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When you're messing around in the attic, check if there is any need to add fire blocking. Anything you can do that slows down flames from getting to the attic could save your life. When you are sealing things up before insulating, think fire, not just stopping air flow with a can of foam.
I'm a fan of mini splits but not in a historic house with multiple small rooms to deal with.
We had a second AC unit in the attic of a historic home in California. The return was in the ceiling of the upstairs hallway. Looked bad, but you can save up and get a historic looking grill made for it, then it looks nice, even adds to the charm.
Our HVAC guy was smart and put in a very long maze of ducting for the return. This prevented a lot of noise form the blower coming out of the return, That worked great. It was not good idea to put the only return in the central hallway though. The AC only worked if all the bedroom doors were open. Forgo your privacy, or bake. We really had no other decent choice for this house though.
Because heat rises and cold air sinks, we rarely used the downstairs unit. The cool air would drift down the stairway. Fortunately, the HVAC guy was aware of this and put a much larger unit upstairs.
If you have thick plaster walls, start the AC first thing in the morning, before the walls heat up. It is much easier and efficient to keep the walls from heating up than to try to cool the house down once all that heat builds up in the thick plaster walls.
We ended up putting in some ceiling fans to help control airflow. However good quality historic looking ceiling fans are mongo expensive (as in $1000 of so each).
Wall insulation will save you some money. Foam (non-expansive ICYNENE) is the best option, but blown in cellulose is much cheaper. They will have to make small holes in the walls in between each set of studs. The holes can be inside or outside, depending on where you need to repaint anyway. You probably have balloon framing and if they did not add fire-stops later, you will be able to insulate both floors from one set of holes. You can rent a machine and blow in cellulose DIY, but it is hard and messy and very difficult to get the cellulose packed in tightly enough to get good results. It is not practical to try to do foam yourself. Foam is pricy but provides the best defect. It also cuts down sound coming through the walls.
Even if you do not insulate the walls, toss some more in the attic. That is very easy to DIY.
Adding fire blocking in the attic is not a great help, but it can help in some circumstances. It is easy and should be done if not already in place. Where you really need it is between floors and at the sills if you have a basement. It is incredibly destructive to put in. Many houses have it added already. Typically there is at least some blocking between the studs to give them stability. However there are some houses with all open stud bays. I am nto sure how common that is, I have only seen it a couple of times and I think those were one story homes. Insulation can provide some fire dampening. ICYNENE claims that it will not burn. Even cellulose is 30% fire retardant and 70% paper. Fiberglass will melt and or burn. It is not much of a fire retardant.
That is the whole purpose of insulation. To keep the heat in. If there is little or no insulation in the attic, the heat goes right thru the ceiling and out the house. Heat rises. Cold air falls. If you insulate the house and dont air condition it you will cook. I got many A/C install jobs from people insulating their house in the winter then couldnt live in them in the summer and they never had air conditioning before.
I can say from experience this is incorrect. The roof of a house collects a lot of heat, especially with composite or wood shingles. (tile may be different, never had a tile roofed house) Without insulation, that heat is passed through to the home, notwithstanding heat rising. It radiates. With thick insulation and a couple of attic vent fans, you can substantially reduce the heat in the house. Better yet, a whole house fan can suck cooler air up through the house and out through the attic (if you have sufficient vents). It is amazing how well a whole house fan works if you have room for one. Evne with a whole house fan, install vent fans, they are cheap). There will be days you want a little cooler, but do not want to run teh whole house fan.
Alternately, if you have the money, use ICYNENE - you do not vent the attic with ICYNENE because the attic space becomes part of your climate controlled area. The ICYNENE is sprayed on the underside of the roof sheeting and keeps heat from passing through to the attic space yo begin with. With this type of insulation, you do not have vent fans (or even vents) regardless of whether you not you add AC. I do not think ICYNENE can be used with a whole house fan because the air must have a place to go. It may be possible to insulate ceilings with ICYNENE but that is not normally done and there must be a reason for it.
Someone needs to invent fans that fit in the duct work to increase the flow to the second story. There's so much cold air in the basement that could be utilized.
