It's HOT

Yesterday and today was in the mid 80's F or higher for me. My current place has central A/C and my office is on the 3rd floor (it's a bed room) and even in here with the high temps, I have a window A/C running otherwise it's unbearable in here in the 85+ range to be productive. The thermostat for the entire place is on the 1st floor and it will be 72 degrees down there and the 85+ up here. I only have the one PC running right now.
 
Handruin said:
Yesterday and today was in the mid 80's F or higher for me. My current place has central A/C and my office is on the 3rd floor (it's a bed room) and even in here with the high temps, I have a window A/C running otherwise it's unbearable in here in the 85+ range to be productive. The thermostat for the entire place is on the 1st floor and it will be 72 degrees down there and the 85+ up here. I only have the one PC running right now.
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Sounds like you need a duct and a fan to get the air circulating from the 1st to the 3rd. That or set the 1st floor AC to 60F.
 
Or a multi-zone AC setup. If you're ducted right, it isn't that expensive to turn each floor into a separate zone. A thermostat in each zone tells tells the controller when to run the HVAC. When it runs it runs for just one zone at a time. Through heat rising/cold falling, you'll find the system tends to heat the bottom floor in winter, cool the top floor in summer, and do the other floors a little as necessary. It should cut heating & cooling bills by 20-30%, making it pay for itself in 2-4 years.
 
I'm a big fan of the portable AC unit. The airflow in my apartment is so dreadful I basically wound up with a dozen fans, trying to direct air around just on one floor. The noise was intolerable and my efforts amounted to about 1.5 degrees F in actual cooling.

A couple $300 portable ACs (I got mine at Sam's Club, at the end of the summer) fixed things up so that I have actual climate control in rooms where I need it. Noise is still a bit of an issue, but with my crappy window unit + one portable running in the room where I'm *not* trying to sleep, things are usually OK.
 
Howell said:
Shut the vents on the first and second floor to force the air to the third floor. Duct tape them if you have to.
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I'll give this a try and see how well it works. Since I'm renting, I'm not looking to spend money altering the zones for 3-4 months of hot weather a year. I don't have issues with heating the place, so I think my little window A/C will work ok for now. It has it's own thermostat so if it does reach the ideal temp, it shuts down. The other reason I prefer this is I have days where I leave the main central system off because the rest of the house is fine, but I need the window A/C in the 3rd floor. I figure it was better to cool the one room, than to run the main A/C for this task.
 
Handruin said:
I'll give this a try and see how well it works. Since I'm renting, I'm not looking to spend money altering the zones for 3-4 months of hot weather a year. I don't have issues with heating the place, so I think my little window A/C will work ok for now. It has it's own thermostat so if it does reach the ideal temp, it shuts down. The other reason I prefer this is I have days where I leave the main central system off because the rest of the house is fine, but I need the window A/C in the 3rd floor. I figure it was better to cool the one room, than to run the main A/C for this task.
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How big of a place are you renting? Is it just you in there?
 
timwhit said:
How big of a place are you renting? Is it just you in there?
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It's just me. The place is a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath townhouse with roughly 1900 sqft. It was a good deal for the area, so it does have a lot more space than I need, but I really liked the place. Part of the sqft covers a finished basement which I use to store bulk stuff but doesn't have A/C or heat from the main system.
 
Wow, that's huge. My new place is around 1300 sq ft I would guess. It's a 3 bed/2 bath. The bedrooms are pretty small though.
 
Handruin said:
It's just me. The place is a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath townhouse with roughly 1900 sqft. It was a good deal for the area, so it does have a lot more space than I need, but I really liked the place. Part of the sqft covers a finished basement which I use to store bulk stuff but doesn't have A/C or heat from the main system.
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You need some roommates!

I "converted" my living room and dining room into bedrooms so the upstairs is 3 bedrooms, 2 bath and a kitchen. The floor of the finished basement is partially removed so that I could pour some footers and fix the structural problems.
 
Need is subjective. It would save me money to have roommates, but having them offers way more inconvenience, headaches, and drama. To me, those are worth the cost or renting alone. I could have rented a smaller place.
 
