We have an older 2 level home where the lower level is a walkout basement. Stairs connect the two levels, each is about 900 sq/ft. We have a Carrier furnace plus a heat pump for HVAC. This system heats/cools our entire house… sort of. It blows “cold heat” in the winter, never quite warming if it’s actually cold outside, and coolish air in the summer, never quite cooling if it’s actually hot outside. Maybe this is normal but it seems ridiculous. That aside, we’ve got a single return on each floor, in the middle of the house. AND those returns are stacked… the main level return is in the floor directly on top of the lower level return in the ceiling. Whether this is good design or bad, it also has the strange effect of zero sound insulation in our home. There’s basically a hole going straight thru between floors. My questions is: how can the return issue be fixed/changed to eliminate the sound issue and improve hvac performance? Thank you!
How to fix/improve a shared return between floors
hvac
Related Solutions
If you're not too concerned about aesthetics, you can use some flexible duct (or dryer duct) and a couple boots.
Use some foil HVAC tape to connect one boot to the duct on the ceiling, and then put the other boot on the ground, and use foil tape to connect the boots to the flex duct.
You can get boots that are straight, 45, 90 degrees, and horizontal or vertical, and many sizes -- the box stores all have lots to choose from.
You can also stick a grill on the bottom, just to make it look a very slight amount nicer.
Have you tried placing a clean fresh filter? Probably, but I have to ask. The real problem is the blower isn't well balanced and other issues exacerbate it. I've not heard of anyone balancing blowers, but I don't know everything.
Another possible issue is the blower anchorage is loose. Some are mounted through resilient mounts. The rubber may have perished, fresh mounts could help solve the problem.
An under sized duct system could be a contributing factor, addressing that would be quite expensive. Be sure all your registers are fully open. There may also be balancing dampers in the ducts, you shouldn't mess with those unless they look almost fully shut. Or it could be the blower is over sized and you do not need that much volume.
Sometimes the speed can be adjusted. If it's truly over sized, you may get by with only medium speed. Depending on your system, an inappropriately low fan speed can be dangerous. Be sure a qualified technician is making the decision to lower the speed.
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Best Answer
Your heat pump is not operating efficiently - how old is the unit - has it always done this ...
What is sounds like is that your reversing valves might be defective or most likely the unit is low on Freon - have you had the unit serviced to make sure it is up to snuff? Also in winter the colder the temp outside the worse the heat pump will work. When temps are below 32 F - Aux Heat is best..
As for the hollow noise - the cheap route was done to build the house - you would need to do a dual duct system to get rid of that - perhaps you can split the duct into two halves and feed to the Air Handler ending up as one at the air handler .