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The temperature is creeping up here, we are hot and sticky and getting pretty miserable. I do not want to use air conditioning this soon-apart from the fact that it will up our power usage, we have radon in the basement (only recently found out and haven’t got the money together to have the abatement work done). So I don’t want a system on that will circulate the radon up into higher concentrations in our living areas.

We have ceiling fans, but they seem to do less than the rotating fans I used to have did. All the windows are open and I changed out the glass doors for screens to keep open.

What else can we do to keep cool?! My toddler is in just a diaper, and still sweaty as anything :(

give me a little more information about your current situation:

1: where are you located?
2: what does the floorplan of your house look like?
3: how is the house situated in relation to the sun (N S E W)

we may be able to come up with a natural ventilation plan for you, but its all dependant on your local circumstances.

It depends on which way the wind typically flows, because thats going to cause negative air preassure on that side of the house, which we can use to pull air through your home. There are alot of other natural veltilation methods, but its a bit hader on an existing house simply because at some point in history, we quit designing houses to make use of this.

here are some links to give you some ideas of what i am talking about:
http://www.aeieng.com/services/sustainable/naturalventilation.htm

I have been looking at the site you linked to and drawing many blanks I guess my big issue is that I cannot understand why having every window open would be less efficient. Maybe I can, but I’m being kind of blonde here….

Anyway we are in south central PA. The house is…. I have to work this out. Based on the sun rising, the front of the house is almost east.

The house is split level. The basement is lowest of course and is half of the bottom of the house. The garage and utility room are a half level up from that, almost at ground level. The kitchen and living room are half level again up, above the basement. My daughter and me sleep yet another half level up, above the garage and laundry room. Finally there is another floor half level up where the rest of the family sleep. There are windows on every side of the house.

Natural Ventilation Explained

I still cant visually see your home in my head, so I will just give you a few basic principles of natural ventilation.

Air flow moves from positive to negative pressure. Therefore we must get the air flowing through your home from the most positive point to the negative point.

I’m not really sure about your particular location, but here, the prevailing winds come from the southwest, this would make the southwestern side of my house be in positive in pressure when the wind blows. This would also cause negative air pockets to form on the northeastern side. So, the best way to ventilate this house by only opening windows, would be to open the windows on the southwestern and northeastern sides. This would create a nice undisturbed breeze to continually circulate.

Now if I were to open any other windows on the northwest side for instance, this would disrupt the flow, because wind would be entering from that side causing turbulence and slowing down the air flow.

Another natural ventilation technique is to open your attic and the windows on the windward side of your home (positive pressure). In this case, the wind traveling at an increased velocity over the roof would cause a negative pressure there which would suck the hot air from the attic. This is all assuming that you have some sort of ridge vent on your roof. Then inside your house the thermosiphon principle kicks in and the hotter air in the space will naturally rise into the attic where it would be sucked out.

Anyway, I hope I did a good job of explaining this, its kind of hard to do without pictures or diagrams. maybe ill scan some of my old text books and post the images later.

Thanks to this very useful information.. I learned a lot from you! ^^

it is good topic how to say cool.when you go to meet than you can say cool day.i want to stay my house there is cool.

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Are you handy with wood? The idea would be to make a wood box. The bottom of it would rest on the floor of your apartment but the open back would

It takes energy to evaporate water, the energy is in the form of heat. as the water evaporates it takes the heat with it.