very novice - ceiling vent too small for standard covers

Hi all,

I'm very novice about duct work. I don't know proper terms, please excuse the extreme ignorance!

We just bought an 80's house, the previous owners put in a basement bedroom. In it's ceiling, there's a vent whose inner duct frame is 3.25" by 8". This is too small for normal vents so they had just screwed a simple return vent over the hole.

I'm wondering, since I can't find any proper vent cover around 3x8 (smallest I can find is either 3x10 or 4x8), is it because it's not to code? Are we on the brink of death? Do I need to tear out the ... "metal bendy-down hole" part of the duct and put a new normal sized "bendy-down hole" part? (I would of course research and youtube and call dads like mad, maybe even learn some of words before attempting!).....

The basement bedroom is only 10'x10'. Our end goal is to be able to close the vent because it gets crazy warm in there already. I can't seem to find vent covers that can close that don't need to slide into the ... metal bendy-down hole part... omg..

The cheapy hack solution is to keep the return register over the hole and use a magnetic cover, but this being our first house, I was really hoping to move away from hacking everything like one does when renting! Is there a non hack solution that is maybe suitable for a beginner?

skill level: we can cut drywall and install electrical boxes and put in light switches and ceiling lights and patch the drywall after. We just don't know anything about duct work.

Thanks for any advice, and sorry again for the total noobness.

 

Chances are they ran a smaller duct because of the space they had to squeeze it in. It will not kill you! Only reason to consider changing it out would be if it's not delivering sufficient air, but it sounds like that is not a problem.

As for being able to shut it off, at least partially, if you trace the duct back toward the main duct, there may (should) be a damper that you can partially close. It will look like a small metal handle on the side of the duct. When the handle is aligned with the duct, the damper is fully open. when it's at right angle, it's fully closed.

BTW, at least in my area, the bendy-down hole thing is called a register boot.

 

ooooooo iiiiinteresting! i'll take a look tonight and hunt around the furnace room. The bedroom is really close to it, and we can see partially into the ceiling for that room from the furnace room so this does sound promising! Thank you for the kindly response!

 

Just to update what we did for googlers. We found something called a "hit and miss vent" which seems more common in the UK? Had to buy off ebay. It's totally flush both front and back, and the face just slides sideways to reveal holes, and slides back to close off holes:

https://www.google.ca/search?q=hit+a...w=1127&bih=890

http://www.hardwareireland.ie/js/plu...les/241175.jpg

https://www.amazon.ca/ADJUSTABLE-VEN...+and+miss+vent

Just make sure whatever size you get, it's at least a few inches bigger. You have to screw in 4 screws into the ceiling around the vent hole, and the cover has those big-hole-to-small-hole holes to hold it up there, like picture frames and clocks. But that big-to-small hole is about a half inch in from the edges to accommodate the sliding action.

Hope this helps someone!


ps we didn't find a way to shut off that portion of the vent tracing back to the furnace, no damper sadly. So this worked perfectly, other than the slow shipping from overseas