I moved into my house not too long ago, and I'm trying to adjust my balancing dampers to "winter" settings. The house has two floors, and there is a damper on the duct going from the garage unit (heat pump) to the first floor, but I can't find one on the duct going to the second floor. The first-floor one is in the garage and very close to the unit. I've looked all up, down, and around the duct that's going upstairs, and there isn't a damper lever. I've also gone up into the attic to look, but the ductwork up there is all insulated.

Is it possible that my system only has a damper on the downstairs duct? Is it possible that the upstairs one is in the attic but covered up by the insulation?

Thanks!

EDIT: Obviously, both of these things are POSSIBLE. What I'm really asking is are they normal?

 

Welcome to the forums.

Possible..... you bet. Some installations are done with no dampers.

The first floor gets the bulk of the air since it's closest to the air handler so it's good there is a damper there. In most applications you just need to throttle the first floor delivery.

If you can't find a main damper to the second floor then you'll need to close individual registers down slightly.

 

Thanks for the quick response. When you say individual dampers, do you mean the floor/ceiling vents in individual rooms? I thought it was bad to close those off?

Or do you mean dampers farther along the ductwork? If so, I don't see any (unless, again, they're hiding behind insulation).

 

Sorry.... I corrected my error. Registers.... not dampers.

You can't close them off completely but you can close them some. Closing each one slightly would be the same as closing the main damper to that floor.

 

Great, I'll give that a try. Thanks a lot for your help!