Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ventilation

What air fresheners are good but not overwhelming?

zombieflanders — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:45:30 -0800

My friends have commented on how strong the air freshener in my apartment is. What brands or methods are good for a place with poor ventilation? I'm a nonsmoker with no pets who has been trying to maintain a nice-smelling apartment using the Air Wick brand of plug-in fresheners, usually with whichever scent seems least likely to be overpowering. The apartment has four rooms: kitchen, living/dining, bathroom, and bedroom. Only the kitchen and the bathroom have ventilation shafts, while the living room and bedroom both have windows. My friends tell me that my place smells strongly of air freshener, and that they can sometimes smell it from outside my window (I live on the ground floor), or even worse, on my clothes. The thing is, it's usually on the lowest possible setting, unless I'm cooking. Whenever I try to cook anything with even moderate aroma, I can smell it for a day or two, although that's better than the week or so from before the freshener. This poor ventilation seems to be the main culprit, but I 'm not sure if there's anything to be done about that, certainly not by me. Plus, I get used to the scent after about a day, so I can't tell how strong it is.

So what can I do to neutralize odors and/or make my place smell good? It can be other brands of freshener, although I'm certainly open to other methods (including natural solutions) as long as they're not strong-smelling either. I'm somewhat of a brown thumb though, and my heating/cooling system seems to dry the place out. Also, I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but 90% of the apartment has carpeting that is vacuumed every week or two.

Ventilation Problem

glenngulia — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:03:06 -0800

How do I determine why vent is not sending heat & A/C to one bedroom? Have a 3 bedroom house. 100-years old if that helps (A/C is brand new, furnace is probably 40+ years old).

2 bedrooms (the 2 larger ones) have vents that work fine. The 1 small bedroom only has 1 vent: absolutely no heat or A/C comes through this vent.

Where do I begin to figure out what the problem is?

Can I screen out the six legged bastards?

medea42 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:56:33 -0800

Would placing an additional window screen material on the outside of a vent cause ventilation problems? This summer I wound up locked inside my apartment in terror because a group of wasps elected a pipe in my a/c unit (located on my balcony) as their new home. Since my fiancee and I are both allergic to bees, and because we chose our apartment for its balcony, this is a source of serious frustration - especially since even after exterminators killed the nest and our maintenance guy removed it, the wasps continued to return to our balcony in particular. I'll be damned if I let six legs win.

My idea to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that there is no way they can crawl inside the outdoors-exposed vent that contains our heating and cooling unit. So I want to fix a screen that is tightly woven enough that bees can't get into it. What I want to know before getting happy with knives, screens and glue is whether the additional screen would cause any technical problem with ventilation, etc.? It doesn't seem so to me, but mechanical issues aren't something I'm well versed in.

Note: This is a rental, but I'm willing to take a deposit hit to avoid further bees.

Does attic ventilation = more efficient air conditioning?

JFitzpatrick — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:50:15 -0800

Is leaving the windows in my attic cracked beneficial for keeping my air conditioning bill low? I'm curious if my present strategy has any benefit at all or if I'm misguided in my approach:

My home was built in the 1930s. The attic is half finished, half storage with windows on both ends of the space. There are no heating and cooling vents in the attic.

The door to the attic has weather stripping and a sturdy draft guard at the bottom.

During the summer the attic gets roastingly hot. It's better now that I installed a ridge vent instead of the cruddy little can vents, but it's still quite hot up there.

I've been opening the windows on each end to get a cross breeze which lowers the attic temp. easily 10-15 degrees. For what it's worth I live in a very windy area and there is a steady cross breeze almost 24/7.

Assuming that my floors and walls are properly insulated (the floor between the attic and the living space and the walls under the attic), which I believe they are based on my inspection... is leaving the windows open to provide natural ventilation (no powered fans that would create a negative pressure space) benefiting or hurting my energy efficiency with the air conditioner on?

It seems that lowering the attic temperature can only benefit me, but I'm not heating and cooling specialist and may be overlooking something outside my scope of knowledge.

