Monday, May 18, 2009

Ghetto DIY Air Circulation

It's starting to get really hot here in San Jose, and we're pretty much forced to make use of the AC. The problem, however, is that when we turn on the AC in the upper two floors, the ground floor gets freezing cold. It will be 75 on the 3rd floor, 71 on the 2nd floor, and it'll be a chilly 66 downstairs. It's just not efficient, and if everyone is split up, it's never the case that everyone is comfortable.

Turns out this is a common problem. Some houses had designers that did it right... the people that drew up the plans for my place obviously didn't.

Anyway, to help this matter, we built something super ghetto to pump the cold air from downstairs all the way to the top. It's seriously ugly, but so far it's working out some. It's not perfect, but it's definitely helping. Here are some pictures of our set-up.

We start here on the bottom floor...


Then, we snake up two sets of stairs.


And, finally, the air makes its way out at the top where it is the hottest.

2 comments:

Duke said...

You might consider some sort of an attic fan setup. The idea is that cold air wants to sink anyhow, and hot air wants to rise. That's why AB sweats his balls off in the loft while you freeze yours off playing rock band.

Try an open window in the loft (as high up as possible) with a fan in it to just blow air out. Get that hot air out of there. If you have some semblance of an attic, consider forcing air into it and them maybe out some sort of other hole it may or may not have.

Summary: moving the hot air out is as important as moving some cooler air in.

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