Perusing the City's energy saving tips while waiting for a response to my energy audit request, I stopped and said: "Well, I didn't know that:"
When bedroom doors are closed, with no way for air supplied to the rooms to circulate back to the air conditioner, each closed-off room becomes positively pressured while the remainder of the house areas become negatively pressured with respect to the outdoors. The result is exaggerated air leakage to the outdoors from positively pressured closed rooms, and from the outdoors into the negatively pressured house areas. Air leakage occurs through bathroom vents, fireplace vents and dampers, around windows and doors, through recessed ceiling light fixtures, through electric plug and light switch plates, etc. The result: The air conditioner must run longer to keep the house cool and dry. Costs rise.So, it's open door policy at our house from now on, with a few brief exceptions.
Check out all 113 causes of higher summer utility bills at the BBCAT website.
1 comments:
Really? I've always learned that the A/C and furnace work more efficiently with doors closed. I'll have to look into this. Of course, I live in an aging (and leaky) Victorian home. It may be different.
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