Thanks!

What's are these bits of residue that drift down out of my ceiling vent?

Askr — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:31:02 -0800

What are these brownish-blackish floaty smudgy bits that drift down out of my ceiling vent at work? Is the stuff dangerous? We moved into a new (to us) office several months ago that I believe was built in the 1970s for whatever that's worth. Over my desk is one of those square metal ventilation grates/vents that takes up half the space of one of those standard rectangular acoustic ceiling tiles. Whenever the AC comes on, little bits of brownish-blackish-grayish... stuff... occasionally but persistently float down out of it. For example each morning I have to blow a light speckling of it off my desk, and it accumulates again by the afternoon.

The stuff is light enough to float down fairly gently and to be blown away easily, but it's not fuzz consistency. The bits vary in size from dust-sized particles to chunks that are about the size of the head of a pin, but 3-D, so you only very rarely actually see one drift down, but you can easily see them collect on the pale wood of my desk. If you pick one up, it turns into a smudge easily when you smoosh it. Its composition does not appear to be uniform, but rather slightly varied.

I've looked up what asbestos looks like, and unless there is a cajun blackened variety, it's not that. We had the exterminator remove some roof rats recently, but it's hard for me to believe that they could have shit so much in the HVAC system that this neverending supply of atomized shit could continue to rain down on me for months. It happens in other offices too, which makes me think it must be the disintegrating remnants of some kind of building material used throughout the ceiling or ventilation system.

I've found this and this, which sound similar but it's hard to tell. One of them might be my same thing once it gets wet.

So WTF is this and is it dangerous for me to be exposed to this every day? Since some of the particles are so small and since the vent is right over me, I have to assume I'm inhaling some of it. Inhaling any particulate isn't ideal, but some make you sick or kill you, so, you know. Looking for anyone who has experienced and identified this more so than guesses.

I need my ventilation to suck

jclovebrew — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:28:25 -0800

Do over-the-oven microwaves with exhaust inherently suck? (no pun intended) I moved into a house that has one of these and this is my first experience with one. It is connected to a duct and vents to the outside. The problem is that it hardly moves any air at all. Last night I cooked a beef fillet and the kitchen area filled with smoke. I like cooking and roasting coffee often, so this is a problem that I need to address ASAP. From some cursory googling, many people seem to think the microwave exhausts are inherently crappy - that is, they will never move as much air as a proper hood. Is this really true? What are your experiences?

I have no problem replacing the whole thing with a proper hood then just doing a counter-top microwave, but if I can get away with an over-the-oven version that works effectively, I'd prefer that due to the space savings.

I need some fresh air.

stormygrey — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:59:48 -0800

I need creative ideas for remedying a stale apartment. The home I own has about 1300 square feet upstairs where we live and 600 sq feet in an apartment we rent out downstairs.

Our first two tenants were drunk construction workers and never complained about a thing, but our last two folks have said the apartment smells stale or smokey. I have noticed that the last two tenants who cook a lot make the whole house smell like stale food. So it seems like air is not circulating at all.

The stale food doesn't bother me, but it does bother me that he can smell our cigarette smoke, particularly in his bathroom. The house shares central air and there is only one return in the whole place. We have a whole house Aprilaire high efficiency air cleaner on the furnace.

We are willing to try filters in vents, baking soda, room size air purifiers, smoking only in certain rooms of the house, caulking up everything in site, a portable air conditioner or window unit down there.

I don't know about how much adding extra returns or whatever would be and I know that realistically we aren't going to start smoking outside anytime soon.

I really don't understand a lot about how ac units work. He seems to think the stale smoke smell is coming from the vents not from seeping down the stairs or floorboards, that is why we are focusing on those issues, but if you have experience or ideas no matter how off the wall throw them at me!

He is being really gracious about it, so I really want to do right by him.

I asked a similar question last year, but this is more about ac this time as that seems to be the culprit rather than just stank basement.

