Heating and air ducting question
Floorman
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
My new house has two heating systems. The one that controls the bedrooms only pushes volumes of air through the master bedroom and upstairs bedroom (both on one side of the house) and no detectable air comming out of the other two bedrooms on the other side of the house. The vents in those two rooms get warm, but no air flow. What are the possibilities? GW
Replies
Not near enough details... but is the ductwork sized and balanced correctly?
Air likes to take the path of least resistance. If you block off the registers that serve the master bedroom, does the airflow increase in the other rooms? The air is going to come out somewhere. Use your ears and your hands to see if you can detect any leakes in basement areas crawls or attic spaces. look for closed balancing dampers. situations like this usually just require a little damper adjustment and a role of duct tape.
I've got the H&A guys comming out Wednesday. When I close off the vents to the Master and the upstairs, it starts to come out of the other two bedrooms. But the vents that I close off are really screaming. A lady at the H/A company said that there is an adjustment in each duct to adjust the amount of flow to each vent. I guess I will find that out then. I will let you guys know Wed. night how it turned out. GW
When you said that the air was really screaming trying to get out of the closed off regisers, it sounds like a restriction in the ducts going to the other bedrooms. Most duct systems have volume dampers where the individual ducts that split off of the furnace and head to each room. If the handles on these dampers are not bent, they are parallel with the duct when they are opened (like a ball or gas valve handle).If you go to the furnace and look for where the ductwork splits up, you might find the dampers and swing them opened.
One question. Is this house on a concrete slab? I've seen situations where the ducts running through the slab were crushed during the pour and restricted the airflow. It's a frustrating situation that requires a jackhammer to solve.
One other point - Greg lives in Southern California - where the HVAC guys believe only one cold air return is all that's necessary for the entire house.
I fought like heck with my HVAC people to install more returns. They acted like I wanted their old ladies and charged me twice what the job was worth. Even then, they screwed up the ductwork, I believe purposefully.