Eco cooling
 

Hi All,

Just joined, and I'm right in with a post! Looking through the forum, I see there's no specific section on cooling, but there is for heating. A search doesn't bring much up either.

I have a problem with the upstairs bedrooms in my house - in warm weather, I can't keep the rooms cool. I've tried keeping windows closed with blinds down, windows open with blinds down, windows open blinds up etc., and the rooms still get very warm. I'm wondering if some of the heat is coming from the roof space / loft, and better loft insulation may help. Any thoughts on that? One room in particular (our baby's nursery) doesn't get a lot of sun on it at all, and despite trying all the window and blind options above, still gets to 26 deg C or more.

After sorting my loft insulation, another thing I thought I might try is a solar powered extractor fan in the ceiling of the room, and a couple of airbricks in the wall on the cool north side of the house. As the fan pulls hot air from the top of the room, it should pull cool (15c) air in from outside. Do you think this is worth a go? It would be a lot of work getting the airbricks in, so I don't want to attempt it if it would be a dog project.

Hi richuu. Welcome to the boards.

A few things I can suggest, one of which may not be possible withough spending a lot of money to have someone do it, or spending a lot of time cutting into walls and then repatching after you're done. I'm suspecting it's as simple as you're ducts losing air. I watched an episode of Holmes on Homes and the 2 guys had the same problem that you seem to present. All he did was cracked open some walls where the ducts where and then had someone come in and do the smoke test where they blow smoke into your vents to see where the leaks were...well they had a TON. And they even had one hole in their main vent where an offshoot use to be and was never covered up. So they just taped all the vents up, covered up and taped everything they needed to and turned the air back on...and voila. Nothing magical, just too many leaks. So if in the winter it doesn't get warm up there, and in the summer it doesn't get cool...then I'd suspect that your ducts just need some sealing up.

And the other thing, as you mentioned already, is to go into the attic and see what kind of insulation you have up there. And if need be, add some more.

That's all I can think of for now. :)

The upstairs will almost always be warmer since the heat from throughout the house is rising to the second floor. That being said, it also sounds like you could use some more insulation in the attic. I don't know about the UK but around here you can get insulation at a home improvement store (Home Depot, Lowes) and install it yourself. Rolls of insulation and spray in insulation (newspaper fiber - not foam) are both fairly easy. Often you use unfaced insulation batts in the attic but that may be regional.

A lot of people around here install whole house fans. They are basically a fan that installs in the ceiling that sucks the hot air from your house and dumps it into the attic. You crack open your windows so that the cool air can flow in (if you don't, you can bring in carbon dioxide from your heater). You can run them all day if the temperature is nice. We tend to run ours when it cools off at night and in the morning since our summers can be hot.

Some also install attic exhaust fans. These either suck hot air from the attic and dump it outside or force cool air from outside into the attic.

Both attic exhaust fans and whole house fans require the attic to be ventilated. Around here, attics often have ridge, soffit, or gable vents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_house_fan
http://www.popularmechanics.com/how_...c/1275656.html
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/vide...047003,00.html

Thanks for the reply. I think loft insulation is definitely the place to start - there is some insulation in there, but it's as old as the house (mid 80's) and just plain fibreglass roll and only about 30mm thick! Newer stuff here is wrapped with a foil layer and I think is about 100mm thick... should save me a lot in the winter too!

From our home we are using some blinds to minimize the heat that will come into our room. It really works well :)