too hot in our house? any thoughts?

bookwrm

We have this craptastic old house that wants to be the money pit and despite a new furnace/air conditioner we couldn't do anything to the duct work leading to the second floor.  without major demo (it is an ancient stone cape cod).

Long story short- downstairs is 71 and upstairs is 80.  This is not even the height of the heat that it hits upstairs. 

I am concerned that it is too hot for the baby upstairs.  We just put in a window AC in our room ( where she will first sleep) and we have a fan in there.  Any other ideas?  Does anyone else live in a furnace?  

AllieJean

Our house doesnt have vents to the upstairs either It sucks. We have window units in our room and in LOs room. LOs roon doubles as a spare room so Im sure we will be sleeping in there sometimes so that DH can still get some rest to go to work, otherwise we would just have done our room for now.

Legally Nads

Do you have an attic? If yes, you might consider an attic fan to get the hot air out and perhaps some extra/new insulation up there to keep the heat from going to your second floor. 

We also keep all of our blinds/curtains closed during the day to keep the sun out. We've tried some insulated curtains (from JCPenney) that work great at keeping out the heat. 

cswatch

I would make sure that your baby is in the room with the window a/c.  If that doesn't seem like enough, you could throw on a fan to circulate the cool air...  but I would think a newer window a/c should be fine. 

kimtritz

I'd be looking for another wall unit for the baby's room. Or have the baby stay in your room until it's not an inferno. Especially since it's the beginning of summer.

I grew up with central air, and now that I don't have it in our current house, I'm in literal hell & misery when I am on the 2nd floor of our house. We have a built-in wall unit for the downstairs which results in the 1st floor being sub-zero temps. Upstairs we have window units for our room and the other bedroom that my husband puts in at the last possible minute (as in, June. If I had my way, they'd have been in since, like, 2 weeks ago lol). In the daytime, it's warm up there but I keep the fans on which helps. But then there's the bathroom that kindof stays toasty if there's no breeze outside. So when the AC is on upstairs, the house stays a comfy temp w/ceiling fans on. It's misery, so I feel your pain! Next house must have central air!

EmilyAnn10

LO will be sleeping in our bedroom at night where there is an A/C. However, we can't dish out $100.00+ each month to keep the A/C running constantly. The electric bill company makes a killing in our area and gets away with it unfor.

It's probably 82 in our bedrooms right now and 84 in our living room. Thankfully tomm. is suppose to be MUCH cooler and I pray it doesn't get 98 again this spring/summer.

 

bookwrm

Thanks ladies.....

I think we have an attic fan, but I have a hunch it isn't working.  Go figure.  Would that be a roof person to look at/fix/put it in? 

Legally Nads

I would look for someone that does insulation work-- so maybe a roof person. Our A/C unit is in our attic and so we had the a/c people look at it.

susie985

We don't have central air and only have a one level house but it has been like 85 degrees in this crappy sweat box house. We have an attic fan, but the only time it does any good is at night when it cools down outside, the attic fan sucks the cool air in and makes it feel a little better. We put a window unit in our room which is awesome for sleeping. We decided, well I decided, the window unit will be fine for this summer since LO will be sleeping in our room, but next year we need to get central air. And I don't know what we're going to do about the living room being so hot when LO gets here, we were talking about getting a floor A/C unit. We'll see.

themrs830

Legally Nads:

Do you have an attic? If yes, you might consider an attic fan to get the hot air out and perhaps some extra/new insulation up there to keep the heat from going to your second floor. 

We also keep all of our blinds/curtains closed during the day to keep the sun out. We've tried some insulated curtains (from JCPenney) that work great at keeping out the heat. 

I was going to suggest this! Even without direct sunlight, the sun just coming in can raise the temp in your house a couple degrees. Also, the insulated curtains suggestion is great, otherwise if you use mini-blinds, look for room darkening as opposed to light filtering (they let less light in as the name says, so they will keep more sun out)