Cooling the house - what to do when you don't have AC?
 

Here's the deal, we don't have AC and I don't really want it. We live near the beach and are generally under 90 on most hot days. When it's bad in July/August it is usually because of the humidity.

Our house is newly well insulated and heats up slowly during the day if we keep the windows closed. Today and yesterday were somewhat stupid hot (having lived in the desert in my youth I feel somewhat ashamed that I apparently can't stand the heat) so we have been able to see how our new windows and insulation are working out. We got those last year, they were great through the winter - especially the new furnace but I didn't spring for AC. The windows/insulation was a gift from the FAA since I live so close to LAX. They would like to cram as many cans of people through this small space as possible and they want me to be okay with the noise (another thread entirely) but I digress. The thread is about the heat...

So what normally happens is the house heats up to about 80 by 3pm in the afternoon and then all bets are off by 5 it is 85 inside and cooling off outside. The problem is that the house just holds the heat in so as it cools down quickly once the sun goes down in the house it is still 80 and somewhat stifling (for me - the wuss). Plus the wife is knocked up and going to have a nice hot summer pregnancy...so if I can do something to make the house nicer that'd be cool.

So - how can I get this nice cool air outside my house INSIDE where I can use it in an efficient way?

Shade devices would help. Either vegetation (trees) or awnings of some sort over the primary points of heat gain (windows).

We have the same problem in our place - back bedrooms face east so they get baked with the morning sun in the summer months. By afternoon the living room exterior wall (and window) which face west are getting direct late afternoon sun and the temp. in that room will jump 30 degrees (no joke) without a/c running. I've put foil on the window with a 1" backer of rigid insulation (okay it looks a little ghetto, but it works). Cross-ventilating the entire place only works to a point, given how hot the air coming in the front is (gets warmed by the "thermal mass" effect of the patio which is just a solid mass of concrete/stucco which soaks up the heat during the day so by afternoon, it's just heating any air coming in the front windows).

Add to that the fact this building was built in 192X and has an "R" value of probably pretty damn close to "0" and you'll understand. . .

In any event, I'd look at shade devices. Or just suck it up and get one of those roll-around a/c units with the "snuffeluppagus" elephant trunk thing coming off the back to eject the hot air. At least your wife could put it in whatever room she's in, be comfortable and not have the cooling bill be too outrageous.

They're old school, but a whole-hosue exhaust fan is really nice. We have one in our place, built in '69. It pulls a TON of air from the house and up into the attic. Sounds like you need a good fresh-air ventilation system to pull the hot air out in the early evening.

Grew up working class with no AC.

-- Fans
-- Showers.
-- window AC units (<100USD)
-- wet towel in the back of your neck
-- BEER
-- Cold water in the frig; to drink.

-- MAIN one - Stay out of your house and go to an Airconditioned place: THE MALL!

etc...

Grew up working class with no AC.

-- Fans
-- Showers.
-- window AC units (<100USD)
-- wet towel in the back of your neck
-- BEER
-- Cold water in the frig; to drink.

-- MAIN Option- Stay out of your house and go to an Air-conditioned place: THE MALL!

etc...

Been thinking about the whole house fan for a couple of years now - may have to pull the trigger on that. We do get a lot of the western part of the sun in our main living area which is the dining room, kitchen and living room. I can't really put a tree up there that would be tall enough to shade my house unfortunately. The west wall of our house is almost as tall as a two story house...

absolutly the best thing you can do to save money and energy is to install a whole house fan. My dad installed one when I was young and they work great. One was already installed when I moved into my house and it works good too.

You won't regret it...not too hard to install either.

I just mildly prod and insult my GF until she gets up and starts running around waving her arms around in a fit of anger. I don't know how effective it is, but it can be highly entertaining nonetheless.

Very very easy! Get a whole house attic fan. Draws the air through the entire house up into the attic and exhausts it out the vents. You open a window or door where-ever you want cooling air and it cools that area. It also cools the attic so the entire house stays cooler.

I installed one in my house 3-4 years ago and it cuts my A/C useage by 30%, and in Phoenix thats a lot.

When I was growing up, my folks didn't like AC so they did the whole house fan thing.

They put a giant fan in the attic and I can't remember if they ran it during the day (I do not think so) but once it started cooling off outside, you cranked up the fan, opened all the windows and the house cooled pretty fast!

