It has long irked me that our main floor gets so hot in summer,
while our basement stays nice and cool.
If only we could somehow get that cool air into the the upper floors!
This week, I persuaded my reluctant husband to try an experiment.
What if we propped the bulkhead door open,
and turned on the whole-house fan to pull air up through the basement?
We tried it, and that seemed to help with the temperature of our home,
but we couldn't just leave the door wide open
because of my other summertime nemesis: mosquitos.
So . . .
. . . we built a bulkhead cover out of scrap lumber and hardware cloth.
We didn't have enough hardware cloth to cover the top,
so we used metal fabric from an old screen,
then covered it with cardboard so the fabric wouldn't tear
the moment a chipmunk or squirrel hopped up onto it.
Abby: That monstrosity is a crime against carpentry.
Martha: Think it'll work?
Abby: It would take a miracle.
Unfortunately, Abby was right, but not for any reason I would have anticipated.
Humidity is the percentage of moisture that air can hold, and hot air can hold more water,
so guess what happens when you pull hot, humid air into a cool basement?
The temperature drops, but the amount of water doesn't, so the cooled air becomes VERY humid.
And super-humid air is NOT what you want in your basement.
Once we realized how musty our basement was getting, we closed the bulkhead, turned off the fan,
and Phillip headed to his office to research portable AC units, which is what he had wanted to do all along.
Thank you, dear husband, for helping me try my wacky experiment,
and being gracious about how badly it turned out.
No comments:
Post a Comment