A staircase can do a lot for the overall look and feel of your home, but there are also some challenges that come along with having a staircase. The biggest challenge involves managing the heat circulation in your home. When air warms up, it expands and becomes less dense. This causes the hot air in your home to rise up to the highest point possible, typically the second or third floor of your home.
As hot air rises in your home, it will often use your staircase to make it up to the second floor, which can be problematic depending on the season. In the summertime, hot air rising can make it unbearable in the upper levels of your home. In the wintertime, however, you might not mind hot air making its way up your steps and closer to your sleeping quarters at night. By understanding how this process works, you can maximize the heat circulation in your home to keep you comfortable all year round.
Trap heat downstairs
If you want an even distribution of heat in your two-story home, you can strategically place electric radiators in your downstairs hallway and upstairs landing. These are two hot spots in your home that, when heated up together, act as a force field that will trap ground heat from rising and the temperature of your downstairs will stabilize.
Or trap heat upstairs
If you want the hot air from your home to remain upstairs, as many homeowners would like during the colder months, you can get inventive with your staircase by adding a door at the bottom. This will prevent the heat from escaping. Some homeowners will use a blanket or sheet to block off the entry point to the stairs as well.
Use ceiling fans
The simplest way to stop hot air from gathering in your home at any time of the year is to install a ceiling fan at the top of your steps. When the ceiling fan is on, it will push hot air down and prevent it from gathering at the top of your steps and on the second level of your home. It also helps if you open the upstairs windows while doing this to evenly distribute the heat. For the wintertime, you can reverse the spin of the blades so that the warm air is pushed upwards into the second floor of your home.
Improve ventilation
You can also limit the amount of hot air that sits in the upper levels of your home by creating positive ventilation upstairs. You can do this by shutting the windows upstairs as well as your cooling vents downstairs, and then turning your air conditioning system on. This will blow cold air into your second or third story and push the hot air to other parts of your home. Additionally, if circulation is important to your home’s health then an open riser stair is a great solution.
Regardless of how you choose to deal with the thermodynamics of your staircase, you should know that there are solutions for doing it. Acadia Stairs can not only manufacture a brand new staircase in your home, but we can also discuss ways to increase the heat circulation in your home, regardless of which kind of staircase you choose. Call us at 845-765-8600 today to check out the staircases we can design for you.
