Ventilation Through Opening Windows in Your Home

Long before air conditioners and high-tech heat pumps — and the electricity bills that come with them — people kept comfortable indoors by utilizing principles of free natural ventilation. Keeping air in motion by opening windows exhausts stagnant, hot air and improves indoor air quality. It also makes living spaces feel more comfortable by inducing a perception of coolness caused by moving air, the same way chill factor makes a windy day feel colder than it actually is.

Opening windows to enhance ventilation isn’t a random procedure. First, ask yourself a few questions about your home and local conditions:

• Which direction does each side of your house face?
• From what direction do prevailing winds usually blow?
• What time of day are breezes the strongest?

By answering those questions, you can use open select windows to set up effective air flow and maintain home ventilation. The most efficient use of windows is cross-ventilation. Wind entering windows on the windward side of the house exits through opens windows on the opposite side. Cross-ventilation actually sets up a vacuum as lower air pressure that naturally forms on the side of the house opposite the force of wind draws air through the home, enhancing the ventilating effect. To optimize natural cross-ventilation, follow these guidelines.

• For maximum effect, open windows on the side of the house directly facing the wind and the side directly opposite. If the configuration of the home doesn’t include windows on diametrically opposite sides, you can still gain some cross-ventilation effect by opening windows in rooms at a right angle to the windward side of the house.
• Since most houses are more than one room deep, make sure doors and hallways are open between rooms to create an obstructed air path as direct as possible between open windows on the two opposite sides of the house.
• Fans placed in outlet windows blowing outward augment the effect of cross-ventilation and cool the house more.

For more ideas to increase natural ventilation in your home, contact the professionals at Energy 1 Heating & Air Conditioning.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Lorain, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about attic safety and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 440-201-2959.

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