If I have any say in the matter I will never live in a dwelling that shares common walls with another unit again.
 
I know how you feel...even though my townhouse shares two walls, the units are staggered. My bedroom walls have no neighbors touching because they are staggered. This is the quietest place I've ever lived.
 
Handruin said:
I know how you feel...even though my townhouse shares two walls, the units are staggered. My bedroom walls have no neighbors touching because they are staggered. This is the quietest place I've ever lived.
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I've lived in places that have shared walls for the last several years and I never really hear my neighbors, especially in my new place.
 
I live above the rental office for my apartment complex. I have neighbors in my building, but they're both older couples who don't have children, and neither of them live on my floor.

I had a lot more noise when I had my townhouse. In fact, I can't say I've ever heard my neighbors at all. The only reasons I know they're there is the cars in the lot and the fact that they leave clothes in the shared laundry room.

My rent is about 1/3 of what ddrueding's is, too.

Houses are for chumps.
 
Living in a 1910 era Victorian. 1/2 acre plot in the village Decent seperation from neighbours, no audible traffic noise. We were in a duplex previously, I was always wondering if the surround sound was on too loud, etc. A background level of paranoia if you will. Type and quality of construction can be a huge factor.

Now I can let the PC-Ultra rip :)

There are some interesting technologies out there for home building now, one is the autoclaved cellular concrete (old in Scandanavia, newer to the USA):

http://www.cement.org/basics/concreteproducts_acc.asp

There was another prefab option where they bolted an entire house together in 5 days. The quality of alignment was something you couldn't get in a traditional timber framed home.
 
The problem with off grid is the power. Solar currently can't generate enough with the foot print of an average house (especially if you have a couple of massive servers/arrays running 24*7). If you had the money then a prime mover generator (rated to run 24*7) fueled by diesel could get you there.

I'm looking forward to affordable fuel cells for the house, can hook that up to natural gas and have hydrogen for a vehicle and electric generation on demand.
 
Based on where I'm looking and the basic design, solar or wind would be enough; I'm planning to have both. The primary concern is sizing the battery bank. Water gathering/storage/filtration is another issue. And the one I know how to deal with but don't want to is septic.
 
I managed at hat trick this weekend and get about 40 hours of contracting work this weekend (from Friday to, uh, about an hour ago), which is more than I've had in probably the last month prior. So I spent all weekend in luxurious central air cooled offices.

The temperatures all weekend have been mild and comfortable, upper 70s, more fall-like than the usual August weather here... until I got home tonight. Now it's mid-80s here with high humidity and absolutely no moving air, and like an idiot I turned off the ACs for the mild weekend, so it'll be several hours before my apartment gets anything like comfortable. I would like nothing better than to just go to bed but if I do, I'll just be sweating the whole time.

Argh.

Off to sit in a bathtub full of cold water, I guess.
 
This computer is getting fairly insane. I wish I could do something useful with all this heat (400W idle, 700W+ load). It never gets cold enough to need it, and when it is hot I wish I could just duct it outside. Wherever I build, it will have the option to intake/exhaust from/to outside.
 
Hit 35.7C (>96F) here today.

The thing is, it's supposed to be Winter in this hemisphere - think February in the northern hemisphere.

Apparently, temperatures are 13-15C (~25F) above normal.

NOT looking forward to Summer ... :cry:
 
Going to the Grand Canyon on Thursday, supposed to be 110F+. Good thing I rented a Bentley Continental, it should have good air conditioning.
 
Actually, Hyundai's have great AC. My wife's Elantra feels like it could make ice cubes in 90 degree heat.

According to Wunderground, the weather should be good (mid 80s) when we go to Maui in October.
 
time said:
Hit 35.7C (>96F) here today.

The thing is, it's supposed to be Winter in this hemisphere - think February in the northern hemisphere.

Apparently, temperatures are 13-15C (~25F) above normal.

NOT looking forward to Summer ... :cry:
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It sure was a hot one yesterday, and of course the home AC unit decides to pack it in when my wife turns it on. Luckily, (since we rent) we have the repair guys coming around tomorrow to fix it at no cost to us.
 
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