Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - basement is cool..so dumb ?

My basement is around 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house in the summer. Okay, so then why can't I use that air to cool the rest of the house? Does anybody do that? I live in Ohio so on a typical 85 degree summer day I could handle if it only balanced out to be 80 in the house. Heck, with the AC on we keep the house at 80. My basement is mitigated, so I don't think radon would be a problem. Obviously the basement air is more moist so I might need a dehumidifier. Just curious if that would be effiecent or not and if so, how would I do that. If I just left the AC fan on would that have the same effect? I've heard that if you do that you'll wear out your fan quickly. Thanks !

I had a friend that ran a 20" portable box fan at the top of his basement stairs to cool his kitchen. I doubt that you could cool your whole house. I think you'd want to make sure the air was dehumidified and the basement is clean. No offense, but I think all our basements to some extent suffer from moisture, mildew, dust, bugs, etc.

Hello mwolf, I do that very thing here. And yes, it does get very hot and humid in Maine in the summertime. As far as the value of doing it, I find it has a limited effect. It does cool for a while but after you brought up a certain amount of air from the basement it doesn't seem to have the effect it did at the start. I feel that if I had a whole house exhaust fan in the attic I would get a better effect, ( another DIY job for a later date)......I have forced hot air so all I do is put the blower switch on manual and remove the cover from the blower intake housing and let it go. Give it a try, what have you got to lose?