Author Topic: Cold air draft flowing upstaris in a new home??  (Read 6517 times)

Financial Threedom

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Cold air draft flowing upstaris in a new home??
« on: January 11, 2014, 01:36:43 PM »
My wife and my father in law are going to drive me crazy.  Here is the situation:  My wife and I live in a "new" home, built 3 years ago.  The basement, which consists of 4 rooms (crawl space, bathroom, utility room and a large to be rec room and a small landing at the bottom of the stairs) was partially finished, as in dry walled, but not taped, and remains in that state today.  We recently added a door to the large rec room, so now the bathroom, utility room and rec room all have doors (the crawl space is accessed from the utility room).  My wife believes this new door has and will result in heat savings, because the cold air will stop flowing up the seven stairs into the living room.  My thoughts are this will do virtually nothing for savings as the basement is unheated.  She also believes this will keep the cold air in the basement, and keep it from drafting upstairs.   I believe the cold air is more dense than hot air, so it will stay down stairs, unless there is a draft, the house is virtually air tight, so there should be no drafts, thus no cold air creeping upstairs, both of which my wife and father in law claim is happening all the time.  The F-I-L was just here and saw the door open and asked "Don't you keep that door closed?  All the cold air will come upstairs!  And your heat will travel into the basement!"  I hope my eye-roll wasn't overly rude.  (Other than this I will say I get along great with the in laws.)
Hopefully Ive explained the situation clearly enough.  Could someone confirm if my physics are correct with this?  Much appreciated.

NinetyFour

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Re: Cold air draft flowing upstaris in a new home??
« Reply #1 on: January 11, 2014, 03:12:31 PM »
My understanding is that cold air sinks, which forces the warmer air to rise.  So I think I am agreeing with you.

Wanderer

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Re: Cold air draft flowing upstaris in a new home??
« Reply #2 on: January 11, 2014, 04:14:22 PM »
The door will provide a barrier between the warm and cold air.  If the door is not there, the warm air touching the cold air will warm the cold air in the basement, and the cold air touching the warm air will cool the warm air in the stairwell.  It's hard to see how keeping the cold and warm air from mixing is a bad thing. 

If you really really really need to know whether there's an air current, go open the door, stand in the doorway, get a candle, light it, then snuff it out, and see which way the smoke goes. 

I can envision the cold air in the basement flowing out to fill the bottom of the stairwell, which could force warm air from the stairwell floor up and curling back through the top of the doorway into the basement to replace the air that is flowing out of the basement into the stairwell.  I don't think you'll find a howling wind rushing up the stairwell, but I do think keeping the door open is causing heated air to escape into the basement.  I just don't know how much. 

 

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