I now highly recommend the idea of a garage exhaust fan for anyone who has an attached garage. Firstly the bad air in the garage (having automobile or not--mine does, and then there are some stored paints and garden chemicals, and more) is kept from infiltrating the house. And in fact the reverse airflow is set in motion, with the house air being exhausted through leaks to the garage (and my garage/house interface is very leaky because of a small room (which is part of house HVAC system) built in part of the garage. Two stones killed with one bird.
For anyone who doesn't already have whole house ventilation especially (and I hadn't). This is a good way to start. Or so it has seemed to me both from prior observation and now a week of actual usage. And in my case there are other good reasons for this. The small room inside the garage also has chemicals (those which need more room temperature storage) and dirty laundry. The dirtiest of laundry (dirty white cloths I use as rags while waiting for their turn at the laundry) is stored in the garage itself.
Also the fact that the prevailing winds come from the SE and my garage is at the SE. Thus the winds tend to force air from the garage, and the small room in the garage, into the rest of the house. This is very undesireable during the fall and winter, when HVAC airflow in the rest of the house is lower, humidity falls below comfortable points, and then the extra load of toxics from the garage becomes all the more obnoxious. In summer, a peculiar alternative airflow used to be set up, wherein hot air rising through the roof ridge vents would draw air through the attic opening in the garage, and automatically provide needed ventilation. In the fall and winter, this desirable ventilation stopped, even reversing, adding noxious smells and particles from the attic to those in the garage that enter the house.
I've long wanted to seal the attic opening, since it is inaccessible anyway (at the boundary of the garage itself and the small room in the garage--and was even originally a crawlspace only to get to center of the attic, as compared with the side house vents which provide virtually walkable access) but feared that sealing it would eliminate the automatic airflow in summertime that makes the air in the house very clear. So I determined that I should only seal the attic opening once I had the electric ventilation fan to replace it.
I purchased the Panasonic FV-08WQ1 fan sometime in 2012, when I had finally decided to act on the house airflow situation. But it was a project that I could just not bring myself to do, I was not sure my analysis was correct, one could argue that this fan would have a worse effect on HVAC efficiency than actual home ventilation, though as I see it could only adversely effect HVAC efficiency IF it were super effective at ventilation, and I need at least some ventilation anyway.
Anyway, I finally called out John Jones to do this project in the last week of September 2013. John and TJ did a wonderful job attaching the Insteon keypad switch I had also purchased for this project last year. I expected the fan might be too noisy to run all the time, but it is actually nearly silent. Perhaps it doesn't even need the switch! I don't know, it probably did need to have some kind of switch, and with the Insteon switch I can program auto restarts (so it doesn't get shut off by accident). And I can use the extra 4 buttons on the Insteon keypad to control other house functions--a cool bonus capability.
This new Insteon capability would be most useful for shutoff controls I would exercise upon exiting the house. But before that, I need to get Insteon control in my house fixed. I finally removed the old Insteon controller (only single band) because it was essentially useless, not even being able to control even the single backdoor light it was intended to control, as well as having the worst by far computer control software ever (the free Smartlink web-based interface). I have recently purchased an updated Insteon controller that is dual band (as they all should have been, the idea of a single band controller is nuts). I think I bought a new program also, but can't remember because I've been so busy I haven't even opened the box I got from Smarthome a couple of months ago.
I though I could tell the difference in smell almost immediately, and it seemed proven by the second day. Dirty laundry smell which had begun permeating the house from the small room in the garage had disappeared, even from the small room in the garage. And now that cool nights have set in, I'm clearly not getting the scratchy throat that used to accompany this--but this is inconclusive as yet because we haven't entered the period of low home humidity yet.
Immediately upon installing the fan, I noticed it was also drawing attic air smell into the garage itself (even though it didn't seem to back up into the rest of the house, except perhaps a tiny bit--I feared and thought I smelled once--in the Queen's room). This was not good for getting out of the car and into the house, and the possibility of attic smell (and toxic particles) entereing the house was not making me feel good.
So I shortly called builder Tom to check out sealing the attic access hole. I was afraid this might required adding the sheetrock panel from the attic side...and thus be very expensive, like major electrical work. But he quoted me a very reasonable price.
So he is here today (October 8) doing this work as I am writing this sentence. (Update: He finished before 6pm and left. The attic opening has been perfectly covered with new drywall (supported with some new wood Tom put up first) and mudded flat. Couldn't be better. The fan surround is now caulked with 50 year DAP ultra caulk, and also the crack at the wall/ceiling boundary in the Queen's room, same caulk.) I'm going to wait until 11pm before restarting fan to allow caulk to cure.
