom in the SE corner, the one in the SW corner has none as of yet (only used as an office/computer room) all other rooms have blinds which are closed during the day
Open the DOWNSTAIRS windows as well. The hot air needs to be replaced with something.
Most thermostats that I've seen have a switch for "Auto" and "On". Normally it's in the auto position to let the furnace control the fan. In the on position, the fan runs all the time. Might help out as well.
I have two $20 stand fans, one up and one down, and I'm just fine most days here in NY. The trees are what does it, though. I don't even have to close the windows during the day, the sun just can't get through. We have lots of light but no direct sunshine. It's perfect.
I don't have that. I would have to run an extra pair of wires down to the furnace, and figger out where to hook them up; the thermostat is on/off, heat only. I assume that this is something that can be done easily as I have seen thermostats as you describe (and indeed if I ever add A/C I will need to wire up this functionality.)
I live in south Texas.. Been running the A/C since February.
I like the ceiling fan idea the best, but I'm also in the security business and leaving windows open makes me cringe. In northern Texas and Louisiana I've seen big attic fans to suck air up from ground level and exhaust to the outside. I guess if humidity is low outside a breeze may make the space livable, but that is not an option on the Gulf Coast.
Window A/C units are pretty cheap now. Maybe get one or two for comfort and heat waves that are inevitably coming to your area.
Solution for me was the creation of ridge vents when I had the house re-roofed. Controlling how much heat gain the under roof area achieved made a world of difference.
Heavy drapes don't prevent the sun from hitting the glass, which then transfers the heat into the house via radiation. You need to block the sun from hitting the windows via an outside blind or an awning.
You have to move the hot air out and the cooler air in. A good powerful window fan can do wonders. You have the fan blowing out of the bedroom and only open the windows in the rooms to be used. You can suck air a long distance through the house that way and cool everything along the way.
Ceiling fans just circulate the hot air already in the room, floor fans don't do much better. You have to blow hot air out and draw cooler air in. You may even want to consider a whole house fan that blows up through the attic and out the eaves. That also gets rid of the blanket of heat above you.
OTOH, I bought my first AC for our bedroom back about 1968 and have not been without at least a cool bedroom since. You can get them for $99 these days and on a hot humid night, nothing beat real AC.
I live in Baltimore. Flash your lights a few times so I can see where you are.
My house has central AC, but I only use it 2 or 3 weeks a year.
Be sure you have enough insulation between your attic and top fllor, if the attic isn't living space.
I have almost enough.
I have a townhouse that was built with fullwidth soffit screens front and back and full width ridge vent. Not nearly enough in my opinion. I put in a roof fan the first summer and I love it. Before the roof fan, it was so hot when I got home at 5 or 6 that I couldn't go upstairs at all. I relaxed and slept in the basement, and went upstairs in the morning to shower and get fresh clothes. AFter roof fan, I started sleeping upstairs. At least 10 degrees cooler and 20 to 30 in the attic. I have had to replace the motor 2 or 3 times in the last 24 years. Some last a lot longer than others, I don't know why.
But I use fans too, a lot.
I don't like window fans because it would take an awful lot of fanning to really put a breeze through my house, if nature hasn't provided one. And they obstruct the window, and I don't have many windows.
I only use table fans, and I have one wherever i spend any time, which means above my bed, facing my chair when I'm sitting at my desk, facing my chair when I'm sitting at the kitchen table, and facing the sofa when I'm in the living room. And one at work on my desk, facing me. Even though work has AC, there are times when it is not enough. So the fan is always blowing straight at me.
I don't use the oscillation when the fan has it, but I live alone. I think if other people lived here, and we didn't sit right next to each other, I'd buy more fans. (rummage sales and thrift stores mostly.) I would definitely have a second fan for the bed, although it would be hard to find another one small enough to fit on the sill.
The below-grade basement is never hot enough to need a fan.
I don't like the noise of fans, so every fan has a speed control. I plug the control into the wall and plug the fan into it. 2 or 3 controls I bought as table-top lamp dimmers (the brown box with the slide control), and the others were home made: one I bought a ceiling fan speed control and mounted it my own plastic box, with a cord to the wall, and a receptacle I can plug the fan into. And one was a dimmer that went in the wall under a standard wall plate, that I ended up mounting in a fairly big metal box (big enough to use in a wall for a switch or receptacle)
Several people here don't like the idea of using lamp dimmers as motor speed controls, but I've been doing this for 24 years with no problems. A couple motors wouldn't work with a lamp dimmer, and it's for those fans I made up the table-top fan dimmer. I use that in the kitchen, with the fan on top of the tv. It was a new fan about 10 or
15 years ago, with a plastic housing.
