Help need advise (post office, location, temperatures)

[Linrobark]

Thank You for all your responses. We worked hard to find a beautiful home and living with "the regulars" has been nothing but positive.
KauaiHiker you were the most helpful, Got 3 good idea's from you.
When someone is new to the area you should give helpful advise not negative. ! The reason I asked is because usually "the regulars" know the tricks of the area.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

OP, if it is cooler outside, I suggest that you put a box fan into a window and it will pull the cooler air in and shoot it into the house. Unless you have some strong winds, you might get a nice cross draft through window screens, but it won't move air fast enough to do a complete exchange of inside air to outside air.

Run that fan in the window all night to pull in cooler air. You will need to have an open window on the opposite side of the house to get good airflow.

The best way to cool the house is strategically located tall trees that will shade whichever side of the house the sun is hitting. There might be a trade off: shade vs coqui habitat complete with noise

If your house is traditional construction, look into getting a full attic fan installed, plus some roof vents. Getting hot air out of the attic will really help the indoor temperature.

It's possible that you aren't objecting to the air temperature as much as you are not enjoying the humidity. There isn't much can be done about humidity in the house except to run air-conditioning.

[mdand3boys]

This assumes that you bought a mainland style, house on a concrete slab.
Most of those style homes in the area were built without any insulation in the attic.
There is an insulation barrier that can be installed in the attic, that gets stapled up against the rafters, just a few inches below the metal (assuming it is metal) roof. It reflects heat back up. It works really well.
Also, make sure you have vents at both ends of the roof, in the attic.
There are also solar powered vents that can be installed in the attic - HELCO even has rebates for them.

[KauaiHiker]

Originally Posted by leilaniguy

Assuming it has flat ceilings you could add batt insulation to the attic. A friend did that to her house (also about 600' from the ocean) and it dropped midday temperatures by about 10 degrees.

Good point. If you can't cool the attic enough, it will help keep the heat away from your ceiling. Insulation works both ways.

[Linrobark]

I looked up in the attic today and found that there was some insulation that is up to the 2x4 rafters, I have vents on each end of the house which we're going to look into the fans that's pull out the heat.
I will check into the solar powered vents, that was a great suggestion. I appreciate the help especially the positive ones. We're going to figure this out yet !!

[KaraBenNemsi]

If you are on post & pier, make sure that you don't block air flow underneath with stuff stored or leaned against the house.

Paint your roof white.

Get that solar fan system from Home Depot.

Window awnings. Easy to make by yourself.

Plant shade trees long term.

If you have no drywall ceiling, get some and put insulation in between the roof and the drywall.

If you are on slab, just use a polished concrete floor or tiles. Rip carpet out. Furnish sparsely and don't clutter. Air flow is king.

Have one of those indoor water falls...the bigger the better. They cool, but the psychological effect makes it feel cooler right away.

Use desk chairs with netting, not sticky plastic or leather.

Use electric cooling with fans & ac units as a last resort.

[davephan]

My parents had a solution in their house in Minnesota that they used before they got air conditioning. Summers can be hot and sometimes very humid in Minnesota. The problem was the same. It was much cooler outside, but you couldn't get the cool air into the house. Some days where hot and humid, so AC was the only solution on those days after they bought air conditioners.

On days where the outside air was cool enough, they ran a central attic fan. The fan was about 4 to 5 feet in diameter and blew air from the main floor into the attic. The fan had a 12 hour timer on it, so you could run it for hours and it would automatically shut off. Then all the perimeter windows would be opened up, and cooler air would come in from every window because of the large negative air pressure created by that large attic fan. Before they got the large attic fan box fans were set up in windows either blowing in or out. The box fans in windows were ineffective compared to the large central attic fan. The large attic fan made some noise, but less noise than a room airconditioner. All the windows had screens to keep the bugs, especially the mosquitoes out.

In addition to the large attic fan, there were two fans inside the attic that blew air from inside the attic to above the roof outside. These two attic fans were controlled by temperature and were independent of the large attic fan.

The large attic fan system worked very well as long as the outside air was cool enough, not too humid, and the air was not smoky. Sometimes the outside air could be smoky if someone was burning something in the area. I think the central fan systems were more common in houses 50 years ago than today. Now the solution is just to use central air conditioning. However, maybe the large central fan system would be a good idea today in Hawaii where all you need to do is to get the cooler outside air in your house to cool down your house with much less cost than running air conditioning.

[hotzcatz]

We just got a nifty laser temperature gun. It's a "point & shoot" gauge with a red laser dot and where ever the dot is, it takes the temperature.

8:15 am in Honokaa. Single wall "Hicks" home so it's up on post and pier, although I don't know as if that would make a lot of difference in this instance. Sunny morning. Shady part of the wooden floor inside is 74 degrees. Sunny part of the wooden floor inside is 88 degrees. Outside of the house (white vinyl siding) in full sun is 90 degrees. Right next to it, the dark green trim is 110 degrees. Green trim in the shade is 74 degrees.

As it gets later in the day, we've gotten temperatures up to over 130 degrees on the dark green trim.

Probably the best thing you can do is to get some of that "Snow coat" blazingly white roof coating and paint your roof white. Several years ago, there used to be tax credits if you chose a white roof while building a house, I don't know if it is still in effect or not. Painting the whole house white wouldn't hurt as far as temperature goes. You could look into vinyl siding, that comes in white and allows for a tiny airspace between the vinyl and the house.

Second thing to do is to get shade on the sides of the house. Large lanais are really good at this, as well as large roof eaves. I believe that it is getting the sun off the sides of the house as to why we have such large roof eaves and not rainfall as most folks think. Building lanais all the way around the house should do a lot to cool it off. The shaded areas cool off the air before it gets into the house.

You could also try putting up a trellis and growing something on the trellis to shade the sides of the house. A trellis with lilikoi or green beans on it might make shade fairly quickly. We had trellised grapes at our other house and those were nice because most of their leaves dropped off in the winter so the sun could reach the sides of the house and warm it up. It was the purple "Filipino wine grape" and made tasty grapes, too, although we never made wine from them.

If your house is up on post and pier, you can put screened floor vents in the floors of your closets and put in louvered closet doors. The cooler air comes up from under the house and cools it off as it flows up and out of the closet. It also keeps mold and mildew out of the closets.

Any way you can get cross ventilation is a good thing. Especially low to high ventilation. This old Hicks home has low louvers under the picture windows so air comes in low and then goes out of the upper side of the louvered windows in other areas of the house. Louver windows are 100% ventilation, not 50% ventilation like you get from casement or sliding windows.

All this is passive methods of cooling off the house so you won't have mechanical equipment to maintain or a high electric bill.

[dchanmer]

All great ideas, Hotzcatz, affordable and fairly easy to do!

[smarino]

Must be a confused OP here. We lived in Kea'au many years and never saw 86 degrees. It's rainy, and cooler than Hilo. The skeeters drove me out, along w/ the unfriendlies and lack of anything to do. And 600' from the ocean??? No can.