How on earth is it possible for our house to get hotter than it gets outside?

[KitchenWitch]

I am sweltering here and it supposedly is not even that hot yet.

[EstimatedProphet]

1. The roof traps heat

The heat stays in your house instead of blowing away

[Elidor]

2. Some houses are just like that.

I have the opposite: my place is always cooler than it is outside in the summer. I hardly have to run the AC at all. But I do spend a lot on heat in the winter. And I have lots of spiders getting in. I catch 2 a day on average. Sometimes they creep into bed with me.
:scared:

[idgiehkt]

11. which direction does you house face?

btw I had a spider house too, once, that I rented. I saw species of spiders in that house the likes of which I've never seen again and never expect to. It was a very old cabin back in some woods that had a creek running right beside it. Great little house but I don't miss the 'spiders from Mars' so to speak.

[KitchenWitch]

14. I have large windows to both the east and west

Yeah, I know, worst possible for the heat.

Our master bedroom window is a large patio door onto a deck. We have drapes for it but they still don't keep the heat out. I am planning on (rather quickly) getting some of that window film that blocks 75% of the heat and installing it on the patio doors.

[Xithras]

3. The attic.

Your attic or crawlspace is a closed environment, and gets substantially hotter than the ambient temperature. It can hit 130+ in an attic on a 100 degree day. That space is typically seperated from your living areas by 5/8ths of an inch of sheetrock and a few inches of insulation. It isn't enough, so the heat radiates into your home through the ceiling.

Ceiling fans, which mix cooler floor level air with the hotter ceiling level air, can help, but the only solution is to add a LOT of insulation to the attic, and supplement that with attic fans.

That, or do like 90% of the population does and just run the A/C 20 hours a day.

[Redstone]

5. Xithras is right. You could also install soffit vents plus a radiant barrier under your

rafters; that channels the heat that your roof collects and exhausts it out of your ridge vent. (You DO have one of those, don't you?)

Redstone

[KitchenWitch]

13. I will find out if I have one - in short order

It only got up to 85 today, but damn if the temperature inside the house was not in the upper 90s today.

[snacker]

6. Attic fans work quite well.

We don't have one, but my mother does and it really does a nice job of keeping her house cool.

[Xithras]

9. Yep, my house has two.

They're on a thermostat. When the temp in the attic gets above 95, the first fan kicks on. If it gets above 105, the second fan kicks on.

They really do make a big difference. With the heat issues we have in this state, I don't understand why they aren't mandatory in California. They save a LOT of electricity.

Even if you can't afford fans, a really good set of attic vents can help too. The tiny ones included in most houses aren't big enough to really help.

[leftofthedial]

4. burritos

[YellowRubberDuckie]

7. Turn on the AC already.

:shrug:

[Inchworm]

8. How old is the house?

What was mentioned is very true. They used to think, back in the day, that the attic should be practically airtight;on the other hand, newer homes are well vented (usually).

Just curious.

:shrug:

:hi:

[Xithras]

12. The vents on new homes are usually too small to help all that much.

They're better than nothing, but absent a fan or wind, only a "chimney effect" can move the air. Most newer houses have a number of vents around the lower edges of the roof line, but they typically only have one or two larger vents near the peak...and they're often undersized. To work properly, the size of the large vents at the roof peak (in square inches) needs to bee equal to or larger than the size of ALL the lower vents combined. Almost no houses are built this way. The undersized upper vents inhibit airflow, preventing the hot air from escaping. Even worse, if the expansion of the air in the attic happens fast enough, it can begin forcing hot air OUT of the lower vents, ending circulation completely. When this happens, the lack of airflow in the attic accelerates the heating, creating a vicious cycle. The venting won't start again until the attic temperature eventually levels off, at which point the house underneath is getting scorched.

If you want a cool house, you need big attic vents. Builders don't put them in because little ones are cheaper. They only put in the smallest ones they are allowed to by law, and THOSE are specced to allow smoke to vent in fires, not to provide cooling relief.

[pitohui]

10. google the greenhouse effect EOM

,

[begin_within]

15. We have a red tile roof, and it soaks up the sun in the daytime and it's like an oven at night.

In the evening, the inside of the house is much hotter than the cool evening air outside. This is an advantage in the winter, because it's a form of solar heating. But in the summer it is a big problem. The flip side of it is that the house stays pretty cool all morning and doesn't get hot until mid-afternoon.

[KitchenWitch]

16. The saving grace is that we have a patio door in the master bedroom

It gets opened at night to cool the room. The window in my daughter's bedroom also gets opened at night.

[begin_within]

20. We open a lot of windows at night in the summer... bad for security, but if we didn't

we'd bake.

[Matsubara]

17. I used to have a house like that.

It was a WWII-era cottage in San Diego. Even on 75 degree days, it would easily hit 85-90 degrees inside by midday.

The roof was just shingles on wood, no attic, no insulation. The walls were equally thin. My solution was to buy one of those really high-powered fans they sell at Lowe's, and point it OUT the back window, while leaving the patio window open. There was a thermostat you could plug into the wall, then plug the fan into that. That way, whenever it was over whatever temp, the fan would kick in, constantly pulling cooler, fresh air through the house. It was a little noisy, but it made a HUGE difference.

[SeattleGirl]

18. Same thing happens here.

After an especially warm day, I have to sleep in the room on the basement level, because it's the coolest one in the house.

[KitchenWitch]

19. We are not even in the hot season yet

:sweatlikeapigprofusely: