Cool air seepage
pa4ul| Posted inGeneral Questionson
My house is roughly 2 years old. I noticed recently quiet a bit of air coming thru the wall plates and switches only on the inside walls. Is this normal to have cool air seeping from the inside or no?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Search and download construction details
Replies
No, it's not normal.
In some balloon framed houses partition walls were built without top plates, making every stud bay a stack-effect column to the attic, but that went out before 1940- your house is too new.
Does the house have...
...central air conditioning?
...full basement?
...unvented crawlspace foundation?
...vented crawlspace?
...vented attic?
it has central air no basement and a solid concrete foundation. the sofit is perforated at the edges of the house and all the fart fans are direct to outside. All the insulation is blown in also. Ive been up in the attic a few times trying to find the area of seepage but haven't had any luck as of yet. Granted the temps right now being around 100 the attic is a furnace!
If you have central air, and your system uses some of the wall cavities as “ducts”, your system might be either pressurizing or depressurizing the rest of the wall cavities through leaks. That would explain the air movement through switch plates. Does the air movement stop when the HVAC blower is not running?
Bill
IT does stop pushing the air when the system is off.
If the airflow out of the switchplates stops when the HVAC blower is off, then your problem is probably due to duct leakage. Where exactly the ducts are leaking is another issue. If air is blowing OUT of the wall, then your supply duct (pressurized) duct is the issue, assuming your system isn’t somehow depressurizing the interior of the house in some odd way (which I doubt is happening).
My guess is you have ducts leaking in the walls or joist cavities between floors. If they’re in inaccessible locations, then aeroseal might be your only option if you don’t want too open up the walls and/or floors to seal the ducts.
Bill
Does it stop when you have all of the interior doors open? Do you have ducts in the attic?