Help with hot summer nights.

carsonb — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:17:07 -0800

Why is my bedroom consistently 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and what can I do to cool it off? Here's a rough diagram of my apartment's layout. There are 4 vents for the AC, and the one intake is in the ceiling of the living room. I have vertical blinds on my south-facing window that I keep closed all day, and an oscillating fan that blows into my room from near the door. Trees block the morning sun onto my window, but noon to sundown I get direct sunlight. The vent in my room blows cold, and is not blocked at all as far as I can tell. The problem persists throughout the night. What can I do?

you find yourself in a stuffy room

bingo — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 04:29:06 -0800

I'm in a rectangular room with no windows. The one door is near the end of one of the long sides of the rectangle. Other than just putting a fan by the door, blowing in, is there anything I can do to optimize ventilation? Another fan pointing out, perhaps (and sitting lower or higher)? The ceiling is high. This is my bedroom.

Stinky Sickly Secondhand Situation

pranalaxmi — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 07:06:22 -0800

I live on the second floor of an old turn of the century mansion and the first floor party-hardy dwellers are serious chain smokers. Their noxious, secondhand smoke is so pervasive (they entertain smoker friends by the droves) that it seeps through my hardwood floors and walls and stinks up my apartment something awful. Sometimes it seems like I'm living above a nightclub it is so bad. I moved into the place in July not knowing their habits, so now that the windows are closed for the winter, the smell has intensified to an intolerable level. It seems unlikely that I can convince two heavily-addicted users to smoke outside their own place, so I'm left to "treating" my own environment, cleansing my own air. Incense is only a temporary relief, while a little essential oil diffuser doesn't seem to be cutting it. What else can I do but move out or open the windows and freeze?

Sewer gas smell in the basement?

nj_subgenius — Sat, 29 Jan 2005 07:13:50 -0800

SewerGasFilter. Help![+] This morning I detected the stink of sewer gas in my basement for the first time. My plumbing is clean, hasn't ever been worked on (at least in five yrs since I have lived here). Anybody, advice? I've looked for a cheap gas detector but Google-fu fails. I don't want to call the FD or a plumber if this is a transient problem. I'm in NJ where there's been some cold weather. Thanks in advance.

Cleaning Kitchen Air

eurasian — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 12:45:49 -0800

Well, our new old apt (it's new to us, but it's old) has no range hood. Looks like the previous owner decided to make a HUGE pass through. What solutions/options do I have (besides some sort of bizaare way to hookup an ordinary rangehood). Do the somewhat reviled ionic breeze / ionic cleaners work well enough to clean the air? It's a 600 sq ft apt.

Getting people to smoke elsewhere

ParisParamus — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 07:17:02 -0800

Cigarette Smoke Filter.
I am currently working at 305 Broadway, a building full of lawyers, (inlcuding me) in lower Manhattan. On the adjacent floor below, someone, or some set of people is smoking, and [mi]their smoke goes through the ceiling/floor, or the ventilation system, to ME. The person (persons--I know there is at least one) has been approached to advised that what he is doing is illegal. I'm looking for effective creative solutions to get these people to stop their illegal pollution.

Dehumidifying without electrical power?

nathan_teske — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 16:40:18 -0800

I have an extremely humid bathroom with no exhaust fan and no electrical outlets. Are there any dehumidification solutions which don't require electricity? The building I live in was built in the late '20s and no thought was given to bathroom ventillation. There's a small window but its right next to the shower, somewhere I'm not comfortable mounting a fan even if I had the electricity to do it.

Modeling Airflow

signal — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 11:14:21 -0800

I am preparing a course on Computer Aided Environmental Design for architects and other professionals, and am planning to make extensive use of Ecotect, a package which allows one model and study the solar, light, thermal and acoustic behavior of a building. To round it out, I would like to be able to study ventilation and airflow as well. Is there any easy-to-use (for an architect, not an engineer) software in the vein of Ecotect which will allow basic modeling of ventilation or airflow on a standard PC?