He's also going to caulk around the fan opening (John Jones it would be best for Tom to do that work) and a new ceiling crack in the Queen's Room (which opened up a few months after previous builder Rob remodeled that room).
For anyone who doesn't already have whole house ventilation especially (and I hadn't). This is a good way to start. Or so it has seemed to me both from prior observation and now a week of actual usage. And in my case there are other good reasons for this. The small room inside the garage also has chemicals (those which need more room temperature storage) and dirty laundry. The dirtiest of laundry (dirty white cloths I use as rags while waiting for their turn at the laundry) is stored in the garage itself.
Also the fact that the prevailing winds come from the SE and my garage is at the SE. Thus the winds tend to force air from the garage, and the small room in the garage, into the rest of the house. This is very undesireable during the fall and winter, when HVAC airflow in the rest of the house is lower, humidity falls below comfortable points, and then the extra load of toxics from the garage becomes all the more obnoxious. In summer, a peculiar alternative airflow used to be set up, wherein hot air rising through the roof ridge vents would draw air through the attic opening in the garage, and automatically provide needed ventilation. In the fall and winter, this desirable ventilation stopped, even reversing, adding noxious smells and particles from the attic to those in the garage that enter the house.
I've long wanted to seal the attic opening, since it is inaccessible anyway (at the boundary of the garage itself and the small room in the garage--and was even originally a crawlspace only to get to center of the attic, as compared with the side house vents which provide virtually walkable access) but feared that sealing it would eliminate the automatic airflow in summertime that makes the air in the house very clear. So I determined that I should only seal the attic opening once I had the electric ventilation fan to replace it.
I purchased the Panasonic FV-08WQ1 fan sometime in 2012, when I had finally decided to act on the house airflow situation. But it was a project that I could just not bring myself to do, I was not sure my analysis was correct, one could argue that this fan would have a worse effect on HVAC efficiency than actual home ventilation, though as I see it could only adversely effect HVAC efficiency IF it were super effective at ventilation, and I need at least some ventilation anyway.
Anyway, I finally called out John Jones to do this project in the last week of September 2013. John and TJ did a wonderful job attaching the Insteon keypad switch I had also purchased for this project last year. I expected the fan might be too noisy to run all the time, but it is actually nearly silent. Perhaps it doesn't even need the switch! I don't know, it probably did need to have some kind of switch, and with the Insteon switch I can program auto restarts (so it doesn't get shut off by accident). And I can use the extra 4 buttons on the Insteon keypad to control other house functions--a cool bonus capability.
This new Insteon capability would be most useful for shutoff controls I would exercise upon exiting the house. But before that, I need to get Insteon control in my house fixed. I finally removed the old Insteon controller (only single band) because it was essentially useless, not even being able to control even the single backdoor light it was intended to control, as well as having the worst by far computer control software ever (the free Smartlink web-based interface). I have recently purchased an updated Insteon controller that is dual band (as they all should have been, the idea of a single band controller is nuts). I think I bought a new program also, but can't remember because I've been so busy I haven't even opened the box I got from Smarthome a couple of months ago.
I though I could tell the difference in smell almost immediately, and it seemed proven by the second day. Dirty laundry smell which had begun permeating the house from the small room in the garage had disappeared, even from the small room in the garage. And now that cool nights have set in, I'm clearly not getting the scratchy throat that used to accompany this--but this is inconclusive as yet because we haven't entered the period of low home humidity yet.
Immediately upon installing the fan, I noticed it was also drawing attic air smell into the garage itself (even though it didn't seem to back up into the rest of the house, except perhaps a tiny bit--I feared and thought I smelled once--in the Queen's room). This was not good for getting out of the car and into the house, and the possibility of attic smell (and toxic particles) entereing the house was not making me feel good.
So I shortly called builder Tom to check out sealing the attic access hole. I was afraid this might required adding the sheetrock panel from the attic side...and thus be very expensive, like major electrical work. But he quoted me a very reasonable price.
So he is here today (October 8) doing this work as I am writing this sentence. (Update: He finished before 6pm and left. The attic opening has been perfectly covered with new drywall (supported with some new wood Tom put up first) and mudded flat. Couldn't be better. The fan surround is now caulked with 50 year DAP ultra caulk, and also the crack at the wall/ceiling boundary in the Queen's room, same caulk.) I'm going to wait until 11pm before restarting fan to allow caulk to cure.
He's also going to caulk around the fan opening (John Jones it would be best for Tom to do that work) and a new ceiling crack in the Queen's Room (which opened up a few months after previous builder Rob remodeled that room).
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