Help me with my HOT second floor

Ceiling fans. Heat rises so you want to move the air. Also check the AC units to make sure they can cool the area without running continuously.
If they are to small your just wasting money.

Gringonazo said:

Due to some personal, family reasons, we moved into a house in Santo Domingo. It is basically a box-shaped house with two floors. The first floor will get to about 87 degrees at its hottest. But the second floor will get to 93 degrees in the areas with flat ceilings and 97 degrees in the master bedroom where there is a vaulted ceiling. It's so bad that my A/C units are almost worthless, and my wife's makeup is starting to melt.

The flat roof is a gray-ish color and the vaulted roof is an orange color with some black in it. Obviously the color is not helping me with reflecting the heat. What options are there? I would love to cool it down some 5-10 degrees. Is there any hope? I'm a little freaked out. Thanks in advance for your help.

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Man DO I FEEL you !!! I have the same problem. My 2nd floor is an oven, day and night... I have high ceilings with ceiling fans but I feel like the fans only move the hot air around...
And it's only the 11th of June... The A/C is only in the bedroom. Living-room is where I work during the day and watch TV at night and most of the time I fall asleep on the couch to wake-up around 5 am, dripping wet...

Welcome to the DR they say...

Bigger A/C unit and more splits, unfortunately it will cost you more on the luz. A/C is the only thing that makes this place livable for me. If your A/C is not discharging water ( humidity) its not working.

The vaulted roof: ceramic roof tiles would help a lot, if the house is yours ofcourse.

Suffice it to say that the construction techniques used here in most residential dwellings do not make use of insulation to keep the hot air out and the cool air in. So, you have to figure out a way to move the hot air outside.

As many have said, air conditioning does the trick but comes at a high electricity cost.

What I would suggest as a more economical solution is to install exhaust fans to suck the hot hair from the 2nd floor and have it replaced by cooler air from downstairs or outside. The electricity cost of several fans will still be less than a single regular AC.

A window exhaust fan in each bedroom and in the landing area at the top of the stairs can make a big difference. In the evening, when the outside temp has dropped below the inside temperature, turn on the window fans and open a window downstairs. 300 or 400 cfm exhaust fans running for a couple of hours will eventually replace all the hot stale air that has accumulated and replace it with cooler air from outside. Running a fan or two during the hottest part of the afternoon will keep the upstairs from getting to 95 degrees in the first place.

Without using AC to actually cool the inside air, fans alone will not turn the upstairs into a refrigerator, but it will at least freshen the heated air with somewhat cooler albeit potentially humid outside air. Your bedroom AC wont have to work so hard at bedtime to make the final temperature comfortable for sleeping.

Have a look on Amazon to get an idea of what is available and the normal USD dollar costs. Then see if something similar is available at a big ferreteria in Santiago or SD at a comparable cost.

Eg.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_...rds=window+exhaust+fan&ie=UTF8&qid=1465728848

Depending on budget and who owns the house?

Roof tiles would work, or a less expensive option is a white roof paint. You can buy 5 gallon pails at most ferreteria. The more you can keep that temp from rising, the less you have to battle it on the inside.
Forget ceiling fans for fixing your problem, they just mix the air in the room. You need to get rid of the hot air and replace with cooler from downstairs thru shaded windows. In the vaulted ceiling room you could put an in-wall exhaust fan controlled by a thermostat. That would take the hot air out, and you wouldn't be fighting it all the time.
In the other bedrooms, the white roof will help.

https://www.grainger.com/product/CANARM-Delhi-Shutter-Mount-Exhaust-WP5003296/_/N-1z0dw2x?s_pp=false&picUrl=//static.grainger.com/rp/s/is/image/Grainger/32PF37_AW01?$smthumb$

https://www.grainger.com/product/DAYTON-Dayton-Shutter-Mount-Exhaust-WP15687/_/N-1z0dw2x?s_pp=false&picUrl=//static.grainger.com/rp/s/is/image/Grainger/1HLA1_AS02?$smthumb$

If you can reach the roof: place blocks on the roof and put zinc-plates (every plate has 4 blocks) on top of them (with blocks on top to avoid flying away of plates)
The zinc-plates will heat up but the heat will go up and not down to your roof.
Keep this "second roof" open on all sides for ventilation.
Good luck!

btw: when a hurricane comes, remove plates and blocks temporarily...they will fly away!

All very good answers to a very common problem..The answer is ventilation because the hot air is trapped in your room even though you have a vaulted ceiling .. IN Australia ,South Africa and in some Asian countries, they use a product called a whirley bird that extracts all the hot air..You can especially see them in racing stables . They are very easy to install and require no power except a gentle breeze. Better still I think that I saw that there was a place in the north that imported and sold them.I will check .

Can only see them for sale on ebay ..there is also one there with a solar panel attached that boasts extraction of hot air at much higher levels

The term is 'attic fan'.... I have a solar one for our closet.

search - solar attic fans... or gable fans

william webster said:

The term is 'attic fan'.... I have a solar one for our closet.

search - solar attic fans... or gable fans

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Gringonazo said:

Due to some personal, family reasons, we moved into a house in Santo Domingo. It is basically a box-shaped house with two floors. The first floor will get to about 87 degrees at its hottest. But the second floor will get to 93 degrees in the areas with flat ceilings and 97 degrees in the master bedroom where there is a vaulted ceiling. It's so bad that my A/C units are almost worthless, and my wife's makeup is starting to melt.

The flat roof is a gray-ish color and the vaulted roof is an orange color with some black in it. Obviously the color is not helping me with reflecting the heat. What options are there? I would love to cool it down some 5-10 degrees. Is there any hope? I'm a little freaked out. Thanks in advance for your help.

Click to expand...

Your heat gain will almost certainly through the concrete flat roof. I had a similar problem in my ex esposa's house. It could be through sun exposed solid block walls too. It is very significant and like having hot plate over top of you.

To verify, get on a step ladder and feel the heat on the underside of your roof on the ceiling. You will most likely find a few inches of very warm air trapped there.

Reflective roof paint makes a huge difference as a starter and once it is painted keep it clean. Use a decent brand. The next step is to insulate the roof, but consider that after step one.

Ceiling fans are a good idea to create air movement within all living spaces. Windows should be opened to allow air movement too.

They sell here a black fiber mesh [in rools] they use it in viveras [garden houses] Its cheep and lasts a long time [if no huricane] Put up posts with wire on them supend the fiber cloth over them and secure to the wire. It will reduce the temp by at least 15% i have done thas to many homes works well and very cheep.

right ctrob... that's it......

that's your most economical route.

The exhaust fan talk necessitates chopping a hole in your roof.

Many inner city areas (PHL< etc) have painted the old black roofs white to reduce deaths in the summer heat .

Yes, white roof will reduce interior heat

We have a pergola on a flat roof. You could feel the difference in temperature in the room below after the perspex sheets blew off in a storm.
We also have a mezzanine space under a sloped roof where heat does accumulate.
We use a ceiling fan and we're planning to add another window to increase the air circulation.

melphis said:

Ceiling fans. Heat rises so you want to move the air. Also check the AC units to make sure they can cool the area without running continuously.
If they are to small your just wasting money.

Click to expand...

About ceiling fans, yes heat rises, so the solution doesn't seem to be to push the heated air down into the faces of the people below. I have never made peace with ceiling fans at all.
Der Fish

It's all about circulation Derf..... you need to open the windows to allow new , cooler air to circulate.

A ceiling fan is not a member of the window air conditioning family