denverpilot
Tied Down
Since there's always an amazing depth of knowledge here...
Most folks here know that when my dad passed we found ourselves liking his little retirement home out on the prairie and moved in a couple years ago.
Dad bought the place as a repo. It sat empty for at least two years, maybe three. (Mentioning because maybe critters...?)
House is a manufactured home on top of a large basement. Which means the original propane furnace was a hallway furnace in the upstairs hallway. Noisy, not up to the task, etc. We found handwritten notes from Dad where (since he was retired) he had time to shop around for a bigger closet furnace with better blower, etc. But he never got it installed. The hint was that he was also having an airflow problem of low flow at various registers.
Recently we decided to talk to residential HVAC companies about how best to upgrade. A few wouldn't touch it because "we don't do closet furnaces".
Nothing was off the table. Tear out and move furnace to basement utility area including ripping out the basement ceilings to run ductwork, etc. Whatever. We're going to be here a while.
For info, there's also a good newish 3 ton Trane A/C outside that probably has a bad capacitor on the blower motor or a dead motor. (Watched 6PCs thread with interest.) We haven't used it since we moved in, there's only about a month of hot summer weather where it's hot enough to worry about it. Eventually we'll repair it. It's disabled.
Small local HVAC company owner stopped by to evaluate and said he had a great mechanically oriented guy who could get a new Bryant high efficiency furnace into the closet space. He wanted to start there, and said we could do that and see how it behaved. Variable speed blower capable of very high CFM in a properly designed duct system, etc. We also knew that return air is a problem, return in a closet furnace is the door/front. So we had him return there and also run ducts thru a pantry to the kitchen and put up a high 24" grate above the kitchen cabinets with two large round ducts behind it. Obviously there will be some input air restriction but not awful.
During install they replaced the coil box for the A/C and tech said there was coolant when he pulled vaccuum to keep the refrigerant outside in the A/C unit while working on the plumbing.
Here's a photo of how well the guy got 10lbs of stuff in a 1lb bag as grandpa used to say. Return is top, furnace is set up to downdraft into the ductwork in the floor. What you can't see is the additional return added to the right that goes thru the pantry to the kitchen. (And yeah I know they tore up the closet frame a bit. That's my project to repair the frame and build a louvered door that covers the closet up and allows unrestricted airflow. Custom job. Probably won't get to that for a few weeks.)
After install, we run the blower test and get a high static pressure alert. The system is claiming a static pressure of over 1" at max RPM. It will back down and protect itself so damage is not a problem. But we start hunting the problem.
Duct work. There's one trunk line of rectangle fiber box that runs the length of the upstairs that has enough airflow to blow to the top of your head easily. The second trunk line upstairs, there's a trickle of heat and air from registers and almost zero airflow.
Basement, same problem. Basement was tapped into ductwork in an unknown way using 4" round pipes to every register in the ceiling. Some heat, almost no airflow.
To both the installer and I, the problem seems to be a large blockage somewhere that's keeping air from easily moving to 3/4 of the duct system. If it were a break the static pressure wouldn't be high. It'd just be dumping air into the space in between the floor upstairs and the ceiling downstairs and pressure would be normal or low.
Could be a long dead (no smells!) critter. Could be a wasp nest. A rag stuffed somewhere it shouldn't be during winterization and seal up of the house when it sat empty and foreclosed. Who knows.
The small company doesn't have duct inspection gear. Cameras etc. He had a typical short camera on a flexible line that we looked in every register with, as far as we could, to try to see trunk interconnects etc, couldn't go far enough on any of them to map interconnects at all. No blockages seen.
Still willing to rip out the basement ceiling. But...
I've got this gut feel that there must be some type of HVAC company with the ability to use snakes and cameras to map out the system and look for a massive blockage or problem. Would the HVAC folks here agree?
I've done some basic Googling and not found much. (Texas however, seems to have a billion of them. Wonder why...?)
In fact... the silly duct cleaning companies look like they have better gear than the HVAC companies around here. But those photos of before and after may just be with a cheap short camera. Can't tell.
Also can talk to the small company owner and ask for a reference. Haven't done that yet. He's more than willing to help but I have a feeling he's too small to do this with tech. He's going to ask to go into the basement ceiling big time.
Not being in this biz I figure I'll ask. If it was your system would you pursue this or just authorize tearing out the ceiling and getting at all of it and figuring it out? Has anyone here had any luck hunting a ductwork problem with cameras?
The good news is even with the duct issues the new furnace already does a million times better job, both upstairs and down. The ability on these new systems to program the blower to stay on at a low setting continuously is awesome for evening out areas with poor return airflow and the fully modulating burner is way nifty. (For the record this is a fully modulating (both burner and blower) Bryant Evolution with the smart thermostat touch screen thingy. I'm a geek so I already love being able to play with the thermostat from anywhere with an iPhone app or see system status remotely when away from home.)
Right now with airflow issues to the basement I program up a "Sleep" mode that includes bumping the blower up to Medium continuously since the master bedroom is the furthest room away in the basement from the furnace. The trickle of heated air that makes it there is actually working a million times better than the original system but there's a pretty consistent 4F temp drop in the basement everywhere. Obviously with no kids and privacy issues we can just leave all the room doors open all the time too, which keeps everything fairly even.
Very tempted to have them get into the ceiling for a different reason. Zoning. Two zones. Upstairs and downstairs. But... If airflow issue is fixed perhaps a better solution is building a proper return into the basement by running a box and ductwork to the far end of the house. Ultimately if the airflow issue isn't addressed the A/C won't work right at all, I do know that!
Ask any questions you have if you know this stuff. I'm not educated enough to really even know what to ask other than a lot of Internet reading, which does not an expert make!
Gratuitous iPhone App shots.
