Wirlybirds

[SteveI]

All of the above is useful - but so is some forced ventilation from in the house to the outside - whether it's into the ceiling space or straight outside.

In a previous home, I installed a reasonably high volume exhaust fan in our bedroom - exhausting into the ceiling..... then had vents to ensure good ventilation out of the ceiling space - the whirlybirds would work well there.

As soon as the temperature outside the house dropped below the inside temp, we would turn the exhaust fan on.

Make sure you close the door and leave the window open - preferably a window across the other side of the room so it is drawing air across your bed.

If it is in a low humidity area, putting the sprinkler on outside the bedroom acts as an evapourative air-cooler.

Generally, we found we had to turn the fan off around 2 or 3am because it was getting too cool. I did play round with a speed control on the fan but I am not sure they like that.

There are commercial varieties of this to cool the whole house - using a 900mm fan running at low speed but they are around $1,000 plus. My exhaust fan cost about $80, and costs peanuts to run.

The only disadvantage was a bit of noise and a gap in the ceiling letting winter heat out.

It had the advantage of cooling the roof space and giving a "breeze" if I was working up there.

[julianx]

Unless the whirly bird has a fan fitted to it in the tube it will provide no more ventilation than a hole in the roof as the only air they remove is via convection. Up until a few fears ago these things never had fans fitted, they worked on the idea that people believe that somthing that moves must be doing more than somthing that is static. A simple round penetration with a bit of bird wire and a chinamans hat on willwork just as effectivly and has no moving parts to break.

[wakamole]

All the above.....Whirly birds, vents in the eaves and gables............and paint the roof...........Going to get around to painting 1/2 the roof at my place with insultec, the racked cieling half..............
http://www.insulpro.com.au
This stuff (insultec) is used widely by BHP, Dept of Defence etc etc etc............It comes in two versions..........The membrane version that they say will last 20 years and the paint version that will last 8-10 years....................For the area i wanted done the price difference was $400 vs $1800..........I'm going for the paint version..........I'll prob sell the place before the paint peels......

Does this stuff work? I just got the really hard sell from insulation superstore to paint the roof at $1200! He couldn't give it an R value (which I bet the council will want) but he claimed "at leat r 4"

[Bleedin Thumb]

Wakamole, I hope you realise that this thread is 2 1/2 years old and Fantapantz hasnt been active sinse Jan 05 not much use asking him a question.

[E. maculata]

Given todays' temperature up here, still very relevant though .