Barometer Placing

[stretch]

Unless you have a perfectly sealed house, the air pressure inside the house will be nearly the same as the air pressure outside the house. Just protect it from the weather.

Stretch

[Jeff Bulach]

I know this is a bit of a silly question, but then again if you don't ask you will never know.

My girlfriend and I are having a discussion as to the placing of a barometer.

I say an outside wall, she said an inside wall.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks

Jeff

[Ron]

[TURTLE]

This is Turtle.

Just put it on a wall where you can stand and look at it and then argue with someone who is in the kitchen.

TURTLE

[Harry Everhart]

There is no difference between the air pressure inside or outside the home. The only time it will change and only for a second is when you slam a door or open a door quickly creating a vacuum or high pressure cell.

If you are in a building - like the Empire State building - and go up the elevator with a barometer. It will read lower as you go up because it is always measuring the weight of the air in the atmosphere "above" its location. A barometer can be used as an altimeter if it is calibrated for feet instead of air pressure in inches of mercury.

Barometer are one of the best instruments for predicting the weather. If AP rises - the weather will be dryer and nicer. If the AP falls - you are going to have wetter and worse weather. If it goes down super fast - watch out for tornado or hurricane :-)

Of course you "need" a barometer. Put in a place where you have good light to read it.

Harry

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Wherever it looks good. Does not matter as the pressure is the same either way.

Perhaps you are confusing it with thermostat placement that should be on an inside wall.

[Harry Everhart]

Agreed - sometimes when the wind blows - you can feel it suck the air out of your ears :-) like going over a mountain in a car.

Harry

[Stormin Mormon]

Depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

Do you want to accurately read the pressure? In that case, it's irrelevant.

Do you want the barometer to be in a more stable temperature environment? Then inside wall.

[Michael Daly]

Or when it is really gusty.

Mike

[Don Klipstein]

If the barometer reads significantly different inside and outside, then you are in or close to serious doo-doo!

A truly properly placed barometer is in an outdoor shelter of such design to have its internal pressure match the pressure of the atmosphere outside it regardless of windspeed. If the barometer is in a room with a window and it does not change as a result of opening and closing the window, then the barometer is probably reading the outside pressure accurately. Definitely if opening/closing windows on other sides of the house also do not change the reading.

If the barometer reading falls fast enough to see it moving downwards or it drops more than about .06 "inch" within half an hour, then there is a good chance your main worry is not the barometer.

- Don Klipstein ( [e-mail])

[Goedjn]

Or when you've got a whole-house fan that's seriously oversized. Or if you've designed your house as a NBC shelter and are deliberately producing overpressure through your filtration system. Of course, that's about which SIDE of the outside wall it should be on, not which wall.

But in any case, the barometer should be placed on the same wall as the thermometer and humidistat, which generally means on an outside wall next to the window, but out of direct sunlight.