Air Flow

Air Flow

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Great Information on How to Solve Air Flow Problems in Your Home

Solving air flow problems in your home

Basic things that the homeowner can check to help air flow:

First and foremost, check your furnace filter to see if it is dirty and if so, remove the dirty filter and install a new furnace filter. Plugged furnace filters restrict air flow by creating a pressure drop. Next, walk around your house to see if any cold air returns have anything such as couches, rugs or cabinets obstructing the vent. If anything is obstructing the vent, then remove these obstructions so that the cold air return, which is an air intake, can draw in enough air. Last, but not least, walk around your home to check to see if all supply registers (heat vents that blows out air) are open. All supply registers should be open. A popular homeowner misnomar, is that by shutting off certain vents throughout the house will cause other vents to blow harder. This simply is not true, because CFM (a measurement of air flow, cubic feet per minute) is determined by the pipes diameter and only so much CFM can ever blow out due to the size of the round, regardless if other registers are shut off or not. Shutting down too many supply registers usually causes more harm than good by creating pressurization problems with the overall duct system, that in an extreme case can actually cause your furnace to short cycle on a high limit and hence increases the cost on your utility bill while working key HVAC components and parts to reduce their life expectancy. Never buy and install heat vent filters either, because these filters really cause pressurization problems too. If there is too much dust blowing out of the vents, then the best thing that you may consider is to have the HVAC system cleaned out thoroughly with the power vacuum/air sweep method in air duct cleaning by an ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors of America) member company. An average price for a 1 furnace home would cost between $400.00-$700.00 to do the job correctly, depending on where you live in the country and depending on the service providers cost to operate.

Some solutions that an HVAC company or contractor may suggest:

Very often in older homes, air ducts are sized incorrectly due to building departments in the past not emphasizing the importance of properly sized air duct construction and the by the fact that the builder wanted to save a buck to construct his own ductwork rather than paying a heating and cooling professional to install the ductwork properly. In recent years, many building departments throughout the United States really have zeroed in on enforcing proper duct design, so in most newer homes indoor thermal comfort has improved drastically. Some of the things that your licensed HVAC company or contractor may suggest to you to drastically help your older homes air flow is as follows:

• Let me tear out all of your ducts and start over! (That would be sweet, however in many instances that is just not practical due to cost, time and a big mess!)
• I can bandaide your homes HVAC system by replacing your old inefficient furnace with a Rheem 80% AFUE 2 stage variable speed furnace equipped with the GE ECM motor. Visit www.luckyduct.net to learn more about the GE ECM motor. The GE ECM motor operates 30-40% more efficiently than a standard conventional multi-speed motor and sustains constant CFM even if your ductwork is undersized and restrictive. What this means is that vents that seem to never blow air with your inefficient old furnace will all of a sudden blow air after the new Rheem furnace equipped with the GE ECM motor is installed. The ECM motor also allows homeowners to qualify for a $50.00 EPACT tax credit that you can receive when you do your taxes, so even the Federal government wants you to go for it!
• For some reason your home does not have enough return air openings to even allow enough air to enter the duct system at all! We need to build additional return air openings into your ductwork so that we can get additional CFM into the HVAC system so that your AC indoor evaporator coil can stop freezing. Good golly, you're paying more money on cooling not to mention the fact that your AC doesn't even keep your house cold enough! Let's fix that and add some new return air openings so that you can save some money on your utility bill and actually cool down this summer too!
• Let's go ahead and rip out the 4" diameter supply runs and install 6" diameter runs so that we can circulate more air into that sun room!
• You know, your ducts amazingly enough are sized correctly, but all of the air is escaping into unfinished portions of the house because the construction of the ductwork is very loose. Let's go ahead and seal up every trunk line connection, brace, joyce and end cap with mastic duct sealant. By sealing up every duct connection on the entire system we'll see if we can blow those curtains side ways afterall! No, just kidding, but the air will come out a touch harder, though as a result in sealing up the ductwork better and you will see a significant reduction in your utility bill because the system will only cycle half as often now.
• You know, for some reason all of your ductwork is sized correctly, but the return leg that is attached to your furnace is severly undersized and is acting like a choke point. Lets rip this leg out and install a bigger one with a greater dimension!
• You know, your homebuilder really got cheap and should have installed 2 seperate systems considering that your home is 3600 Sq/ft. Two smaller systems will actually cost you less on the utility bill to operate and will provide greater comfort. Save up some money and lets build that second system in the attic!
• You know, the most cost effective thing that I can think of that will improve your indoor comfort tremendously is to simply just zone your current system so that 3 different thermostats will control 3 different temperatures in your home. Aprilaire and Honeywell make great zoning systems and we usually can get this system installed from $3800.00-$6,000.00 depending on how fancy of a system you want to have installed!

You see some of these bandaide jobs will cost just a few hundred dollars, while some solutions may cost a few thousand dollars, but in the end after the corrections are made, your utility bill will probably reduce a bunch and you'll finally have true indoor comfort that you didn't have before. Many HVAC companies and or contractors will give you more than one option to consider as well so that no matter what you decide on some sort of indoor air comfort solution will be achieved to atleast improve the comfort situation. The best thing that you can do as a homeowner is to select an ACCA member heating and air conditioning company or contractor to ensure that your comfort specialist has all of the latest and greatest training, tools and professional assistance to best serve you as a customer. In the long term you won't regret it because you will save some money on the utility bill and you will be much more comfortable in your home as a result.

Article By: Mike Meincke

Managing Member

Lucky Duct, LLC

www.luckyduct.net

About the Author

Mike Meincke is the Managing Member of Lucky Duct, LLC which operates a full service heating, ventilation, AC and air duct cleaning company in the Denver metro. Lucky Duct, LLC was founded in 2005 and has quickly attracted some of the most seasoned tenured HVAC technicians to work for Lucky Duct, LLC due to a positive working climate, good hourly pay and full fledge employee benefits that has allowed Lucky Duct, LLC to rapidly grow in the saturated Denver Metro HVAC market. Visit www.luckyduct.net to learn more about why Lucky Duct, LLC has raised the bar in customer service, up to date technician training and quality of service, products and workmanship!

Is there a way to block a permanently installed air conditioner without blocking the air flow?

I'm trying to rearrange my living room in my apartment, and I'd like to put my sofa against a wall that has a permanently installed air conditioner built into it. Is there a way I can do this without affecting the air flow of the air conditioner? Maybe something along the lines of an attachable scoop or something, to redirect the air? Or I don't know, SOMETHING that'll allow me to use that wall for furniture!

You can redirect the air toward to top,bottom, left and right just like you can do it to the air vents in a car if you air conditioner has that feature. But with a house air conditioner the vent area is so large that you'd still be sitting on the couch with cold air flowing right at you.

Air Force retiree marvels at her new hand
Air Force retiree marvels at her new hand

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