No Cold Air Return At Second Floor

It is way too warm in the summer and a little too cold in the winter.

No cold air return at second floor. The basement one should be on the floor not the ceiling of the basement. I have a forced air heating and air conditioning system that performs poorly on the second floor. This is one reason why your first floor is so much cooler than the second floor. It made a huge difference dropping the pressure in the bedroom relative to the hallway from about 6 7 pascals pa to about 1 7 pa.

So your upstairs has a natural tendency to be warmer than lower levels. Air circulation in homes which are older and or in poorly designed newer ones equipped with a central forced air system might be compromised because they do not have an air return port installed on the second floor. In the upper stories of the house the return air duct openings on each floor should be approximately equal to the sum of the hot air outlets. Physics is the challenge here because hot air rises and cold air sinks.

When a furnace comes on heated air is pushed through supply ducts to registers in each heated room in a house. The air flows across the ceiling in the hallway towards a larger cold air return that does extend to the basement furnace. The a c come out cold out of all the 4 bedrooms in the upper floor of the house but the only return vent is in the hallway. Without this second floor return air system the heavy cool air being discharged from the supply ducts in each room can t do its job.

I installed these return air pathways in my condo three years ago and that video shows the one in our guest bedroom where the positive pressure created by the lack of a return air pathway was the worst. In homes with a single central return air grille return air often struggles to find its way back to the furnace the result. During the summer it gets really hot upstairs and i think it is due to no return vents except for the one in the hallway. It doesn t matter how much you run the air conditioning system during the summer that second floor will always stay much hotter than the first.

In the basement to avoid chimney backdrafting the return air duct should be only half as large as the sum of the hot air ducts. You do this and i guarantee you that the second floor is going to be much more comfortable year round. I live in a 1920s masonry row house that has one vent going to each of the three upstairs bedrooms and four vents on the first floor. It often floats along in a layer near the floor.

Room to room pressure imbalances that lead to uneven room temperatures comfort complaints higher energy costs and even moisture problems in walls and ceilings.