For the use where you are, it should work ok but you will lose your sound deadening when the windows are open.

A few points on WH fans,

They are not silent,in fact quite noisey put away from bedroom
Make sure you have near the right amount of vent sq. feet recommended on the box otherwise you can get back pressure and they get noisier, I think they make variable as oppoesd to three speed ones now. Technically require a permit.

We used ceiling fans and shutters/awnings to keep out house cool before we got central A/C.

You can add a ridge vent also - this is a passive system that will do a lot of the same things a WHF will do, only it's passive. I believe it can be installed without a permit (but check).

Those WH fans are cool when you turn them on and doors start slamming all over the house and the cats are hanging onto the furniture to keep from being turned into kitty parts.

It's like the Wizard of Oz, only indoors.

A dehumidifier would help too.

We just got an attic fan installed -- not a whole house fan, but a quiet thermostatically controlled fan that vents the hot air in the attic out the roof. I don't have a ridge vent in my attic, but have vents on either side of the house, allowing cooler, outside air to enter the attic. Just got this installed, but it should help significanly cool the attic, which in turn will help cool the house.

During the hot summer nights, we use a small window fan in our bedroom at night. We have two windows, so we suck in air via the fan in one window, and the air circulates out the other window. The room is significantly cooler using this fan.

At night, we also use some other fans in the living room / kitchen. As long as there is some type of circulation/venting of hot air out the house, it helps.

We do have a couple of window A/C units, and on really hot days, we do run them, but prefer the fan / circulation method greatly over the A/C.

BTW: While my daily driver has A/C, I often just roll down the windows even when driving home in 80-90 degree heat - I guess I prefer the wind in my hair. :)

-Z-man.

Ridge vents are a BIG help.

Interesting how this works. Like a refrigerator, a well insulated house warms up slower and cools off slower. Insulation is just a stalling process, but it works because the stalling effect saves on energy, if it's done right. Doesn't matter whichever you are using at the time, heat or cooling. However, when you don't have one or the other, the effect is opposite. To counter, and as mentioned, you need to "stall" heat gain some more, if you can, and try to accelerate the removal of the gain. Now, you are trying to undo what the insulation has done to you.

Before springing for a whole house fan, try a couple of box fans in the windows. Maybe one in and one out. Remember, you are sucking in all the dirty air outside and it won't do any good until the temps drop a few degrees below the interior temps.

I live in an original SoCal Spanish stucco and it's like a museum. Pretty much all original inside and out and not a bit of insulation anywhere. You'd be amazed how quickly I can cool down the house after sunset. Except for the last 3 days. When it gets to record heat like we've just had, everyone w/o A/C just boils.

I do have a couple of window units so I can have at least a cool area. You might get one of those.

:D:D:D funny...

With WH fans, make sure you also get a contract for "Merry Maids" or local house cleaning service. Your partner will hate the pollen and dust that is sucked in and lands on the floor and fabrics-your bedding. In the dust bowl of major Arizona cities, the pollution caused by builders and cars keeps our sky hazy. I drive north to Flagstaff or Payson the sky is actually blue! The WH fan I installed on my home is not used. It may work in some areas but if you have humidity in the summer maybe not.

John_AZ

I've used 2 box fans on a rare couple of occasions as Milt describes - 1 blowing in, the other blowing out. This creates a gentle breeze of outside air through the house. Close all the windows except the 2 where you set up the fans.

In a 2 story I'd put the exhaust fan in an upstairs window and the intake fan in a downstairs window on the opposite side of the house.

I keep all the windows closed during a hot day and also keep them covered - I've got plantation shutters so it is pretty dark (but cool).

Git nekid!

+1 on the whole house fan.

The trick is to run it early in the morning to cool the house way down, and then turn off during the day. Turn it on again at dusk to cool the house down again before going to bed. It also helps to install a timer switch so that you can have it turn off after you go to bed, and/or on again before you get up in the morning.

They are loud though...

Shoulda bought a heat pump instead of that furnace then you would have the cooling and heating covered.

LAX paid for it - they wanted to charge me $8000 to upgrade the system they were going to install to include AC. The unit is however sized to add AC to it apparently. They replaced my forced air heating with this new furnace, the replaced all of the ventilation as well with insulated vent pipes. While it hasn't been perfect and has failed a couple of times due to minor installation issues it performed very well over the winter here and saved us a great deal of money in heating expense.

the idea behind the insulation program however is to protect us against the noise from LAX. They did the work in our house starting in August of last year, it was supposed to take two weeks to complete but wasn't complete until December. That is a whole other thread...

