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Air circulation in a basement
Pantshandshake
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Evening, PA.
I'm trying to find out the best way to, as the title would suggest, circulate the air in my basement. I've got your usual sized basement windows, about 2 feet long by 1 foot high. Ideally, I want some way to pull air from the outside into the basement, disperse it, and then an exhaust.
The google has sort of failed me, in that there's so much it's trying to show me, I don't know where to begin. So I was hoping someone had done an ad hoc project like this before and could tell me how to start.
Then again, with my luck, it'll be Dr Frenchenstein and my house will end up haunted too.
I'm trying to find out the best way to, as the title would suggest, circulate the air in my basement. I've got your usual sized basement windows, about 2 feet long by 1 foot high. Ideally, I want some way to pull air from the outside into the basement, disperse it, and then an exhaust.
The google has sort of failed me, in that there's so much it's trying to show me, I don't know where to begin. So I was hoping someone had done an ad hoc project like this before and could tell me how to start.
Then again, with my luck, it'll be Dr Frenchenstein and my house will end up haunted too.
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As to why, my basement has recently become a foster home for dogs that need permanent homes. We (my wife and I) work with a rescue foundation, so there's a pretty high turnover rate. I'd like to get some air circulation to both cut down on the smell, and to give the dogs more fresh air than they currently get.
I assume this question will come next, so a quick guess as to the dimensions is about 800 square feet, give or take.
I'd say you need three fans at most. One sucking outside air into the basement, a circulation fan to move the air around the room, and then another to suck air out of the basement.
Don't just look at the cheap stuff. If you are concerned about smells or pet dander, you want to create a negative pressure in the room. Essentially, the fan that sucks air out of the basement should be more powerful than the one bringing it in. If you wanted to reduce cost you could skip the intake fan and just have a grill, but the ability to create a positive pressure environment without having to reverse a fan is useful (pulling warm air from outside to dehumidify a damp basement, for example).
The negative pressure will prevent dander from being blown upstairs to the rest of the house when you open the basement door. It will also help reduce the amount of colder air being circulated in the basement from making it's way upstairs.
Measure the cuft. of the room, and find a fan that can move that much in a half hour or less. That's the exhaust fan. For the intake you want that size or slightly smaller. For the circulation you want the biggest fan you can find (ceiling fan or standing fan) and you put it on the lowest setting. That will keep the noise low, and move the air in a slow but powerful way that ensures you don't have large "dead" zones.
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Just get two of the biggest fans you can afford that will fit in the basement windows, put them as far away from each other as possible to maximise the air circulation, set one to intake and one to exhaust, and go about your life with one less problem to worry about.
Without circulation, fans on the windows are going to leave large zones of stale air.
Without moving large volumes of air in and out, the heat, humidity and odour in the basement is going to increase rapidly.
Negative pressure is as simple as moving more air out of the room than is going into it. Even if you can't feel it (you won't notice by standing in it) by doing the maths you will know you have achieved it. I can guarantee that you will notice the difference when there is something pungent stored in the room and you are upstairs or next door. Particles carrying the odour can't travel in that direction as easily, because the air wants to flow in the opposite direction. Larger particles such as pet dander can't travel in that direction either for the same reason. So the air in the rest of the house is attempting to travel downstairs and restore equilibrium.
You could use a bathroom extractor kit, this one is silent and the kind of thing I would start looking at. 2500 cuft. should suit a basement.
If you fitted just this, as SIMM said there is little that would change how your house circulates air now. An extractor on its own would pull the air out of the basement and it would be replaced with air from the main house, through gaps in the door and floorboards above. That will drive up your heating bill. You want to bring in outside air, circulate it and then remove it. That keeps your heating bill down, stops the main house getting too cold and prevents odours drifting.
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I did some home improvement work. Any point of ingress involving the basement has two doors (airlock... for dogs... doglock?) So, there isn't really a rush of pressure equalization.
And... what else... ok, 'cuft.' means cubic feet, I take it? I'll do those measurements. Is the half hour time mentioned some kind of a standard I should shoot for, or was that just for ease of maths?
And, SIMM, yes, it's legal and safe. Someone checks on the dogs just about every hour. The pens are cleaned between 3 and 5 times a day, depending on how much of a mess a given dog creates. They have Kuranda beds if they'll use them, or a pile of blankets if they won't. The blankets are changed at least twice a day. While the pens are being cleaned, the dogs go outside into a fenced area when weather permits, and if it's too crappy out they get to play in the central area. As far as healthy is concerned, we haven't had any dogs get sick, aside from some puppies that were rescued from elsewhere and came here with Parvo. They were moved to a different location, and 0 dogs that remained in this house came down with it. So, yes, I'd say we do a pretty good job on the healthy front as well.
And, lastly, thanks for showing up, Dr. Frenchenstein. It's nice to know that even without tagging you in, you still come around. Good to see you.
This here is why your idea is sub-par. The blue air is cold coming from outside. The red is the stale, warm, moist air that gets sucked back out.
The grey stuff is what doesn't get really circulated by using your plan. Now, I'm not saying that every molecule in that region will stay there forever. But it won't be changed with anything like the frequency of the air nearest the fans. You need to do more than the bare minimum here, particularly when dealing with multiple animals in an enclosed space. Half-assing it isn't just lazy, it's cruel.
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A third fan will likely not change anything drastically, "negative air pressure" won't really work without a sealed room. This is why Chris said it's not a computer case. We're talking wood, sheetrock, void spaces in walls. Lots of places for air to move from. This is also why Satan mentioned the houses are designed to vent upward through their stack. There's really not a whole lot you can do without seriously changing the structure of this basement.
Even an open window with a fan will change air quality in a room.
Thanks! I've been around, just lurking.
you said that you don't care about your heating bill but I'm still thinking heating is going to be your biggest issue. It is winter now, it gets real cold out. If you are constantly blowing in winter air your furnace probably won't be able to keep up - meaning your basement will be freezing AND your furnace will be going full bore trying to catch up. I might be wrong about this, but it sticks out to me as the biggest concern intake and exhaust fans would create.
The short answer, this is not something that will be cheap to fix. Your house was not designed for this type of airflow, have an HVAC specialist come in, if your basement is finished this will be a 9k-12k problem that needs to be fixed, if your basement is unfinished this will be a 5k-7k problem to fix. An air filter will help too, but only after you improve the airflow of the floor.
This is for dogs just to cycle air. I don't think it's unreasonable to put in a window fan and see how things go.
Window Fan
Edit: I kept pet chinchillas in a laundry room during spring one year temporarily, because I didn't need the room heated or cooled, just the air cycled a nice Vornado fan mounted to the window worked fine. If it had been another time of year and I needed to cool and/or heat the room, this would have been different.