Ventilating a 1 1/2 story house.

[Jameshow]

I live in essentially a bungalow with bedrooms in the roof.

The last few nights have been unbearably hot upstairs and the kids / wife have slept on the sofas in the lounge. (Which are much cooler)

Anyone have any ideas of cooling the bedrooms in the evening?

How about a large fan in the window frame say 200mm in diameter?

Any thoughts?

Many thanks

James

Btw any one finding the workshop too hot too?!

 

[Spectric]

You need to install air conditioning, what has happened to when it was normally cooler up North, oh yes global warming. Carries on like this we will be like the tropics and start to grow palm trees and cactus.

 

[jimmy_s]

You could do that - night time cooling. Best to use an in line duct type fan and actually blow cool air into the house and allow it to escape via windows etc. Extract fan in window will not work very well as extract has no directional effect. Ideally you would blow cooler air in and duct to ground floor and displace hot air at high level allowing it to escape out windows etc (stack effect vent)

 

[artie]

Btw any one finding the workshop too hot too?!

32 c for a while last Sat. Had to search out my bandana to keep my eyes clear.

My house is laid out like yours, but I don't have to go upstairs.

 

[D_W]

Put a fan back from the window blowing toward it, about 2 feet. Fans pull air in from the sides, even box fans, which means they pull some from the top corners in the front. Translation, if you put a fan in the window, half or so of the air it pushes is pulled in from outside.

They'll move twice as much air back from the window because all of the pushed air is originating from inside the house.

 

[Inspector]

200mm is not even close to being a large fan. At my last place I used a 760mm/30" 2 speed at the back door to pull air in through all the open windows when I got home from work around midnight. It brought the temp down from 40ºC to whatever the outside temp was at the time in less that half an hour.

I took a 610mm/24" to work to circulate air over me while wearing an evaporative cooling vest. Hung it from a jib crane to get it at chest level. I was the only one to work 10 hour shift and not feel I was melting by the end of it.

You should be looking for something like this at least. https://www.amazon.ca/Lasko-H20610-...ords=30"+drum+floor+fan&qid=1626829518&sr=8-3

Pete

 

[JobandKnock]

You need to install air conditioning, what has happened to when it was normally cooler up North, oh yes global warming. Carries on like this we will be like the tropics and start to grow palm trees and cactus.

Too late - they already have palm trees in the Kyle of Lochalsh!

 

[Aligish]

Too late - they already have palm trees in the Kyle of Lochalsh!

Not to mention Plockton...!

 

[Rorschach]

As @D_W says you need to blow the warm air out, not try and blow cool air in. Big fan blowing out of the upstairs windows and then open the downstairs windows furthest away to get maximum pathway for the cool air.

Of course this only works if the outside temp is significantly lower than the inside temperature. If that is not the case then you need air conditioning. Portable units can be very useful for the infrequent periods of hot weather we get here, make sure it is an external venting type though with a hose that pumps the hot air outside, otherwise you are not actually cooling anything.

 

[Bristol_Rob]

Split ac unit will do nicely.
I've owned one for 20 years and never regretted installing it for the couple of weeks a year it gets used

 

[eribaMotters]

James,
I don't think fans are the way forward. You need to think long term on this one. The only real solution will be insulation. We moved into a bungalow end of 2017, that winter we could not get warm and spring 2018 was hot. 400 mm of insulation later and we have no problems. At present we are sleeping without any problems with bedroom window open and winter bills have been slashed whilst house is nice and warm over winter.
Access for the high performance insulation you need may be possible without major work. An old trick used with flat roofs was to remove facia if needed, fold insulation over end of a board and push board up into void. When you pull board out insulation stays in place.

Colin

 

[Jacob]

Yes insulation. Also pays for itself in winter.
There's all sorts of traditional passive strategies for cooling houses in desert areas - the most obvious being ventilation arrangements - e.g. a cooling tower which at its simplest is just a chimney. Worth googling.

 

[Rorschach]

James,
I don't think fans are the way forward. You need to think long term on this one. The only real solution will be insulation. We moved into a bungalow end of 2017, that winter we could not get warm and spring 2018 was hot. 400 mm of insulation later and we have no problems. At present we are sleeping without any problems with bedroom window open and winter bills have been slashed whilst house is nice and warm over winter.
Access for the high performance insulation you need may be possible without major work. An old trick used with flat roofs was to remove facia if needed, fold insulation over end of a board and push board up into void. When you pull board out insulation stays in place.

Colin

I get your point, but insulation isn't always the answer. It wouldn't work for me currently, the day time temps are in the high 20's, the night time temps are only a few degrees lower. Insulation will keep that heat out for a day or two but after a week of these kinds of temps the insulation is not doing anything, the inside has reached a pretty much permanent temp of 26-27C now, insulation ain't gonna help there.

 

[Jacob]

I get your point, but insulation isn't always the answer. It wouldn't work for me currently, the day time temps are in the high 20's, the night time temps are only a few degrees lower. Insulation will keep that heat out for a day or two but after a week of these kinds of temps the insulation is not doing anything, the inside has reached a pretty much permanent temp of 26-27C now, insulation ain't gonna help there.

Also needs ventilation especially at night when the air temperature is a lot lower and a flow of air is cooler than still air

 

[Rorschach]

Also needs ventilation especially at night when the air temperature is a lot lower and a flow of air is cooler than still air

Yes indeed, but as I said in my post, the night time air here is the same temp or very close to the same temp as the air inside the house anyway so ventilation does nothing to cool the house.

 

[MikeJhn]

A split unit Air source heat pump will cool in Summer and Heat in winter, I have two one in my office and the other in my workshop, would not be without them.

 

[Jameshow]

Getting hold of a fan ATM is as easy as collecting rocking horse poop!

However I had a Eureka moment this morning why not bring in my snail hvlp fan from the workshop.

Yet to work out how to configure it but worth a good for a couple of hours before bed!

Cheers James

 

[Jacob]

Yes indeed, but as I said in my post, the night time air here is the same temp or very close to the same temp as the air inside the house anyway so ventilation does nothing to cool the house.

If you look at your weather forecast you will see that night time temperatures are nearly always lower (unless the weather itself has changed) and on clear nights can be a lot lower.
e.g. Totnes today - 30º at midday, 20º at midnight
PS

you need to blow the warm air out, not try and blow cool air in.

Works either way - you can't blow cool air in without blowing warm air out, and vice versa

 

[Rorschach]

If you look at your weather forecast you will see that night time temperatures are always lower (unless the weather itself has changed) and on clear nights can be a lot lower.
e.g. Totnes today - 30º at midday, 20º at midnight

Tell that to the weather, last night when I went to bed at 11pm it was 24c outside and when I woke up this morning at 6am it was 22c.

also you will note I did not say the temp at night was the same as during the day, I said it was the same outside as it is inside the house.

 

[Jacob]

Tell that to the weather, last night when I went to bed at 11pm it was 24c outside and when I woke up this morning at 6am it was 22c.

also you will note I did not say the temp at night was the same as during the day, I said it was the same outside as it is inside the house.

That's OK then 22 inside is bearable and will feel lower if there's a draught.
Sorry I forgot your are anti science so weather forecasts and a lot of these things won't mean much to you!