That is what we do in our current house with no AC. We put those powerful fans that are used to dry out carpeting after a flood on the stairway and at the top of the stairs. They blow up enough cold air to cool two rooms.
I added a $100 window air conditioner to my baby's room. Worked great. Didn't even notice it on the electric bill. I take it out of the window in the fall. I probably only used it 15 hot nights all summer.
I added a $100 window air conditioner to my baby's room. Worked great. Didn't even notice it on the electric bill. I take it out of the window in the fall. I probably only used it 15 hot nights all summer.
Spend $6000 only if you have money to burn.
We are currently using 7 of these. We do notice an big increase in electrical costs. Not sure how much because our pool pump starts around the same time, and it is pretty demanding as well.
The down side of these are:
1. Ugly.
2. Not very efficient. It is hard to really seal the space around them. the little plastic accordian thingies break in a year or two and they never work very well anyway.
3. They drip water out the back side and damage siding, sills, or whatever is behind them.
4. The blow a great deal of heat out the back side which can cause various problems depending ont he location.
5. They require a direct plug in or a very heavy (appliance) extension cord.
6. Noise.
7. Block your windows.
8. Uneven cooling. Parts of a room are freezing while other parts are hot.
9. Even with 7 of them, only parts of the house are cooled. We would need at least 12 to cool the entire house.
10. Ugly. Why do you have all those nice windows if you are going to plug them up with ugly machinery?
Benefits:
1. Better than nothing.
2. They were mostly free.
3. That is all I can think of.
We have ducting for high velocity central air. The machine is $6000 installed. We have never gotten the $ together to put it in. Eventually we will. Although it is worth it, there are always things with higher priority, like Kayaks.
That is what we do in our current house with no AC. We put those powerful fans that are used to dry out carpeting after a flood on the stairway and at the top of the stairs. They blow up enough cold air to cool two rooms.
That's what we do as well only we have a large return in the floor that goes to the basement. We place a large fan on that and suck the cold air up. It keeps the first floor nice and cool but the thermostat is close by and the air conditioning doesn't come on as much. It's great for saving energy but the upstairs is not as comfortable.
We demoed the old cedar shingles on the second story and had insulation blown in and wrapped the house. We had stucco installed and it made the house virtually air tight, except for the 1911 windows that we refuse to part with. I made cradles of insulation to go by the weights before the trim was installed and calked. It stopped the air flow from the windows a lot.
It's going to be hot today and we closed up the house this morning. It's still a comfortable 77 and will stay this way for hours.
We are going to make our own inside storm windows this fall and that will solve the heat problem. The floor of the attic is well insulated and we put a big sheet of foam insulation and tape it off to the door that goes up to the attic.
I wish we could insulate the downstairs but there is only an inch or so between the brick and we were told that it wasn't cost effective. It would also be impossible to do a good repair to the textured plaster.
I'm going to try your method of putting a big fan upstairs to draw some cold air up. Once the sun is off the brick on the west side it cools down pretty fast.
Our widow air conditioner is in now and ready. It makes the pets happy too
When you're messing around in the attic, check if there is any need to add fire blocking. Anything you can do that slows down flames from getting to the attic could save your life. When you are sealing things up before insulating, think fire, not just stopping air flow with a can of foam.
I'm a fan of mini splits but not in a historic house with multiple small rooms to deal with.
Most of the spray foam for attic work is fire block rated. But there is also special purpose foam for that use too.
This thread has me thinking.
I've got the same problem: the second floor of my two story house is MUCH warmer than the first floor. To make the second story comfortable the first floor has to be practically freezing. ((And in winter, the first floor is comfortable and the second floor is AN OVEN.))
Is that just the "way it is" -- because of the "heat rises" issue. Or is that the result of poor ductwork and HVAC design for the house. I've noticed this to some extent in other houses as well. But the extent of the problem varies.
And what exactly DOES insulation have to do with it? I was told (but an insulation salesman) more attic insulation would help ameliorate the problem of the second floor being too hot.
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