How To Cool Your House Using Furnace Fan
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- Shell shows you how you can cool down your house in the summer if you don't have an air conditioner. You can use your furnace fan to get the cool air in the basement, to the rest of your house.
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Lord, the quality of this video makes me feel like I should be watching it on Real Player on Windows 95!
Not only the quality, but the information presented is like his age.
Thats because it's an old but helpful video. 😉
20 years with my furnace and I never used the fan. Sold my home and came home after the buyers home inspection. They turned on the fan and it felt like they installed an air conditioner😅 I can't believe u suffered the humidity all these years. 😂
😂😂😂
I have an old furnace with no electronic control board. So, I wired my summer switch to a relay and connected it to the green wire for the blower leading to the thermostat. Now I can control my blower fan independently with the fan switch on the thermostat. It’s been cooling the house nicely.
One less pixel, and this would be radio
ever heard of the Fan only switch on the Thermostat, you can often set that to "ON"
mine don't work
Here is what I did to achieve a constant 69`f indoor air temp during the entire hot summer.
1.) I used a piece of cardboard to block off the furnace filter to cancel out all of the return vents then made a custom air filter door for the bottom furnace panel to prevent dust and pets from getting into the blower.
2.) I shut all of the supply vent registers to the basement and made sure all main floor vents were fully opened.
3.) I put a 20" box fan blowing up into the attic access hole and set it on medium speed as a poor mans whole house fan.
4.) I installed Gila Heat Control Platinum Adhesive window film on all of the windows.
5.) I used foam, caulk, mastic, foil tape and fresh door seals to seal all of the air leaks in the home, the supply & return ducts.
6.) I dug a 6in wide x 1ft deep x 100ft long trench outside my basement wall near the furnace / utility room that extends out into the back yard and buried 100ft of 4" drain tile to act as a geothermal air intake that feeds fresh, cool dry air into the utility room.
When the attic fan & furnace blower are running, hot outside air gets sucked into the end of the drain tile it then runs through 100ft of cool earth where it sheds its heat and moisture, then gets sucked into the furnace and forced up into the main floor then the attic fan helps draw it up into the attic to force out the heat. I run the fans when it hits 75`f then turn them off at 69`f I am finding that on a 100 degree day I only have to run three 1 hour cycles between noon and 6pm at 340watts this only costs about 12 cents a day as apposed to $1-$3 a day running the 3000 watt heat pump.
Do you have plans for this? Would be very interested in seeing this work
This is bullshit. 100ft under 1ft of ground is a the worst lie ever. Horizontal geothermal needs at least 5-6ft below ground with about 400ft loop to be effective.
A 20" box fan on high moves 2500 cfm.
A 24" whole house fan will move 4500 cfm.
A 1500 sqft house with 8' ceilings would need a 6000 cfm house fan.
But about his comment would work.
Oh heck all I did was just turn on the blower fan. I had a switch on my thermostat to just turn it on and now basement air is flowing upstairs. It's about 5 to 8 degrees cooler than upstairs so that works.
Ouf.. reading the comments.. it's one thing to give your opinion but no need to be rude.
Personally I live in an old 1885 house in Quebec and do this on the hotter summer days.. it work for me. The basement cools the 2 floors and I'm not worried about the air quality (with Merv8 filters on) any more than
I am in the winter when I use the (wood/electric) furnace for heat.
I 've used my furnace fan for years and its better than the AC Cheap. I have Central aie but his doesn't use but a fraction of electricity.
You can also put a box fan in the attic/crawl space opening in the ceiling and it will put the cool air up and also flush the heat out of the attic. Works great for me!
defmud80 was just thinkn of this, glad to hear it works!
Have hard a lot about this before, wouldn’t you need a fairly powerful fan?
@David Brinck - just a regular fan on my Lennox .furnace .
Never had to adjust the pilot light ever
Most times we don’t have to use .
Ecactly. That worked more than anything else. Gotta get rid of that muggy heat
I have a "fan" setting on my old thermostat, so it circulates cool basement air through the vents.
But if the return ducts pull air from the first floor, you're not circulating air from the basement. It's just recirculating the air on the first floor. Correct?
