Let’s get one thing straight. For the rest of my days, I will complain about the heat.
Today I cooked and baked downstairs but I went upstairs to wash the cooking dishes and, oh my goodness . . it was so hot up there. The only negative I can say about this house is that it just doesn’t get cool on these super hot days. We have a black roof. We have no roof vents because they didn’t want any penetrations in the roof. We have lots of windows. I am not an expert but the a/c unit is smaller than the one we put in the house in Texas. If I had my way, I’d pay whatever it costs to put a second unit or at least a zoned system. In Texas, we had the 10′ porch across the entire front, which blocked a lot of the sun, we had a metal roof with tons of insulation in the attic. The rock walls were 7 or 8″ thick. It was an easy house to cool. This one . . just not a good set up for cooling on hot days.
Vince put new batteries in the gizmo that measures temp in the walls. At 8:30 p.m., the thermostat is set on 76. It’s 78 in our bedroom. It’s 80 in the kitchen. In the downstairs kitchen where I baked for over an hour, it’s 72. I started the day with shorts on and the basement was so cool, I changed into jeans. By about mid-day, I had on a sweatshirt. About 4 p.m., I told Vince I was going to sit outside and get warm. He said “Why don’t we close off some of these vents?”
The neighbor’s house is pretty much the same size as this one, has one unit and it isn’t zoned and their upstairs seems much cooler than ours. The neighbor told me they keep half their basement vents closed in the summer and then in the winter, open those and close half the upstairs vents. We’re going to try that approach and see what happens.
From now til the middle of July, our highs are in the upper 90’s to 105. Hot!!
MRH says
Yes, without zones we have to adjust the vents when we switch between heating snd cooling. In a two story house. But we could also use loads more attic insulation. IIRC when we bought the house R17 was code. Now I think it is R25.
Amy M says
We love on a lake, so the main part of the house is upstairs, and two bedrooms and a family room downstairs. We have the AC/Heat shut off downstairs and it is always 68-69 degrees down there, as the cool air from upstairs drops down, and the warm air rises up! When we have overnight company I even have to turn the heat on for a bit to take the chill out! ( Central NC)… so some of that applies for sure… No recommendations for you if you cannot shut one zone, but even with that here the temp. difference is a lot. Good luck!
judy.blog@gmail.com says
We pretty much live in the basement and even sleep in the basement during the summer so we keep some of the vents open. Shutting about half the vents downstairs in the summer may be helping but our heat index has been about 110 this whole week so it’s been rough keeping any of the house cool enough.