House temperature

[Kalcium]

I live in a 2 storeys house, in a hot summer day, the temperature on 2nd floor could be as much as 5 degrees more than first floor. And my finished basement is another 5 degrees colder than first floor, is this normal? I don't recall the difference to be this big in my previous house...

[OldFortYork]

Was your previous house surrounded by trees? What is the current home construction? Previous?

[Q-Ball]

Yes this is normal for most people. But it can be hotter on the top floor for many reasons such as, insulation, more sun shining on your roof, lack of roof vents. Myself, I plan on adding some more roof vents to mine to keep the heat out.

[rogerrabbit168]

Yes this is normal for most people. But it can be hotter on the top floor for many reasons such as, insulation, more sun shining on your roof, lack of roof vents. Myself, I plan on adding some more roof vents to mine to keep the heat out.

also different in different rooms, my bedroom is at the back of the house, where most of the sunshine occurs, its damn hot

[Kalcium]

The house I am living in now is 5-year old house. I wonder if it's because this house is facing east...

[CSK'sMom]

If your house is east-west facing... yep this will make a difference. It's the west sun that is the hottest and most intense of the day. As a real life example, our house faces east-west with the front west facing. Our master bedroom is at the front of the house with 2 windows, 2 bedrooms at the back of the house both with windows. Our bedroom can routinely be almost 10 degrees warmer (year round) than the back bedrooms because of the afternoon sun. We don't generally use our AC at all so what I do is to make sure when the sun gets to the front of the house I close the blinds in our room. We always seem to get a good breeze though so just closing the blinds really seems to help to equalize the temperature. On a side not, I do the opposite in the winter to get the solar gain.

[Dustbunny]

Varying temps between floors are pretty normal. What you can do is turn the fan on the furnace on for a while (an hour or so usually does it). That will get the air circulating between the floors. Doing that in the morning (or during the night) can bring that cool basement air up into the rest of the house. The other trick can be opening your attic hatch so the warm air can escape the top floor and go into the attic.