They gave us a great setup in the winter but did virtually nothing for us for the summer months.

When they moved the runway 55ft closer to us the impact on the noise in our house was significant.

I don't mind the idea of a whole house fan and in fact I'm going to request that THEY pay for it and do it since things are now a few degrees hotter but if they won't I will do it. I don't want AC really because then I will use it...

Or a temp switch. But. you have to remember to open the windows either way.

As far as being loud, you can install the fan up and away from the louvers. My kitchen hood blower is in the attic. No noise to speak of. Also, depending on the house design, gable fans in the roof space are very effective in reducing heat gain during the day keeping the attic cooler. No outside air into the living space.

I install windows for a living and keep up on this stuff. Most houses have a window package that is less than 5% of the total energy package. A bit more on slab.

We grew up with whole house fans. I read somewhere that if the temp outside drops 10 degrees in one hour (like it does in So Cal between 6:30-7:30), it takes the inside of the house approx 4 hours to do the same on its own. Something about insulation and the actual heat that has been absorbed and stored in the walls, ceiling, floor etc.

With the WH fan, just crack a window near you, turn on the fan, and you will benefit from a breeze of from the cooler outside air.

Anyone have a brand or model they can recommend?

That's correct, a house is a huge heat sink. Some are big enough to actually be stable in many areas (of the house, not the region in which they are built).

we rented a old farm style house with OUT A/C in miami
it did have a 4 foot attic fan that did wonders to cool the place
the house was built in about 1890 and was real heavy built

attic heat is a killer , super insulate, and vent plus a fan and for the roof paint it white
as tiles or shingles if even a little dark soak in the heat

LAX paid for it. That is one of the things that kills me about govt. Nothing against you Mikester, but I'll be LAX was there long before you bought. Now they're paying billions to double/triple pane houses and insulate them and then they pay for A/C cause you want to keep the windows closed due to the noise. (Yeah, I know you want A/C anyway, cause it gets hot). Lawyers filed class action lawsuits over the noise and we the Los Angeles taxpayers and anyone flying through LAX get to pay for insulating and cooling thousands of homes. Happens near Van Nuys, Burbank and John Wayne (Orange County) airports.

You know what - John Wayne, Van Nuys, Burbank and the others can kiss my a$$ really. They won't take any of the traffic of LAX so LAX has to expand and the homes who live around it and have to deal with them making the airport bigger and moving runways closer to us get to deal with it due to so many other folks saying 'not in my back yard.'

Well, I say 'Okay' to LAX (like I have a choice) but they moved that southern runway 55 ft closer to my house and I really didn't think it would matter much I mean really - 55 ft right?? Well I'm surprised that it matters so much because the difference was nearly night and day. When one of those heavy 747-400s or a loaded down FedEx DC-10 takes to the air, well I can certainly tell. The worst offenders are the small jets. We were lucky (yeah right!) that the move put us into a higher priority zone otherwise we would likely still be on the waiting list.

The facts regarding LAX expansion are clear - the residents around it suffer. Is it fair when there are quite a few airports that could be expanded instead?

John Wayne?

Ontario?

Palmdale?

Burbank?

Long Beach?

Hello?

Instead we as a region depend on LAX nearly 99% for air travel needs. So when something bad happens to LAX if I am still here afterward ask me about it and I will say "I told you so." Instead of expanding LAX we should be regionalizing like mad so that our infrastructure could handle something bad that is likely to happen. I also believe that regionalizing successfully will help deter a terrorist attack. If we make it so our infrastructure can handle LAX going down for the count what incentive is there to wipe it off the map?

So yes, LAX and the FAA paid for my windows.

Mikester, Forgive me, I don't know your specific situation, and I believe things can easily change from tolerable to intolerable with a change at the airport that you had zero input on. I guess my point is that if LAX had bought a bigger area decades ago they would not have these expenses now. My perspective is people who bought around the BKK landill in West Covina, CA in the 80's and then complained about the smell. Why did they buy there? Well most of the time it was cause they could buy a very affordable house 1/8 mile from a dump. Same thing with people who buy a house near the freeway and then insist the CalTrans put up a sound wall.

