Forest fire smoke in Calgary

[jeffporfirio]

Originally Posted by BigNumbers

uhh, I had mine on the whole time... Usually the fan isn't drawing outside air during the AC cycle (mine doesn't) as that would hurt the purposes of AC...like driving on a hot day in traffic with the windows down, you're letting hot air in and then cooling it perpetually if you have an external intake that opens during AC running....

Obviously your Cold air intake next to the furnace may draw a bit more air than it does naturally with the furnace off, but as no combustion is happening in the furnace with the AC on, I just can't see how running the AC the past few days would cause a significant increase in smoke ingress into the house....

Thank you.
Me in my stupidity thought it drew fresh air from the outside.
Suffered in vain.
Again thanks

[Caged Great]

The wind blew more smoke in. The # is actually over 800 now at 3:30 AM, so for those up early tomorrow, be advised that it's going to be bad in the morning.

[BigNumbers]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Same as your furnace, AC's are (generally) just heating air thats already in the house. The inside air is pulled and passed beside either a very hot or very cool heat exchange (furnace vs AC). No law violation needed

Some ACs (window units) will draw air from outside though.

Enviro Can & AB Health recommend no AC and no furnace fans since that will increase the amount of outside air drawn in through the fresh air line in the return venting.

Enviro can is right, but I figure it would be relatively minor amount of fresh air drawn with the AC running on a cycle basis through the day.

I have manual control of my HRV (cold air draw) so I simply turn off the HRV which further minimizes the amount of outside air being drawn through the cold air return.

With that said, if anyone in my house had significant reactions to the smoke outside, I'd not turn on my AC out of an abundance of caution... uckly my wife and kids don't, so I am cool!

[bc-chris]

good news from kelowna guys.... i can see patches of blue sky!!

it's still really smokey but it looks like it's starting to blow away a bit. looking at the air flow maps it looks like whatever hits kelowna tends to hit calgary about a day later

http://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/BSC00WC04/current/

[Locke]

Are you sure? I'm still not seeing it.

[Bobblehead]

I looked at the Environment Canada site this morning, specifically at the Air Quality Monitoring Stations page (link) and thought it a bit strange that Calgary Central was rating a 10+ yet Calgary Northwest was 4. I know there could be differences, but that was a bit extreme.

Then I just saw this:

A spider crawled inside the instrumentation at one of three monitoring stations, causing the machinery to give inaccurately high readings, according to Mandeep Dhaliwal, the air quality program manager with the Calgary Region Airshed Zone (CRAZ).

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...206200?cmp=rss

[Regulator75]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

I looked at the Environment Canada site this morning, specifically at the Air Quality Monitoring Stations page (link) and thought it a bit strange that Calgary Central was rating a 10+ yet Calgary Northwest was 4. I know there could be differences, but that was a bit extreme.

Then I just saw this:


http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgar...206200?cmp=rss

And I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords.

[Tron_fdc]

Originally Posted by Locke

Are you sure? I'm still not seeing it.

You need to check your facebook feed. If I'm ever in doubt about the weather, I just ask look there

[polak]

Alright this is getting old.

[CliffFletcher]

Yeah, this would have been one of the nicest weeks of the summer - of the year - if it wasn't for the smoke. And it's supposed to continue into the weekend. I'm not stressed about breathing the air, it's the lack of sunlight on what should be beautiful, 22-25 degree days that's ticking me off.

[Mazrim]

I woke up at 4 AM with the house reeking of smoke. Closed the windows and it helped a lot. Today seems to be the worst so far for smell.

[Fuzz]

Ya, seams worse today. Looks like rain in the forecast for some of the fire areas, hopefully that will help.

[DoubleK]

I'm so over this smoke nonsense.

[habernac]

I can actually smell it in our office building today, yech.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Just nasty this morning.

[undercoverbrother]

It set off the smoke alarm in my house yesterday.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Is it causing any difficulty breathing? Anyone's pets having trouble? I'm back tomorrow morning but I have no concept of how bad it is.

[Sainters7]

My mom lives out in Vernon and today sent a pic of her and some relatives on a boat, the sky looked completely blue and sunny behind them so it must be on its way out for us soon.

It's been extra annoying this week since it's getting to the end of summer and it should've been a gorgeous week, like 24-27 every day. Such a tease, not many of those kind of days left. Why couldn't it have been next week, with forecasts in the teens?


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[Street Pharmacist]

I'm an hour from Vernon and we're blanketed

[polak]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Is it causing any difficulty breathing? Anyone's pets having trouble? I'm back tomorrow morning but I have no concept of how bad it is.

I'd say it's causing light irritation for healthy people. It's crap though. You can't see the blue in the sky.