Furnace model number if someone needs that...
Most folks here know that when my dad passed we found ourselves liking his little retirement home out on the prairie and moved in a couple years ago.
Dad bought the place as a repo. It sat empty for at least two years, maybe three. (Mentioning because maybe critters...?)
House is a manufactured home on top of a large basement. Which means the original propane furnace was a hallway furnace in the upstairs hallway. Noisy, not up to the task, etc. We found handwritten notes from Dad where (since he was retired) he had time to shop around for a bigger closet furnace with better blower, etc. But he never got it installed. The hint was that he was also having an airflow problem of low flow at various registers.
Recently we decided to talk to residential HVAC companies about how best to upgrade. A few wouldn't touch it because "we don't do closet furnaces".
Nothing was off the table. Tear out and move furnace to basement utility area including ripping out the basement ceilings to run ductwork, etc. Whatever. We're going to be here a while.
For info, there's also a good newish 3 ton Trane A/C outside that probably has a bad capacitor on the blower motor or a dead motor. (Watched 6PCs thread with interest.) We haven't used it since we moved in, there's only about a month of hot summer weather where it's hot enough to worry about it. Eventually we'll repair it. It's disabled.
Small local HVAC company owner stopped by to evaluate and said he had a great mechanically oriented guy who could get a new Bryant high efficiency furnace into the closet space. He wanted to start there, and said we could do that and see how it behaved. Variable speed blower capable of very high CFM in a properly designed duct system, etc. We also knew that return air is a problem, return in a closet furnace is the door/front. So we had him return there and also run ducts thru a pantry to the kitchen and put up a high 24" grate above the kitchen cabinets with two large round ducts behind it. Obviously there will be some input air restriction but not awful.
During install they replaced the coil box for the A/C and tech said there was coolant when he pulled vaccuum to keep the refrigerant outside in the A/C unit while working on the plumbing.
Here's a photo of how well the guy got 10lbs of stuff in a 1lb bag as grandpa used to say. Return is top, furnace is set up to downdraft into the ductwork in the floor. What you can't see is the additional return added to the right that goes thru the pantry to the kitchen. (And yeah I know they tore up the closet frame a bit. That's my project to repair the frame and build a louvered door that covers the closet up and allows unrestricted airflow. Custom job. Probably won't get to that for a few weeks.)
After install, we run the blower test and get a high static pressure alert. The system is claiming a static pressure of over 1" at max RPM. It will back down and protect itself so damage is not a problem. But we start hunting the problem.
Duct work. There's one trunk line of rectangle fiber box that runs the length of the upstairs that has enough airflow to blow to the top of your head easily. The second trunk line upstairs, there's a trickle of heat and air from registers and almost zero airflow.
Basement, same problem. Basement was tapped into ductwork in an unknown way using 4" round pipes to every register in the ceiling. Some heat, almost no airflow.
To both the installer and I, the problem seems to be a large blockage somewhere that's keeping air from easily moving to 3/4 of the duct system. If it were a break the static pressure wouldn't be high. It'd just be dumping air into the space in between the floor upstairs and the ceiling downstairs and pressure would be normal or low.
Could be a long dead (no smells!) critter. Could be a wasp nest. A rag stuffed somewhere it shouldn't be during winterization and seal up of the house when it sat empty and foreclosed. Who knows.
The small company doesn't have duct inspection gear. Cameras etc. He had a typical short camera on a flexible line that we looked in every register with, as far as we could, to try to see trunk interconnects etc, couldn't go far enough on any of them to map interconnects at all. No blockages seen.
Still willing to rip out the basement ceiling. But...
I've got this gut feel that there must be some type of HVAC company with the ability to use snakes and cameras to map out the system and look for a massive blockage or problem. Would the HVAC folks here agree?
I've done some basic Googling and not found much. (Texas however, seems to have a billion of them. Wonder why...?)
In fact... the silly duct cleaning companies look like they have better gear than the HVAC companies around here. But those photos of before and after may just be with a cheap short camera. Can't tell.
Also can talk to the small company owner and ask for a reference. Haven't done that yet. He's more than willing to help but I have a feeling he's too small to do this with tech. He's going to ask to go into the basement ceiling big time.
Not being in this biz I figure I'll ask. If it was your system would you pursue this or just authorize tearing out the ceiling and getting at all of it and figuring it out? Has anyone here had any luck hunting a ductwork problem with cameras?
The good news is even with the duct issues the new furnace already does a million times better job, both upstairs and down. The ability on these new systems to program the blower to stay on at a low setting continuously is awesome for evening out areas with poor return airflow and the fully modulating burner is way nifty. (For the record this is a fully modulating (both burner and blower) Bryant Evolution with the smart thermostat touch screen thingy. I'm a geek so I already love being able to play with the thermostat from anywhere with an iPhone app or see system status remotely when away from home.)
Right now with airflow issues to the basement I program up a "Sleep" mode that includes bumping the blower up to Medium continuously since the master bedroom is the furthest room away in the basement from the furnace. The trickle of heated air that makes it there is actually working a million times better than the original system but there's a pretty consistent 4F temp drop in the basement everywhere. Obviously with no kids and privacy issues we can just leave all the room doors open all the time too, which keeps everything fairly even.
Very tempted to have them get into the ceiling for a different reason. Zoning. Two zones. Upstairs and downstairs. But... If airflow issue is fixed perhaps a better solution is building a proper return into the basement by running a box and ductwork to the far end of the house. Ultimately if the airflow issue isn't addressed the A/C won't work right at all, I do know that!
Ask any questions you have if you know this stuff. I'm not educated enough to really even know what to ask other than a lot of Internet reading, which does not an expert make!
Gratuitous iPhone App shots.
Furnace model number if someone needs that...
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