O.T. Home Air Movement Expert...

[Derek Arita]

I am in desparate need of a home air movement expert. I live in O.C. Cal. The front of my house has a row of windows that face north and the rear has a row of windows that face south. I get no breeze what so ever through my house. The exact same model of my house is across the street. With the street infront, there's a terrific breeze through that house all day.
I need to find some one that can give me some advice as to what I can do to get a breeze. Is there such an expert?

[Grady Cowardin]

If you are willing to cut into the ceiling's drywall a whole house fan is an option. I recently installed a makeshift one in my garage/shop and it cools off faster and hopefully helps to push some heat out of the attic. This is just an inexpensive gable mount attic fan. But a whole house fan moves a significant volume of air. Fancy ones have an automatic shutter that will seal well when closed. They are upwards of $200 but will draw air in every window that is open if sized right. This is one of the more expensive brands.
http://www.wholehousefan.com/hv-1000.html

Grainger (http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg/productIndex.shtml?originalValue=whole+house&operator=prodIndexRefinementSearch&L1=Fans%2C) has several models. I don't claim to be an expert, here's my "professional" install (http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i13/qwikkota/fan1.jpg). Going to box it in with some drywall soon, its on the to do list...

[David DeCristoforo]

What you need is some form of what is called a "thermal chimney". Basically, this is simply a way for the warmer air in your house to vent out, drawing replacement air in through the open windows, thereby creating a crossdraft. It is completely passive and requires no fans as it works by convection. The simplest form is a closable (you don't want to lose heat in the winter!!!) louvered grille (or several) placed in the ceiling of your house, combined with one or two (or more) roof turbine vents. A configuration like this would be using the attic space as the thermal chimney. You can also construct a thermal chimney in a manner similar to what you would do to install a skylight. But, this would be considerably more work. I have used the above method on a number of existing houses with amazingly good results.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

If you are willing to cut into the ceiling's drywall a whole house fan is an option. .



What he said. Those things are the Shizz.

[Derek Arita]

Already have a whole house fan installed, however you cannot keep that thing on all of the time. I just want a nice breeze thru the house.

[Derek Arita]

David, I have an open beam ceiling in the living room that really collects the heat. The "Thermal Chimney" things sounds like it might work. Can you tell me what it might look like and where I can find out more about it?

[David DeCristoforo]

"David, I have an open beam ceiling in the living room that really collects the heat. The "Thermal Chimney" things sounds like it might work. Can you tell me what it might look like and where I can find out more about it?"

Well, there really is no "it" to look at. It is more of a concept than a product. If you search the web for "thermal chimney", you will find some good reading. What you are trying to accomplish is to let the hot air escape creating a convection current that will draw cooler air in through an open window or whatever. We built a house in Nevada that had a 50 foot long 2 foot diameter culvert buried six feet deep with a vertical riser at each end. One end came up in the back yard and the other under the house, venting into the crawl space. There were several floor registers to allow the cool air into the house. Combined with several openable clearstory windows in the high part of a vaulted ceiling that served as the thermal chimney, the house would stay cool on the hottest days with no AC, fans or anything else. Theoretically, the thermal chimney would be as tall as possible to create a stronger updraft. But, the effect can be realized without a lot of work. In your case, a few openable skylight vents would probably do the trick.


Oops, sorry, I just realized you were replying to the "other" David.....:)