Is it normal to have a draft of air coming from your basement to the main floor? You can feel it easily coming from under the basement door on the main floor level. The Basement windows and doors are closed and when installed were sealed tight with foam. No draft is getting in around them. Yet, the door on my main floor leading to the basement has a fair amount of air draft coming in under the door. What could be causing this?
If you realy want to know and not guess get an energy audit and a blower door test, even a blower door test itself will give a printout of how many air exchanges per hour your house has and should have. The tech then pinpoints all the leaks with a smoke stick. Old houses are leakers, the test might pay for itself in a few months, mine did. It might cost 300, a full audit would be a few hundred more but will eliminate guesswork on how to save on utilities.
It's pretty much happening all the time. I do have the HRV running most of the time. But even with that shut off I still feel draft. The basement is about 75% underground with 8' tall cement walls. The rear of the house is above ground and about 10 feet on either side are also semi-above ground. It has to be coming from the HRV or dryer vent.
If you have Central air, and the return duct is on the main floor, it could be sucking the air out of the basement. If you have a whole house attic fan, it could be causing the same effect.
check where the drain stack goes through to the upper reaches. See if there isn't a blast of air coming down from the attic. That's what i found mine doing. They had cut about a 8" square hole for a 3" pipe, and i stuffed it full of fiberglass insulation.
snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@s50g2000hsb.googlegroups.com:
My basement is very similar to yours and I experience drafts under/around the basement door also. It's most noticable when the ac/furnace is running. I have two hvac registers in the basement, but no returns. On a windy cold day the drafts are most noticable even when the blower is not running. I have a fresh air intake for the furnace and a gas fired hot water heater in the basement that is vented to the outside. Also, my garage is at the exposed end of the basement but seperated by block walls. My theory is that there's enough fresh air from the mentioned openings to create a positive pressure in the basement and the air has to find a way out and takes the least resistant route which is under the basement door. Even though the house is well insulated there's enough openings on the upper level via bathroom exhausts, kitchen exhaust, and fireplace that it creates enough lower pressure for the draft to occur. FWIW.
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