I live in a pretty old house in the midwest, built 1929, bought in '21, single-story, ~1300ish sqft, and with a large, spacious basement. Every time summer comes around I’ve had issues with the basement getting MUCH colder than the rest of the house (like >10 degrees F difference), presumably due to poorly-insulated floors and cold air sinking. The HVAC is still capable of keeping the main floor at the temp set on the thermostat, but the temperature differential indicates it’s working quite a bit harder than it really needs to be, and is probably wasting quite a bit of money.
I’m planning on getting an insulation specialist in at some point to go over options for shoring up the insulation, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I could do to recirculate air in the basement through the rest of the house - even with good insulation, I feel like the laws of thermodynamics would still result in a basement at least fairly colder than the rest of the house.
Is there anything I could look into that is reasonably cost-effective for circulating air from the basement to the rest of the house so my HVAC doesn’t have to work so hard in the summer? Thanks
If you pull air from the basement, it’s going to get replaced with warmer, wetter air from upstairs. As it cools the air is going to deposit that water on the coolest surfaces. You might be trading this problem for another, more damaging one.
Wouldn’t the AC still be dehumidifying the air circulation on the upper floors?
Good point, I’ll have to keep that in mind. I would think that after the initial temperature equalization, it shouldn’t be an issue as long as the temp remains relatively stable afterward, so in theory, if the rate of the initial equalization is gradual enough, I would think it wouldn’t cause any long-term issues.
Though that does depend on how exactly any possible solutions would work, and how controlled they could be. I might just re-evaluate after I get the insulation work done.
I’ve had this conversation before.
I live in a geodesic dome and the finished basement is always noticeably cooler than the main floor and top floor.
As a test, I got a blower fan and put it at the basement stairs blowing the air from the very bottom of the house up towards the middle floor.
After about a day the temperatures equalized enough that it was difficult to tell the difference between the Middle floor and the basement.
Doing that causes the colder air to mix in with the warmer air upstairs, and the registers pull the warmer air in and blow out dehumidified air back into the basement, so no moisture build up.
The only downside is the noise and energy costs to run a fan. Probably 400 watts.
What I want to do is get a 4 inch duct fan and place that in the wall and run ducting from the basement up to the top floor so that the cold air is constantly being reblendid back up with the rest of the air upstairs.
I feel like that would use much less power and do a decent job of blending the two.
Maybe you can find something like that that will work for you.