I think I can use the one that is actually a fan control to control the speed of electric drills etc. maybe, but I have variable speed drills and so far I haven't had occasion to try this.
I almost always set the speed of the fan to just below the speed at which I hear the fan. So I only get the breeze. One fan, the one at my desk, has to go a bit higher for some reason, but it's not as loud as even the slow speed out of 3.
I never sat the dimmer so slow that the fan doesn't spin at all. It needs to turn or it will overheat.
Also I never leave the fan alone on the dimmer until I've run it say 5 or 10 hours in a row without overheating problems. Just feel the fan. It should be warm, but if it is hot, maybe it's being used with the wrong dimmer, although I've never had that except the one or two that would barely spin on the light dimmer. (There are differnt kinds of motors.)
I have my bed just below the bedroom window, and there I use a fan that I think was once riveted to some big machine at a factory, to blow on the operato. It might be 50 or 70 years old. It only has two blades, that is, one blade with two ends. And the protective screen is barely any protection at all. But the motor is pretty weak and when the blade wasn't firmly attached to the shaft, or even now, I could just put my finger in with no problem. When started, it would take 15 seconds for the blade to catch up to the shaft. But it got to where it would never catch up, so I glued the blade on.
It has a tiny flat cast metal base, 4"x4" and would always be knocked over or pulled over if I didn't nail one corner to the window sill.
This old fan doesn't have self-lubricating bearings and I have to oil it 2 to 5 times during the summer. Sometimes it will last 2 months on one oiling and sometimes only a few days. I guess it depends on how well I do it. Sometimes when I didn't keep the oil right by the fan, I would let it slow down some, and then in the middle of the night it would slow down to a stop. But it had already done this a few times in the middle of the day too. Motor was quite hot, but after oiling it was always good as new.
For a while, I thought it would make me too cold if the outside temp went down during the night, so I took a thermostatic contro from another fan, mounted in the plastic cap from some aerosol can, and wired that into the power cord. I don't use it much anymore but it's adjustable and sometimes I set it just warmer than the current temp, so the fan has just gone on as I turn the knob. Then it will turn off if it gets any colder inside.
OH YES VERY IMPORTANT. I learned to sleep with no blanket or sheet covering me. It was hard to do. I used to use a blanket or comforter no matter how hot it was. It took a couple weeks to get used to no covers. That was worth 5 or 10 degrees. The following year I learned to sleep with no clothes on and no covers. That was worth at least another 5, for a total of at least 15.
I live alone. If you have daughters, the naked part is probably not a good idea.
The roof fan turns on between 8 in the morning and noon, depending on how hot and sunny it is. It turns off between 6 in the afternoon and
9, so it's always quiet when I go to sleep. It never lets the attic get more than 5 or 10 degrees hotter than the outside temp, so the wood that makes up the house never heats up more than that and the second floor and the furniture and walls never get very hot. A whole house fan doesn't work until it gets cool out, and there will some days it will be 80 or more until you fall asleep, I believe. If it's
80 out, the fan won't make it cooler than 80 in.
I'm dubious about ceiling fans. My table fans I think blow far more where I am than would a ceiling fan. Maybe in the kitchen where someone moves around while cooking, but the fan on top of the tv has some effect in the rest of the kitchen too.
My brother has one in my bedroom when I visit, in his airconditioned Dallas home. I think a table fan might do more, but since the house AC is sst to 72, I don't have a real comparison. Another friend here who also has AC has 2 or 3 ceiling fans, one on a not that high but cathedral ceiling. He doesn't have the money my brother has and he gets a lot of heat in his living room window, and sets the AC to 75, and the celing fan does something but i'm not sure how much. Should I pay attention next time I'm there.
I hate having the windows closed. I hate the quiet.
I absolutely woudn't install more than one ceiling fan at first, and compare the results with a table fan. Or two if you have more family.
I set up a "gable vent fan" in the attic access hole (exhausting) with a X10 appliance module to turn if on and off. I open a window upstairs and a window downstairs when I want to use the fan. It's sort of a "poor mans" whole house fan. The fan had four mounting "arms" on it. I sliped foam pipe insulation over each arm and place it in the access hole to the attic. The foam de-couples the vibration to reduce noise. It really makes a difference here in Seattle, It won;t do so well in DC, but better than just a fan.
Low-e glass stops a lot of that heat, like 90% of it.
I have the same problem as the OP, 'cept that trees aren't an option. My front lawn is 10 feet from house to street, it faces south and the front of the house gets direct sun for as long as the sun is above the horizon.
I did put in a ridge vent a month ago but I'm not sure it's going to work. Well, it can't make it hotter!
