Basement ventilation device - just about complex
Even when designing a building, you should think about the ventilation of the basement, make the necessary calculations, proceeding from the fact that the air exchange should be equal to one volume of the basement per hour. The question is actually more serious than it may seem at first glance. The basement ventilation device is not so complicated and can be performed in one of two ways: natural ventilation and naturally-forced ventilation.
Natural ventilation of the basement of the private house is due to the difference in temperatures inside the cellar and outside. The arrangement is reduced to the laying of two pipes:
- the exhaust pipe runs vertically along the basement corner, with its lower end located at a height of about 150 cm above the basement floor level, while the upper end protrudes 50 cm above the ridge of the building roof.
- the supply pipe is laid in the opposite corner, and one of its ends should be above the basement floor at a height of 45-65 cm, and the other, passing through the ceiling, is released through the wall of the building at a height of up to 100 cm above the floor level.
It should be noted that ventilation of basements can be significantly improved by additional draft in the exhaust pipe, which appears if the pipe is located next to a warm chimney.
Natural basement ventilation system
The basement ventilation system provides pipe equipment with valves that allow you to adjust the speed of the air flow or even completely block it in a strong frost. To avoid condensation, the pipes must be insulated with any thermal insulation material.
The easiest way to do this is by placing them in pipes of a wider diameter, and fill the free space with, for example, mineral wool.
When equipping natural ventilation to create the optimal airflow, calculate the ventilation of the basement, which in its most elementary form reduces to determining the diameter of the pipes. One square meter of floor requires 26 cm2 of pipe cross-section. Knowing this, based on the school course of mathematics, there is no difficulty in determining the diameter of the pipes.
For example, with a floor area of 8 m2, the diameter of the pipes should be 16 cm. The ventilation scheme of the cellar naturally works only if there is a difference in internal and external temperatures. The movement of air stops completely when these temperatures are approximately equalized.
Create forced air exchange
In case of impossibility of natural air exchange, compulsory ventilation of the cellar comes to the rescue, where the extract is no longer due to natural conditions, but through the fan built into the exhaust pipe. More precisely, we now mentioned the topic of how to make ventilation in the basement combined, i.e.such ventilation, which will be included as mandatory only as needed, and the rest of the time will work as natural.
It is possible to completely make ventilation forced by installing both exhaust and supply fans. But for this it is necessary to perform rather complicated calculations to reconcile their capacities and determine the pipe diameters. Pipes with ventilation equipment can be used any: asbestos-cement, plastic, metal or special air ducts.
There are several proven techniques for increasing the intensity of ventilation:
- lengthening the exhaust pipe;
- increase in diameters of both pipes;
- the location of the pipes at as far as possible from each other.