Plano Heating Repair Company offers tips to improve home comfort.

Plano Heating Repair Company owner Steve Lauten, President of Total Air and Heat, offers some simple tips to help improve the comfort of your home or office.

This is the 2nd part of a series of articles that I am writing which covers issues that impact your comfort level in your home or office.  In addition, I will address ways to reduce your cooling and heating bills, and extend the life of your HVAC system.

In this article I will be discussing grill placement, and properly locating supply and return grills which is an absolute must in order to be comfortable.  Unfortunately, grill location is typically dictated by what is cheapest to install in residential and light commercial new construction jobs.
What are the issues with grill location?

According to the studies done by the EPA/DOE, Utility Companies, and many universities, 70% or more of all residential air conditioning systems have inadequate or improper airflow.   Listed below are my recommendations for achieving the best comfort levels by using proper grill placement and the proper grill type:

Supply Grill locations:

• The best place to locate supply grills is where the heat loss or heat gain is occurring.  This is typically outside walls and windows.
• I recommend that supply grills be located near the exterior of a room in a manner that allows them to “wash” the walls with airflow. The goal is to place the air conditioned or heated air around the perimeter of the structure.
• I do not recommend that supply grills be placed in a manner that causes the air to blow on the occupants of the structure. In some cases the air is cool enough or warm enough to cause people to feel uncomfortable.
• Most supply grills are located by what is cheapest to install and not by what will work best.

Return Grill locations:

• My philosophy has always been: If you get enough supply air to a room and provide a path for the return to make it back to the system, then the actual location of a return grill is not critical.
• However, I do feel that return air is necessary in all bedrooms, or any room where the doors can be closed since it blocks the path for return air to make it back to the system.
• Many homes do not have dedicated return air openings in the bedrooms.  These rooms are typically comfortable until the doors are shut to the room.  In order to fix this problem, a return air opening is necessary.

Types of Supply Grills to use:

• Another factor for ensuring comfort is the choice of proper supply grills. This is another area where costs are cut during construction.
• The typical supply grill that is used is a stamped face non-adjustable grill.  I recommend that as a minimum, a fixed curved blade grill should be used.
• An even better choice would be an adjustable curved blade grill.  The reason why curved blade grills work better is because the “curved blades” throw the air across the room more efficiently and with less airflow restriction.

Types of Return Grills to use:

• The types of return grills used are typically stamped face.  As long as enough return air capacity is designed into the system, the types of grills used are not significant as long as they are not too restrictive.
• The bigger issue is that many homes do not have enough return air capacity.  The most common issues are either that the return air duct(s) are sized too small, or that the chase itself is too small.
• Many homes use wall cavities to pull return air through.  That’s fine, however, most of these chases are sheet rock and not sealed, which means that they might have wiring or plumbing running through them, causing further restrictions and another area to allow unconditioned air to leak into the chases.

In summary, supply grill locations are critical to the comfort and efficiency of the air conditioning and heating systems.   Each room that has doors which close the room off from the main system need to have a dedicated return opening inside the room.

Plano Heating Repair Company owner Steve Lauten is President of Total Air & Heat Co. located in Plano, TX.  Steve can be reached at 972-535-8066 or by email at sales@totalair.com.  Total Air & Heat Co. has been serving the North Dallas/Collin County area since 1957 and has been voted the “Best Heat and Air Contractor in Collin County” 14 times by the readers of Star Community Newspapers.