Hugh, my comments were not directed at you directly but folks who don't seem to understand generally. I build networks for a world wide company and if I didn't build resilience (the ability to fail) into those networks I wouldn't have a job. I always look at these things but when it comes to our basic infrastructure, ports, air ports, road ways, freeways - it doesn't seem like our leaders in SoCal are considering these needs. Instead they pander to the 'NIMBY' folks and those with an existing situation get it made worse.

Yes, I moved to LAX knowledgeable in what the sound of Jets is exactly. I grew up on Air Force bases that flew KC135s and KC10s which are basically military versions of civilian aircraft. I am also familiar with the sound of small jets (F-16s, 15s, 4s, etc...). 20 years on AFB's you get the ability to tune out jet noise. So when we made the decision to buy here 5 years ago it wasn't as bad as it is now. We did sign up for the RSI program then but since we were in a low priority zone and there was virtually no money for the project at the time we did not expect to hear from them any time soon. Plus, we would be required to pay 20% of it. Then they moved the runway and put the money into it and that got things moving but now things are worse than they were before for a lot of folks.

I hope Westchester is able to fight this, we just had an election and I didn't vote for anyone who allowed the LAX expansion to roll over them.

I lived in El Segundo as a kid. LAX traffic flew right over my school. After a couple months I literally couldn't hear it. I remember once looking up at the belly of a 747 and wondering why I couldn't hear it, though I could hear everything else around me. The mind is strange.

The problem for you, I think, is that with the windows open comes the LAX noise. My impression, maybe wrong, is that to avoid the noise you have to keep the windows shut all the time. Will a "whole house fan" work with all your windows tightly closed?

If $ permits, I think you should spring for A/C if your wife is going to be home with the baby. It'll be a lot more comfortable.

True, for the whole house fan to work the windows must be open. But the idea is just to get the house temp down - would I have to run it for an extended period of time or just say 20-30 minutes to get the house cooled off?

We don't mind opening the windows for a bit, it's a trade off. The RSI program is fairly lame in this respect because they do a great job for us during the winter but leave us totally hanging during the summer. The documentation says they strive to keep the house as cool as an open window would. Our furnace can move the interior air around but I think that is fairly worthless...so far we have only had a few hot days (last weekend).

High bypass turbofans generate a lot less noise than the old turbojets. But a lot of companies don't really care about the noise. Insulating the cockpit is cheaper than changing the engines on a cargo carrier. And paying the noise fines is cheaper than changing the engines. And insulating your house, is cheaper than paying for all those engines to be changed.

On the topic of the house cooling, try a couple of window fans. Open the windows and run the fans when the air temp is equal to, or lower than the outside (they make these thermometer things). Close the windows in the morning. No use of the stove, or the oven, or dryer during the day.

Or pay to have A/C installed. When momma ain't happy, no one is happy. And I know momma.

In Western Mass, we did the above and supplemented with a couple of window A/C units. If you don't need them much, take them out of the windows and store.

And no matter what, install an attic fan with a temp switch. Most of the sun factor heat gets into the attic. This will take the hot air out.

Mike, does your furnace have a "vent" mode, where is pull air in from the outside? This might be a whole lot cheaper than adding whole house A/C.

I don't know if it has a 'vent' mode but I'll look into it. I've seen how it is plumbed and I don't see how it could. It gets the air for heat from inside the house.

Gwen actually doesn't mind the heat as much as I do. She grew up in Arizona...of course I grew up just west of Palm Springs so it isn't like I don't know the desert...

"Shade devices would help. Either vegetation (trees) or awnings of some sort over the primary points of heat gain (windows)."

I'm with Jeff on this one. If there's heat gain from south-facing windows and you can't wait 10 years for that tree to grow, I'd consider an outdoor shading system like an awning or ext. window shades. It's easier to control interior temperatures if the heat gain is reduced as much as possible, preferably from the outside.

That's heat. Humidity is related, but the only way to reduce humidity levels is by treating with conditioned air, A/C. A small window-mount A/C unit in an equally small room to habitate during the more brutal hours of the day might be the answer. That or plan frequent visits to the local movie theater, mall or frozen food section at the local grocery.

How bad can it be at the beach you lucky bastard. :)

Sherwood

Here is a way to keep dust and pollon out if you have allergies:
http://www.natlallergy.com/product.asp?pn=1155

John_AZ