Nate Nagel wrote:
Hi all,

well, it's finally summer here in DC. Yay. House has no A/C. Yeah, I
know, but I loved the place and there's lots of trees for shade. Here's
the problem; it gets up over 90 degrees outside during the day. With
the windows closed and blinds drawn it gets up to about 80 in the
upstairs (rest of house is comfortable when I get home from work.) As
soon as the outside temp drops below the inside temp, I will open all
the upstairs windows and turn on the cheap floor fan that the PO's left
for me to try to blow some outside air through the house. It doesn't
seem to be working - outside temp will drop to 65 degrees or cooler
overnight but the bedroom will still be 75 degrees or so when I wake up
in the morning. I suspect if I could get the ambient temp. of the
upstairs down to the same temp as the outside and then shut everything
up when I left for work, it wouldn't even be as hot when I got home, but
I seem to be getting little or no cooling from having the windows open.

To those of you who also persist in living without A/C, what's the best
way to deal with this - get a bunch of window mount fans to try to set
up an artificial cross breeze, or would installing ceiling fans provide
enough circulation? (the girlie wants to do the latter anyway, and the
only reason I haven't done it yet is because I still need to get up in
the attic and install the heavier boxes and drop some 14/3 switch legs
to the wall boxes.)

I've also thought about tricking the furnace fan into running to
circulate cool air up from the basement, but I haven't really dug into
it that much yet. Would that be a worthwhile modification?

thanks,

nate


Invest in a couple of very powerful window fans.
Not the $20 box fan, real window fans.

While you're in the attic, survey the insulation level.

If windows receive sun, do *something* to prevent that
heat getting in.

Jim ex-DC'er