DIYbanter - View Single Post

wrote:
I have one room in my house, a southeast facing room, that gets damn
hot...the rest of the house can be 72 degrees and this room will still
be in the 80s with a ceiling fan going full blast (i live in Houston,
Texas)...the room is also over the garage....it has one window that
faces south and is double paned and one door that is double paned that
faces east to an outside porch...i am thinking about having extra
insulation injected into the walls

my questions to this great group are

1) do you think the extra insulation in the walls will help
2) what is the deal with reflective insulation and should i consider
adding that to the mix
3) are there any suggestions in general to get this room more in line
with the rest of the house and keep it cool...it is my office and i
have to move into the kitchen in the summer!

This may sound very silly and obvious, but do you have a computer on in
that room for long durations? I had a friend who complained that their
room was always much hotter than the rest of the house (and it was).
The problem turned out to be that they had a computer in that room that
was on for 12-18 hours per day, and their computer generated a lot of
heat. Certain CPU brands and models generate much more heat than
others. For example, the Intel P4s, and AMD 64 FX CPUs are big
generators of heat, and some models generate over 100W of heat
continuously.

As a test to see if your computer makes a difference, keep it off for
the day and see if you still find the room to be much hotter than the
rest of the house. Or keep your computer on with the door closed all
day long (make sure you configure your computer not to go into power
savings mode), and see if the room is much hotter than the rest of the
house when you open the door after 4-6 hours.

If the room is an office, printers, fax machines, UPSs, and CRT
monitors are other generators of heat. Together with a power hungry
computer that's on for long hours, they can generate quite a bit of
heat.