I have a 2-story apartment with only doors on the first floor. This means that the stairway to the upstairs is wide open and there are no barriers in the upstairs portion of the apartment. The only doors are for the bathroom & the bedroom. See below.
http://ift.tt/1nRJMc3 (side view) http://ift.tt/1LtcV8T (looking down stairs)
After a summer of pretty intense heat from being on the third floor, I would like to air condition the upstairs. The cost of comfort is absolutely worth it.
This would obviously be a temporary fix as it's not needed in the winter but my idea is to seal the top of the stairway off (from the railing to the wall) + provide some sort of "door" to get through when going up/down the stairs. My initial idea after running this by a friend was to use canvas (grew up on boats, seemed reasonable) but I feel this may be too expensive. I am wondering if I could just get away with a plastic of some sort (thinking along the lines of a transparent shower curtain.)
The door is another tough one. I could create a zippered door in the plastic if necessary but open to suggestions.
I'm also open to the possibility of cooling the whole apartment but I want to save costs where I can. I use a 5000 BTU unit that I use in the bedroom that works fine. The upstairs is roughly 350 sq ft (11 ft wide, 32 feet long) so to do so, I'd probably need >15000 BTUs which I'm not keen on. I could probably do away with less, but the proximity from the air conditioner to the last cooled spot (down the stairs, around a corner into hallway) is far and there is a refrigerator in the kitchen portion of the upstairs.
Thanks for any suggestions!
Submitted March 18, 2016 at 12:22AM by snappuccino http://ift.tt/1MpPI24 HomeImprovement
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