@@ChuckChickenLegs Well the return ducts carry air from the first floor to the basement, but remember, the wents are surrounded by cool basement air and so they then cool the air traveling through it to some extent.
Living up north close to the Great Lakes, we do get hot days maybe five or six in the nineties where we wish we had central air. I say sweat it out because it wont be long and old man Winter is coming. Never had AC growing up and never owned any AC units in my 65 years. My wife grew up the same way. We can walk down to the lake beach and cool off day and night, its great under the starry sky.. We`re having a heat wave.. a tropical heat wave... yay.. !!
Not many new homes have basements any more. I live in the Arizona desert and we get 300 plus days of sunshine a year ! I do have central A/C. I had my roof sprayed with a silver coating and it made a great difference !
Silver? I've been looking into anything to help during the summer and have gotten recommendations but that's white. It's a lime coating, is this what you have, or is yours something different?
How do you address the issue of the very moisture laden cool air? Is it assumed that there is a de-humidifier as part of the furnace configuration, or one or more in the house itself?
De-humidifying happens naturally as the air moves through the furnace.
yes there is a coil called the a coil but when you're just running the fan it only brings the humidity into the house if it was on heat the furnace boils the moisture but very little but if it were on air conditioning the air would be dryer but like i said before if it were on heat or fan only it won't dehumidify by alot but it would bring the outside air in thatd hot but if it was in a basement i wouldn't even run it with out a dehumidifier because of the chance of fungus
If you want to re-watch this video, you have to rewind it. Might've been an ad for Mervyn's at some point too. Couldn't tell, with the tracking and all.
we all know that cold air doesn't move up by itself. So if it's not forced under the roof, this seems to be a very inefficient way to cool house. Plus the idea to cool the roof by cold air from a basement is a waste of cold air and electricity. All you will get is just a hot basement.
QUESTION PLEASE: do you have to take the furnace panel off and shut your pilot light off??????
ASLO PLEASE: do the windows have to be open or closed or does it matter????????????💯💯💯🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦
You sir are a GENIUS...
Concept is almost right but there is no way I want our lower quality mustier air in our unfinished basement getting pulled upstairs. Next year we may try drawing cool evening outside air from a first floor window to a second floor window in our upper half story. To do this properly will require a fan in each to equalize pressure.
Put some plants down there to clean the air
If i put my 12000 btu aircon by one of the intakes, will that work for the entire house?
Yeah they seem like a good idea what the problem is hot air rises and cool air sinks so his theory that the attic is going to get cooled off by Rising cool air is a bunch of horse hockey.
my AC run all day long but did not bring temp down much , around 79 degree even i set 72 , only cooling down at night .
hoang anh Hoang I'm in the same boat
i will try put roof fan and more insulation
I had a new a/c put in but runs all the time blowing out cold air, fan runs all the time. The furnace is in the basement and the fan no longer is running on high speed. The fan needs to run fast or on high speed to push cold air up. In the winter heat naturally rises and needs a slower fan speed. All a tech needs to do is switch two wires on the fan control so the blower will blow the cold air up faster. If you do it be sure to turn off power to the furnace first. First go to utube and read info. available on the fan motor and adjusting the speed.
You need to figure out, where's the, heat coming from. Single pane windows. Drafty doors. Very little or not enough, this is the biggest problem, insulation in the walls or attic. The attic should have at least R 49 to R 60. It will make a huge difference. It'll stop the down ward, radiating ceiling heat. I went from super hot home,with no attic insulation. To R38 insulation, 73° inside, outside temp100°, no air-conditioning
The diagram looks so similar to my house including soffits, dome vents, the grade, fresh air duct, and furnace setup (I live in Canada). I'm going to try this tonight.
Michael Bernardo
Hi Michael, could you please post a video of this, I am live in Edmonton, Canada.. Thank you..
I have a laundry chute that goes downstairs, so I prop this door open. I cover my upstairs intakes so the return air can't make it back to the furnace. I open the door to The Fan, and turn on the summer fan. This process draws upstairs air down through my laundry chute opening through my basement, through the furnace and back through the vents upstairs. I can get 4 to 5 days of cool air coming out of the basement before it starts to warm up. This guy's system to draw on warm air in from outside, probably won't give you more than a day of cool air, plus you have attic open. Not a good idea.
the question is how fast & big the fan should to fill cool air and blow out the hot air. how to count that? i doubt small fan able to do the job for 4 bed rooms, too big also means more cost.