And make sure the cool air scrubs the heat out of the room surfaces, vs just passing through rooms with still air near the surfaces (including people surfaces, which feel cooler in moving air.) Ceiling fans can help whole house fans. Picture surface thermal mass in series with an airfilm conductance Ga that increases with air velocity (Ga = 2+V/2 Btu/h-F-ft^2, with V in mph, approximately) in series with a conductance to outdoor air (cfm Btu/h-F, approximately), like this, viewed in a fixed font:
1/cfm 1/(AGa) Tout ---www------www----------- Tsurf | | --- Csurf = 0.5A Btu/F/ft^2 --- | for A ft^2 of 1/2" drywall. | -
A 10'x20' room with 880 ft^2 of drywall might have Csurf = 440 Btu/F. With a 1000 cfm window fan and a ceiling fan that raises the airspeed near the surface to V = 2 mph, it might have a natural time constant RC = Csurf(1/cfm+1/(A(2+V/2)) = 440(1/1000+1/(880(2+2/2)) = 0.6 hours.
In 2 hours with Tout = 70 F, a Tsurf = 80 F room would would cool to
70+(80-70)e^-(2/0.6) = 70.4 F. With a 500 cfm window fan and no ceiling fan, RC = 1.1 hours, so it might only cool to 70+(80-70)e^-(2/1.1) = 71.7, or more, if the bulk of the air near the surface stays warm, hardly moving at all.
With R20 walls, after 8 hours with Tout = 90 F with the window fan off and no internal heat gains and RC = 10 hours, the 70.4 F drywall temp would climb to 90+(70.4-90)e^-(8/10) = 81.2, or less, with 2 layers of drywall with RC = 20 hours and 90+(70.4-90)e^-(8/20) = 76.9. We might have a lot more mass and a lower temp if we cooled a basement at night and circulated house air through the basement during the day.
Not from direct sun radiation. I have brand new, low-e windows (milguard) and they do fair with blocking outside ambient temperatures. When the sun hits the glass, not so much. Our retractable awnings are an absolute neccesity.
Ah, awnings. They were on most every house when I was a kid, a long time ago. Now we just stick a cooker box in the window and suck up electricity instead. A decent tree can cool your house as much as a 12000 Btu AC and at no cost.
Agreed, we have trees, but the upstairs still gets hot. After reading this thread and seeing that several people recommended window fans, I thought "what the hell?" when someone says "window fan" I think of those cheezy little plastic things. Well I did a web search and found that there are *real* window fans made; I've already ordered a big Air King unit, we will see what happens. I suspect that whoever suggested that the attic is getting hot is correct, although there's a ludicrous amount of insulation up there. If the window fan does not do the trick, I will look into some kind of powered attic ventilation. My house is odd; the roof does not overhang the exterior walls at all, although there are large vents at the top of the exterior walls so one of those would be a good place to put a thermostatically controlled fan.
What you could do is get a wireless thermometer. Lowes had one for 15 dollars, but it seems to go through batteries pretty quickly. Especially since I only use it one week every 26 or so, so I guess I would remove the battery during the rest of the time. The lowes is cheap and pretty, but for the same price you can get a big ugly one at Harbor Freight, but it has a) min and max holds, that keep track of current as well as min and max since the last time you reset it, and b) has the current temp on the transmitter, not just the receiver.
First, you could calibrate a regulart themometer against the wireless, and if they don't say the same thing, use a third as a tie-breaker, then handicap the one that is off, if any.
Then without the fan on, measure the temp of your room near the ceiling and at other heights closer to the floor. It is always hotter near the ceiling of any room because hot air rises, but if the difference is ?? just guessing, 6, 7 degrees more or less more than at 4 feet high, too much heat is coming in through the attic.
Another thing one should do is go up when the attic is cool enough, just at the start of dawn is when the attic is at its coolest, and leave the transmitter there, and see how hot the attic gets as the day goes on, and how hot it is at dawn. The min max would be nice for that.
And out of curiosily, you might even bury the transmitter at various depths in the insulation, to see how much cooler the temp is 6 inches down than on the surface.
Insulation is great, but if it is 140 or 150 in the attic, I can't help; thinking it will still be 110 at the top of the ceiling sheetrock, and 100 at the surface of the sheetrock in your bedroom But I just got the wireless thermmoeter and haven't made any measurements at all.
With my roof fan, I think it gets no higher than 100 or 110 up there, even in the middle of the day, but even that is too hot for me to go up and measure temps. At least I never did.
It's better to have the most data to work with, and also if you do install a fan, or someone else who installs insulation, he'll know how much improvement he gets. And can post here like an authority. :)
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