| meirman 2005-07-17, 4:25 am |
| In alt.hvac on Fri, 15 Jul 2005 15:37:26 -0400 "Yeung Fun Ho"
<shaolin_master@oriental.com> posted:
quote:
>
>
>unlike some of the folks here, who are forgetting a very important point,
>let me remind you of something:
>
>many places in the USA have high RADON levels
>(RADON, a colorless, odorless gas, is the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer,
>after smoking)
>
>many of the solutions that are typically presented in this group involve
>exhausting attic heat via a fan, turbine, etc.
>
>most of these are "negative pressure" solutions, i.e. they suck air out in
>order to exhaust the unwanted heat
>
>this will cause RADON to be sucked IN to your home from the ground
Not necessarily. There is almost a 3' x 3' stack connecting my attic
to my basement, but at the first floor ceiling it is covered by the
flooring, or at least plywood, except for holes made for the HVAC
duct, and maybe something else. The hole surrounding the duct is not
much bigger than necessary, and might even have been caulked. In
addition, it's hard to suck air out of the dirt through the cinder
blocks or cement into my basement. More likely that my basement or
other window would leak.
Most importantly I have soffitt vents that are about 14 square feet,
many times bigger than the sum of all the entry points put together.
Also I tested my basement for radon, and I none or not enough to be
measured. (There is no need to capitalize radon, any more than tin,
cupper, iron, oxygen, nitrogen, neon, xenon, argon, freon. Well,
freon might be trademarked with a capital F.)
quote:
>I suggest the following two ideas which are at least as effective and will
>not introduce any RADON:
>
>
>suggestions for hot attics:
>
>1. a positive pressure solution (i.e. fan blows into attic and out a vent,
>rather than sucking air out and RADON in)
>
>2. even better is a white roof, studies have shown that a white colored roof
>is 7 times as efficient for eliminating attic heat than any vent, fan, or
>turbine system
I hope so. I didn't go to white, because I saw soot stains on the
roof of the house across the street, but when I got a new roof, I went
from the darkest shade of brown to the second lightest. It's so hard
to tell, but I haven't noticed much difference. That's probably
because I had such a good system with my roof fan. It may well run
much less now, but I didn't have more than a vague idea when it ran
before. IIRC from noon to 2 PM until 10PM. This is the second summer
with the light colored roof, and I haven't noticed when this one runs.
If it's never more than 2 to 9, that would be an improvement. I
really should keep track. (I should have kept notes with the time,
outside temperature, level of sunniness. Oh, well.)
I was going to come up with a hypothetical number to hope for for
myself, instead of 7, maybe 3 or 2. And I noticed tthat you don't
prhase it right above. White colored roofs don't eliminate heat, they
prevent it from entering. The other three are meant to expel it.
But I agree with you that roof color is much ignored. In 1963, the
son of the owner of one of the two big department stores in my home
town had a house built on the road I drove by to get home. And he had
an average color roof put on. Within two months, that roof was off
and a white roof on. Never found out how much good it did, but I
suspect the guy didn't use AC, or didn't want it running all the time.
And radon is often ignored also, after a burst of attention in the
80's.
quote:
>YFH
>
Meirman
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