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Comment by elil17 | Hacker News Reader

It's not your fault, it's your house's. Modern houses are designed to be mechanically ventilated. Older houses were designed to have better thermal mass and better airflow. I have a friend who lives in an 1800s-era "summer home" (designed specifically for the wealthy to live in during the summer). It is quite comfortable during the summer without the AC on.

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This is a big part of it. Almost anyone who lived in a large house in the past would have "summer rooms" and "winter rooms" - rooms that were more comfortable during those times.

They'd take more to heat because they often leaked, but they were cooler in the summer also.

Now we heat and cool all the rooms, even on those same older houses.

Yep! And that's part of the reason many places probably shouldn't go back to the old way of doing things. Yes, you use more electricity for AC vs. natural ventilation. However, you gain so much efficiency during the winter with better insulation, and heating power use generally exceeds cooling power use above a certain latitude.

Now, there are some indoor air quality drawbacks associated with mechanical ventilation, but new standards around higher rates of fresh air intake and new technologies like energy recovery ventilators (which now even come in ductless options) are fixing that.

The main thing is to know what you have, what the house was designed for, and keep it maintained. Trying to "add" complete house sealing to an existing house without considering things like ventilation leads to sadness.

I'm in the process of updating my home including whole house sealing. Part of it is an air exchange system that brings in outside air and matches that air to the interior temp and humidity before circulating.

I'm not sure if you're talking about an energy recovery ventilator, but if you're not, you should use one for that. It uses selectively permeable membranes to transfer HVAC exhaust heat and humidity to incoming air. They can recover like 85 to 95% of the energy difference between the air streams. They're pretty cheap now too - totally worth it.

Beware of sealing things that weren't intended to be sealed - for example, a crawlspace may have been designed to be ventilated, and sealing above or around it can lead to rot in the cross-members under the floor.

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