Leaky old house here: remove the 2x2 foot cover to the attic and let gravity move the house air up to the mushroom units and other vents. The house becomes a chimney; easy peasy!
I live in south Louisiana, and have only seen a basement once in my whole life, while on vacation. So, any other ideas LOL! ?
won't that be a problem because the chance of fungus without a dehumidifier
Shell, I would like to say thank you sir for this good effort, please after your excellent explanation on the board go to a real furnace and Attic hole or entrance window in order to show us in live what you said. F.e. remove the button window of the furnace is not understandable , mine has a motor there with, wire and other stuff . Cut gas intake, the same. Sorry i am not a handyman just common people.
My home gets cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Is it poor insulation in between walls or attic ? Its a new development home.
probably just nature ;)
It sounds like you live on earth.
Were do you live, sounds like my home, before I foamed, every outside hole. Around every register. Added R38, wished I had put more, but it still works, in the attic
I did try this and it DID NOT WORK. The problem is the attic is 150 degrees F and lots of stuff works on paper like he demonstrated. I found what DOES WORK and you don't even need to run any fan. Simply paint the roof super white so it reflects the heat and doesn't heat up the attic to begin with!! I did this to my house and my attic temperature went from 150F down to about 95F. This reduced the house temperature from about 92F down to about 82F. You can read more about this on the website called builditsolar.com and search for "white roof experiment" on that site.
True David, I'd done it too, white roof. But some of my neighbours hate me
Greetings from Indonesia
How long ago did you do the white paint on your roof? I want to know if it has had long enough to start peeling off yet and how that looks when it does. I would love to do this but I don't want a future mess on my hands preventing me from selling my house if I want to do so.
I left it on for 2 winters. It didn't wash off except slightly. I did it as an experiment because my roof was old and needed replacing anyway. Everyone's situation is different... so decide what to do based on your situation. If you live in upscale neighborhood, maybe don't. There are other alternatives that are not visible outside the house. Place styro panels inside the attic of ceiling of attic. This routes heat UP to top of attic and out the vents. Not as effective as hyper-white hydrated lime, but no neighbors complaints. If you want more info, read the stories by me and "wolfgang" on the website builditsolar dot com. Just search for "white roof experiment" Also, I wrote a book on "Heating & cooling experiments" available at the website LULU dot com.. just search for books by David Mundy on that site.
Thank you very much for your quick reply David. So after the 2 winters what did you go to? I did read the White Roof experiment before your reply here. Now to read your other recommendations. The houses here are far enough apart and I have enough trees that I don't think anyone would notice if I get my roof limed that is if I can find someone who will do it for me. Being a smallish 65 yr old lady I probably shouldn't do it myself, lol. I just wonder if having this many trees will keep my roof from benefiting from the reflective quality of the lime. It does get really hot in my attic apartment part of the house that I stay in. There is little to none of the pink fluffy stuff in the area of the roof attic that I can look into. The central air for the upstairs recently broke down so I bought a window ac for the bedroom part of my apartment. I would like to do the lime coating to help it out but only if it will make a reasonable difference.
If your roof is already shaded by trees, then you would NOT BENEFIT from making your roof white. You already have the ideal situation. After 2 winters, I put styro-foam up against the UPPER INSIDE of my attic. This give the heat a path to go UP and OUT the ridge-vents at the top of my roof. It is not as effective as the HYPER WHITE roof color, but it is not observable by neighbors. Then we got a standard shingle brown roof put on. Read about it at BUILDITSOLAR dot com.... just search for "white roof experiment" on THAT SITE.
Tried this and a mouse crawled in my furnace blower broke the motor I had to spend 890 to fix it. Thanks,
What if you don’t have a basement?
First, get yourself a shovel....
Ha!
Yes, same question but seriously. Here in the south we rarely ever build houses with basements. So I am thinking more along the lines of attic fans and a white roof.
Its the same in southern California, very few houses have a basement (actually I don't know anyone with a basement there). The spinning attic vents are pretty popular, as is the growing trend to whole house fans, which if used properly can be pretty effective, but at some certain point (which southern California reaches on the regular) there just isn't any way to beat insulation and central air.
