My apartment gets very hot during the day. The temperatures inside the
apartment are almost always way above the temperatures outside. I have
fans going all day with the front door open and a window in the back
open. That helps, but it's still very much hotter inside than out.
I'm quite certain there is nothing in my apartment that could be the
source of all that heat. I am living on the top floor of a 3 floor
apartment building. The roof is completely flat. My working theory is
that the sun heats up the roof and that heats up my apartment. My
floors are much cooler than my ceilings, so I'm fairly certain this is
the case.
However, heat rises, so it may well be that the heat from the
apartment heats my ceiling and not the other way around.
My plan is to put up some sort of structure in my bedroom that I can
use to cover the ceiling with insulation. Is this a good idea? Is
there any way to tell if the ceiling is heating my apartment or the
other way around? (before going to all the effort to put up the
structure)
I don't want to damage the walls or ceiling, so I can't just staple
the insulation to the ceiling. Insulation is presumably very light, so
I plan on putting perhaps 4 metal bars across, a few inches below the
ceiling. Those would be screwed into the walls. Then I would put some
metal mesh across all the bars. Then I would unroll the insulation and
put it on top of that.
I want to know if this is a good plan. Is there any fire risk? I
assume insulation is nonflammable, but I've never put it up, so I
don't know. Also, if this works then the ceiling will presumably get
much hotter because the heat won't disburse throughout the room.
Do you have an recommendations for what the 4 metal bars would be? I
was thinking of using the extendable metal bars that are used to hang
up curtains. (the ones that usually come with venetian blinds)
I've seen rolls of metal mesh at Home Depot, so those should work fine.
As long as the mesh is light and the insulation is light then the 4
metal bars should be capable of supporting it all.
The bedroom is 12ft by 12ft with 8ft ceilings. |
Clarification of Question by
mxnmatch-ga
on
07 Sep 2004 20:03 PDT
My apartment isn't air conditioned. I did install an air conditioner
in the front window, but found that it wasn't able to cool the room.
Even if it was, it's kind of silly to use it when the air outside is
already significantly cooler than the air inside. But, fans just don't
seem to do a good enough job. That's why I thought about using
insulation.
The apartment has one bedroom, one bathroom, and the main room. The
front door and two windows are in the main room pointing
north-northeast. There is one window in the bathroom and two windows
in the bedroom, all of which point south-southwest.
I have all windows completely covered up. In the front I have the
windows covered with 2ftx4ft hardboard. In my bedroom the windows are
covered up with some latex that is white on the outward side and black
on the side inside the apartment.
Would a sprinkler on the roof work? The roof of the building is flat
and covered with that gravel stuff that flat roofs often have. I could
ask the apartment manager to do that, but I suspect he might think
there was potential for water damage. Then again, it is a roof and is
supposed to stand up to rain, so maybe not. Also, I live in California
(near San Francisco), so I suspect he might not want to pay the added
cost of irrigating the roof all day every day. But, I can still ask.
I'll look into the ceiling systems, but I don't think this should cost
me thousands of dollars. My original idea wouldn't look pretty, but it
would probably be relatively inexpensive. Are there ceiling systems
that cost only a few hundred dollars for a 12ft by 12ft room?
|
