Improving Ventilation in a '70s Single-Family House: Cost-Effective, Gravitational Solutions

Hello all
Together with my wife, we moved to a single-family house from the '70s
In part, we are remotting it but at a lower cost because we plan construction in 4-5 years, that's why we don't invest in it too much, but despite the fact that we can "improve" our comfort of living, we will repair it a bit

The situation is as follows - ventilation is a difficult matter at home, so please advise how I can solve the problem with ventilation in this house with the current scheme
I would like to add that I only want to improve the quality of ventilation in the home, not with a lot of money, because we do not intend to invest huge money in the house, and only improve the image and efficiency at a lower cost, which is why I want the installation to be still gravitational

The house has two chimneys - one from the central heating - the boiler room is located in the basement
The second chimney is located in the Room where a free-standing Koza type furnace is connected with external air supply from the west by a duct in a flat floor 150x50mm with a damper - this chimney is divided in half from the base or basement to the outlet

In the kitchen (1) Mushroom
in the bathroom Grzyb
and two rooms also a mushroom

Any exhaust grilles are only two and they are clogged (MARKED IN RED COLOR)

In Room No. 1 No diffuser (plus Chimney with central heating)

In Room No. 2 No diffuser (Mushroom on the walls)

In a room with a free-standing stove Goat - Split stone chimney, a free-standing stove connected to one channel, a second free channel - Air supply to the free-standing stove from the outside (PINK RECTANGLE)

In Kitchen No. 1 No diffuser - fume extraction from the hood takes place via a 100mm pipe outside the building (I have already found such a system) (Mushroom on the ceiling)

In Kitchen No. 2 Nawiewnik Okienny / Exhaust Ventilation Grille / No Ventilation Hood

Bathroom - Provisional exhaust grille, no diffusers - above the bathroom (center of the room) there is a chimney but from the bathroom level no access to it can be seen., Door tight

Hallway just behind the main entrance - a makeshift exhaust grille - no diffusers

The attic is not usable. Cold
New Plastic windows
The house is not insulated

If anyone can advise on a solution, I would be grateful
I attach a drawing of the arrangement of the rooms in the attachment

Baca1988 wrote:

Any exhaust grates are only two and they are clogged

Probably not a problem to unplug them. Mushroom indoors may be the result of not using the house for some time (of course also without heating). Turn on heating to 25 degrees until spring temperatures, often ventilate the room (window) and you should chase the mushroom out.

The problem is complex.
Maybe in a few words how it works.
The problem is steam - but it cannot be avoided because you have to cook, wash, clean and most importantly breathe. In the old system there were stoves and combustion air was drawn in through leaks in window joinery, etc. When you burned in the stoves, the humid air was drawn into the stove and went through the chimney outside the house, fresh and heated inside.
Modernity came, central heating and good woodwork. Now moist air has no way to leave the rooms. There is no ventilation because the windows are tight. In addition, if you have gravitational ventilation and everything is sealed to the maximum, ideally this room air will go anyway because the ventilation ducts will start pulling cold air from above. This is the so-called reverse string. Cold air pounds from the ventilation grille, e.g. in the kitchen. This is because there is no other air circulation except ventilation grilles so people in a fit of genius clog the ventilation grilles because it blows with cold. At first it is ok and even warm, but if it is not well ventilated every day - and it is not ventilated because after the frost outside the room humidity increases in the air. Moisture finds different places. That's why the quilt gets heavier. There are cold and damp things in the wardrobe. In the morning, he puts on cold clothes. If that was not enough, the more humidity in the air, the more difficult such rooms to heat and the need to heat more and more. As it heats up harder and more moisture can accumulate in the air. Such a spiral. This moisture that is in the air usually condenses on the coldest elements in the room - on the glass. Therefore, in the morning it pours out of the windows and there are puddles on the windowsills. You can also see dew drops in the outer corners of the rooms. You probably know all this from an autopsy.
How to fix it?
It all depends on how much money you can spend to solve the problem.
The easiest way is to just regularly ventilate daily - but who saw such a solution in winter ...
At the beginning I suggest buying a moisture meter, because you probably have a thermometer - it will be useful. You probably have 80-90% constantly.
The second solution is a slightly unsealed windows, but this is unlikely to work with this arrangement of rooms. The problem is you don't have any vents. The thing is that the air passes the entire room from the window and it would be best if it went up with a ventilation grille - but it would have to be a ventilation chimney in the middle of the house.




As I drew the arrows, the air from the windows should go through the rooms, take the moist air and remove it with a ventilation grille somewhere under the ceiling in the place of the arrow. Then gravitational ventilation would work properly. The condition is "leaky" windows.
But you also need to heat better and air circulation must be. If someone gets colder and just closes the window somewhere, it can do the reverse draft and go cold with the ventilation grille.

Buying a dehumidifier or a few is another somewhat noisy solution. It is placed indoors, they walk around, condense water into the containers that need to be poured and that's all. The downside is that they cost a little and they also need a little wat. The plus of their use is that they will increase perceptible heat in the rooms and it will be easier to heat them to higher temperatures.

The next level is recuperation, but we will not talk about this solution because of the costs. With an independent approach to the topic, it could be enclosed in several thousand, but a large amount of own work is needed. With a completely uninsulated home, I don't know if there would be any spectacular results.

Thank you for the answer, so in that case, can I bring ventilation in the ceiling that is suspended with insulation?
I could lead ventilation pipes along the chimney to the roof and in an insulated place such as the attic insulate them, but how can I solve it just when the ceiling is hanging?
Cut out the hole in the plasterboard for the ventilation grille - pull out the wool forge into the attic and insert pipes into the holes?

