What specifics will I need to collect to figure out if our furnace and A/C are sucking too much at the source/intake?
I don't know the proper terminology for these things, do forgive me for any errors here. We are in a 1,000 sq ft home. The air intake for the furnace and A/C is in our hallway near our bathroom and two bedroom doors. Any time the thermostat turns on, any doors that are within a foot or so of being closed are sucked closed, hard.
Is there a way to determine if our furnace and A/C are sucking more in than it should? Is there even a way to turn the volume of air down somehow?
Also, most likely contributing to quite a bit of our home energy cost is a whole house attic fantasy we no longer use mounted in the hallway right next to the furnace and A/C intake. Is it a problem having this whole house fan still installed?
The louvers don't actually open and close when the thermostat turns on, but I'm sure it sucks some air from the attic.
Best Answer
This is common in HVAC systems with a single central return. My system does this too. It's simply the nature of a central-return system. The only practical way around it is to have a balanced system with per-room returns sized the same as the supply registers on those rooms.
There are a couple of things you can do about it. One is to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars necessary to re-do your house's return ducting to put a dedicated return in every room. Another thing that might help is to replace your doors with heavier ones on less-well-lubricated hinges. Or you could just keep the doors wide open.
As for the whole-house fan, remove it, seal up the hole, drywall the ceiling, and pile insulation over the top to the level of the rest of the insulation on your attic floor.