Seasonal Vent Controls?


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Old 06-16-22, 04:40 PM
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Seasonal Vent Controls?

Hi, folks,

we recently purchased a split level house (Chicago area) with some major HVAC balance issues. In summer, it’s very cold in the basement and very warm on the upper floor (where the bedrooms are). Ok, sort of par for the course for a split level with a single zone. The upper floors have some very small floor registers as a supply.

However, it appears the house was designed for this. There are additional wall-mounted vents (which appear to be supply vents with dampers) in the bedrooms. Currently these don’t have any appreciable airflow in either direction. I suspect these are designed for seasonal use, but are currently not active

The problem is that I don’t know how to activate these. There’s no obvious switch on the air handler (there’s a dial for a humidifier, but that doesn’t seem to affect the vents.). I don’t see any control rods sticking out of ducts for a damper control, or any obvious sliding panels.






I guess I don’t know what I’m looking for. I’m really hopeful there’s some way to “open” these idle vents and get more cold air in summer. Any ideas on where to look/what to look for?
 
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Old 06-17-22, 12:09 PM
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Not sure what kind of vent/damper control you have, I have an old style of vent with a damper build-in, I have to push it open or close manually.
 
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Old 06-17-22, 04:17 PM
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That humidity control is for, well the humidifier, has nothing to do with dampers.

So you need to do some searching, are there any duct dampers in the basement? They typ have them on each branch leading to each vent in each room. Then you have the grates in each room some are fixed some are adjustable. You need to find all the levers for each room.

Summer you close/throttle down the lower level to push cold air upstairs, winter, the opposite, close upper since heat rises.
 
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Old 06-17-22, 06:59 PM
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Your setup looks a lot like mine. A typical older gas furnace install with added A/C.
That would mean your systems was originally setup for heating.... not cooling.

You need a high return or two in the rooms in the upper floor to remove the heat and bring it down to the air handler. More than likely your returns are low.

With insulated ductwork in your basement.... it will always be colder with the A/C running.
You need to make sure all the supply ductwork is sealed in the basement.
Insulating it would help greatly but is not easy.
The supply joints should all be sealed with metal duct tape or brush on mastic/sealer.

Floor registers are not conducive to good A/C flow.

If you have a system that was installed for heating and A/C..... you would have two sets of wall registers...... one low and one high right above it. You'd change those based on heating or cooling mode.

Attic insulation is critical for effective A/C.
Without that the upper rooms will always be too hot to cool effectively.

Look for handles or wingnuts on the bottom/sides of the large ducts.
My system has two..... one controls the first floor and one controls the seconds floor.
Even with that... the second floor only gets marginally comfortable.
With a second system.... it will always be a compromise.

 
 

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