Within all of the different cases, challenges and construction situations not favorable for the wellness and comfort of the people from the household, it can be mentioned one of the most common cases, how to ventilate a room without windows. The previously mentioned subject can be caused by multiple reasons that goes from design errors, space availability or inadequate perimetral distribution of the room.
For this issue we present one of the most viable and affordable solutions available on the market and that’s the installment of a ventilator, which takes care of entering fresh air from the outside into the room constantly. Besides the ventilator, it’s also convenient to install an extractor strategically in another part of the room, as long as the conditions allows it (if the air that is meant to be extracted doesn’t stay confined when exiting). In summary, the objective of the ventilator is to introduce an air flow from the exterior into the room and the extractor’s purpose is to expulse said air flow to the exterior creating a constant air flow that gets renewed every time.
This system is based on the basic principle of natural ventilation that comes into action according to the design of the building, taking advantage of the natural air flow given to the building’s geographical location. As an example of what was previously mentioned: If we’re going to build an edification, we should place it in a way that if the air flow goes from North to South, the front has to be facing the North and the back has to face the South. This takes advantage of the natural air flow to ventilate the whole building.
How to install the ventilation – extraction system
Taking into consideration that our main objective is to create an air flow that goes in and out to the exterior, the first thing that we need is a ventilator and an extractor. The tools needed for this type of installment would be a jig saw, measuring tape, industrial diamond tip drill (this tool would be used in case of having masonry, brick or cement walls), a pencil, multiple screwdrivers, anchors, screws and a hammer.
- First thing that we need to keep in mind is that both the ventilator and the extractor need to be located near an electricity source because it will be needed to power said devices.
- Verify the installation directions from each device according to the manufacturer. Normally a measurement for the perforation is needed, said perforation is typically spherical and then we proceed to place the stencil that has the indications on where to drill for the fixation of the device and the passing hole that will allow the air flow.
- Once the measurements are made, we proceed to drill. In case of having cast walls that are hollow at the same time, we use the jig saw and the drill to make the outline of the hole to both faces of the wall. In case that we have masonry walls, we will use the diamond tip drill. The drill gets anchored to the wall with a mobile base that gets leveled to make the perforation completely horizontal, and then we add a cooling system that moistens the tip of the drill with water and manually we move the drill forward to get the passing perforation on the wall. It is important to utilize a drill tip with an adequate tip size for the ventilator and extractor. Besides that, we need to generate the perforation for the fixation of the devices, for that we use anchors for lightweight walls or masonry according to the case.
- For both the ventilator and the extractor, first we fixate the exterior part of the device following carefully the instruction from the manufacturer, place the inlet and outlet pipe attaching it correctly to the base that was fixated to the wall previously and then install the interior part of the device on the interior part of the wall.
- At this point to continue with our project on how to ventilate a room without windows, we need to work with the electric connections. These need to be done according to the manufacturer instructions as well, usually the devices are fed with an alternating current and the connection goes to a switch that allows the shutting on and off of the device, besides that, in the case of the ventilator we also have various speed options to choose from.
- Lastly in the installation process, we place the interior lid of the ventilator and the extractor, we connect both equipment to a power source and get the whole system to work. It´s important to keep in mind the decibels that these devices generate because in some situations they generate a buzzing noise.
Type of installation according to the climate
It´s important to mention that according to the climate of the region where these ventilating systems are installed, there can be used different type of devices. The previous case, where we explained how to ventilate a room without windows applies for a tropical climate without many temperature changes or where the temperature is consistent. But other type of conditions exists such as zones with extremely hot and cold weathers where it’s needed to install a different type of system. This system consists of the bioclimatization that takes advantage of the heat of the subsoil in cold seasons and when hot seasons come in it takes advantage of low temperatures from the subsoil.
The bioclimatization consists of making an air flow circulate from the exterior because of a series of pipes that are buried in a minimum depth of three feet, this current is made to enter the room because of a set of turbines that suck the air from the exterior and it gets distributed throughout the whole building.
As conclusion of our investigation we can recommend two highly efficient ventilating systems to learn how to ventilate a room without windows. It all depends of the climate that predominates in the zone where the building is located. The first system works with the basic principle of natural ventilation, which consists of creating an air flow with two devices on a simple way, these devices are the ventilator and extractor installed in opposite directions of the room. This creates a constant air flow and reduces co2 levels of the room. The other system uses the bioclimatization principle and it’s used in zones where climate changes are very abrupt. This takes advantage of the heat from the subsoil in cold weathers and vice versa when in hot weathers.