To begin with, I suggest you look at the chimney, because it is an old house and someone could just wall up the ventilation - such "modernization". Maybe you won't have to build anything but unstick.

As for the ceiling, it would be worth to be interested in wool, because it can now be a problem.
How do you get it all protected against moisture?
From below, the wool should be secured with vapor barrier.
If you do not have it sealed, the wool is probably full of moisture and actually does not insulate anything, but only makes the situation worse.

I still suggest buying a moisture meter. Can be with a thermometer.
There are also ones with electronic watches etc. so it will be useful in the future.

You will see your conditions in individual rooms.
I also suggest you do a weathering experience. Maybe not now, but how warm it will be. You put a moisture meter there and open the plant window for half an hour. After that, humidity in the room is expected to drop to 50%. It will be interesting how quickly it reaches 80% after closing the window, but since there is a problem with the fungus rather quickly.
You will then also know how ventilation works by opening a window and how much the window should be open, but it's rather informative if you want to do gravitational ventilation.

As for the chimney itself, it is divided, one free channel to another is connected to a free-standing stove of the goat type
when it comes to warming the ceiling, it is wool itself without a vapor barrier
when it comes to indoor humidity it showed me with 70% windows closed and with open for half an hour it fluctuated 45-52%

I think that it would be the one unused channel in the chimney to insert in the middle of the chimney a flat galvanized ventilation duct and its inlet would be in a room with a free-standing stove, while in the kitchen I could not do it anymore that this free duct will be located behind the wall - I could only use fittings and put into this free duct two separate galvanized ducts one discharge from the living room the second discharge from the kitchen, but how to end it so that when burning in the stove there is no smoke backflow into the ventilation ducts?

As for wool, it suggests somehow to look at what is happening there. It may be ok, but the lack of isolation from steam will make itself felt over time.

With this humidity is a classic in the absence of ventilation in the home. The only plus that can be out of it is that on hot summers it is cooler in such homes - but it probably doesn't make up for the disadvantages.

How quickly did humidity return to 70%?

When it comes to this free ventilation duct, I once saw on the network a solution in which there were two grilles (for ventilation of two rooms at the same time), but not straight through, only one was slightly lower. I don't know how it works but you could try it that way.

I think the idea of inserting a contribution to the chimney is unsuccessful.
The stove will draw frosty air from above in winter. It is better to slightly open / unseal the window when lighting up when the stove draws the most air. Later, when it lights up, you turn the stove on and there is no such draft.

There should be no backfalls when you have room airflow. As you seal everything, the stove will draw in air with smoke from above through ventilation.

Or maybe you can use this channel and do ventilation in both kitchens. With outlets higher / lower. You produce the most moisture in kitchens.

I was thinking about breaking the ceiling and making the channels through the wool straight up.
This can be problematic - with poor insulation of channels in the attic. The steam will condense on the vertical walls of the channel and flow straight down into the room. The outlets will flood the water, the wool will wet, there will be mushrooms at the outlets.

crap, I didn't know it would be such a problem with this ventilation
As far as this ventilation is concerned, it won't work for me, if in the living room I can make a grille, then in the kitchen this ventilation duct is already behind the wall, or how to put it the wall of the chimney is as if divided by the kitchen partition wall, which in the middle of this chimney divides the channels, in the room the partition wall goes from the end of the chimney wall
in the picture I showed how it goes (light gray is the chimney wall) (dark gray is the kitchen partition wall) (red is the channel in the chimney to which the free-standing oven is connected on the other side) (yellow is the free channel behind the kitchen partition wall)

To the furnace on the other side I have a fresh air supply duct with a shaft in the floor

The windows have plastic, the door left gaps between the floor and the door about 1cm

Ventilation is a big problem. Every year in the heating season there are carbon monoxide victims, and this involves ventilation.

If you look at the phenomenon objectively, then for gravitational ventilation to work well you need to specifically smoke / heat the house. Without it, the strings reverse, moisture appears, and the further scenario I described above.

Gravitational ventilation is actually not controllable - this is confirmed by the grilles glued to the owners in winter. In the summer it works so or does not work.

I will not tell you how to solve her problem, because I have not found a good solution. This season I plan to give it up and set up a mechanical one. The windows will be tight, the heat will not go into the chimney.

idepopizze wrote:

The windows will be tight, the heat will not go into the chimney.

Theorizes.
Can you say how do you want to provide fresh air in your apartment during the winter season?
The only way is from the outside. So some of the heated (used) air must go into the chimney.

@brofran
Read yourself how the recuperator works

I found an alternative, maybe to rooms where there is no access to ventilation ducts
I'm talking about the Duo Marley system, has anyone met this device yet?
I wonder if to this set in the kitchen is it possible to connect two devices to this system, i.e. a hood and, for example, an exhaust fan?
From what I read, it is possible to release it directly through the wall outside, but how will the condensation work on water drops? Maybe it is an alternative for people who have problems with steam evacuation in the kitchen or do not have ventilation ducts

I looked at this Duo Marley system.
In my opinion, it is an alternative to a hole in the wall to lead the hood outside. This may make sense if you have a gas stove then there will be no danger that the vacuum will extinguish a weak flame. I would not see it as an alternative to ventilation, because with such a hole in the wall and with a fan you will not sit long in the kitchen in the winter.

A wall recuperator could be an alternative. Except that one such costs around 1500 PLN and it is a solution for one room. It works so that a few / several minutes fresh air blows into the room and then blows it out. Some ventilation is (near this dandelion) but if it ventilates the whole room, I don't know.