My uncle actually dug his own basement with a shovel. Back in the day, men were men!
i came here to learn how to install a summer fan switch, i'm leaving non the wiser.
Nice idea... but every house not the same ?!
The whole house fan set up is better!?!?
Old houses had them in ceiling in hall way!
Newer houses are being built without them.... strange?!
Trying to save money and stay cool? If the temperature outside at night is cool here is a way to get that cool air into your house. Find the biggest fan around and put it in a window (basement or upstairs) blowing outside. This will draw the cool air into your house in any room you open a window especially on the shady side of the house. When the temperature outside gets hotter than the temperature inside., shut off the fan and close all the windows trapping the cool air in your house. It's much cheaper than air conditioning, you can run the fan all night, and you can do it yourself. A/C units and heat pumps are a rip off and failed technology
As soon as I open the door to my attic all the heat came pooring down on me 🥵?
I don’t think so.
This may help cool your home, but it is an unhealthy way of doing so. If you pull air from your unfinished basement you could potentially be pulling contaminates (radon, moist air/mold spores, dust, fumes from cleaning supplies, paint, etc) from your basement and cycling them through your home. This would be especially problematic if you or any of your family members have asthma or different allergies. Another issue would be to consider what your electric bill will be like when running the blower on your furnace continually or the wear and tear on your furnace blower motor (assuming your furnace has an AC motor, like many do).
Use a filter and keep plants down there
144p...
but many furnaces are in the attic!
B-but many aren't !
Most furnace fans wont run if you remove that door on the front...
Gah! Your right!
Does anyone have an idea why my furnace fan run every 45 mins for 15 minutes? Thermostat is off.
IITOMII360 your thermostat might have a fan circulate mode that’s on
it might be a humidistat, sensing humidity that is too high. It then activates the a/c to remove the excess humidity.
If you have nest thermostat it does for you
You have a great voice. But why does it look like this video was made in 1983?
D G I’ve been listening to Shell Busey on the radio for years! This probably was made in the 80s
If i only had a basement...
Get central air!!!
I tried this bullshit , and ended up the basement got hot and then the whole house is hot did not work , so I bought an air-conditioner end of story !!
Tiger. Lol
LOL!
potato cam in 2014
Unless you don't have a basement and your furnace is in the attic.
It will never work.
The minimal amount of cooler air in the basement is not sufficient in volume to keep the house cool. You'll simply pull warm air into the basement and it will be hot too.
Stay super cool by staying out of focus. It's what all us super cool dudes do.
Not everyone lives in the north with a basement.
FK my eyes
2014....and the video quality sucks...just as the idea of how to cool your home!
now my house smells like a damp old foot basement..
And the basement has more dust mites than anyplace in the home. I wonder if this dude does not realize cool damp air blown up into a home with warm\hot air creates some very high humidly levels?
You should go to jail for attempted murder. Depressurization of the basement with the furnace door removed can easily back draft the water heater. Ever hear of carbon monoxide? What about flame roll out? There is a safety switch that should kill
power to the furnace if one tries to run it UNSAFELY without the door installed. You should stop giving advice on topic that can hurt / kill people.
Ed Janowiak p
Electric water heaters don't create carbon monoxide and many homes including mine have the hot water heater on the main floor so it's closer to the sources it's fed to. I've added vents in my hvac return in our basement to feed cool / dehumidified air to the top two levels for years and it's worked very well.
EJ, You seem to be a total alarmist. Significantly depressurizing the basement would be a monumental task. Are you afraid of your own shadow? In the case of my furnace the return vent is from the upstairs. The reason for removing the bottom cover is to suck in the cool basement air and move it to the upper levels of the house. I think it's a great idea.
Do you run your oven and stove burners outside too? I know someone who ran their basement water heater for years without an outside vent, and the water heater was right under their bedroom. While I don't recommend it, it's no where as dangerous as you make it out to be.
Ed Janowiak Please explain how this would effect the hot water heater?
Nice idea... but every house not the same ?!
The whole house fan set up is better!?!?
Old houses had them in ceiling in hall way!
Newer houses are being built without them.... strange?!