I’ve attached a photo, cause I’ll be darned if I can figure out a way to explain this problem using only words!
We just bought this old farmhouse, and are doing (needless to say) tons of work on it. The downstairs is on its way to looking ok, so the focus in now upstairs. Where, as you’ll see in the photo, there is a small forest of heating ducts sticking straight up. Ok, maybe a slight exageration.
I guess you know, my question is about shortening them to flush with the floor and covering them with a grill, the way “normal” heating ducts end.
But I just thought it best to run this by you fine folks and make sure I wasn’t getting myself into a heap of trouble.
Like, do these heating duct NEED to be that long for some reason?
Am I going to be sorry if I whack them off and make them flush with the floor?
(If you say it’s ok to whack them off, my next post is going to be about how to go about doing so!)
Doug
in our Northeast Indiana Farmhouse
Replies
Ya got me.
They're not air returns? A/C vents?
Since heat rises, injecting heat into a room near the ceiling is counterproductive.
My A/C outlets are near the ceiling(s), and there is a flap on the furnace duct to direct air up or down, depending on the season. Any possibility of that?
Are all of those "heating" ducts?
Are are some of them returns?
In a 2nd story house, specially if you have a big AC load it helps to have at least some of the returns high so are else you will get hot air stagenating at the uppper part of the room.
Also if one of those is supply and the other one a return it ain't doing much good with the vents next to each other.
Looks like the one on the right is a return (no control louvers) and the one on the left is a suypply register.
As others have noted depends on your climate and heating and cooling needs.
I've read that the best of all situations is to supply duct low, return duct low in winter and high in summer