I live in a pretty old house in the midwest, built 1929, bought in '21, single-story, ~1300ish sqft, and with a large, spacious basement. Every time summer comes around I’ve had issues with the basement getting MUCH colder than the rest of the house (like >10 degrees F difference), presumably due to poorly-insulated floors and cold air sinking. The HVAC is still capable of keeping the main floor at the temp set on the thermostat, but the temperature differential indicates it’s working quite a bit harder than it really needs to be, and is probably wasting quite a bit of money.
I’m planning on getting an insulation specialist in at some point to go over options for shoring up the insulation, but I’m wondering if there’s anything else I could do to recirculate air in the basement through the rest of the house - even with good insulation, I feel like the laws of thermodynamics would still result in a basement at least fairly colder than the rest of the house.
Is there anything I could look into that is reasonably cost-effective for circulating air from the basement to the rest of the house so my HVAC doesn’t have to work so hard in the summer? Thanks
My house has a similar issue with a lower level that is perpetually much colder than the upper level. The main way we have somewhat alleviated the problem is by opening/closing registers. In the summer, we close all the registers in the lower level, forcing all the cold air from the HVAC into the upper level, then letting it sink down naturally. Our lower level is still cooler, but it isn’t as stark a difference. Due to the layout of the stairs linking the two levels, a fan is not terribly effective at exchanging a lot of air between the two on its own.