Close Air Conditioner Vents In Winter

Adjust return registers for summer.

Close air conditioner vents in winter.

Your home s hvac works best when the air can flow freely. Closing vents can actually damage your heating and ac system. When you shut off the vents you can increase the pressure in your ductwork which can back up into your hvac and cause issues. By opening the lower registers and closing the top ones you keep hot air in and draw the cold air out.

Heated air rises and is drawn through unsealed central air conditioning vents into ductwork in the cold attic. In the winter you want the cold air to be drawn through the return registers leaving the hot air behind. When you close vents and block air from going to certain rooms you are making your system work harder than it needs to and harder than it was designed to. Instead of completely closing air vents you can maximize your home comfort and keep your home energy efficient by partially closing those vents.

Although air should circulate year round through the attic your house will probably be more comfortable if you cover the foundation vents in the winter. Don t shorten the life of your hvac system unnecessarily by closing off your vents. The air is re introduced as icy drafts through lower vents. They need to be open in the summer.

The issues your hvac experiences due to closed vents are like problems caused by dirty air filters including inadequate airflow turning off and on frequently and premature hvac breakdown. Hot air produced by heating systems in fall winter lose thermal values of 30 or more through the central air duct system. Closing vents can actually cause your ac or heat pump to run inefficiently and eventually break. The bigger issue that no one here has mentioned is that if you close off more than about 20 of the vents you risk damaging the heater air conditioner.

Since cold air is heavy it will automatically flow down to the lower register. Those systems are designed to move a certain amount of air and blocking lots of vents puts a restrictive pressure on the part of the system trying to move the air. Closing vents does not save you money. The hot or cool air is coming out from the same air ducts it depends on how high or low temperatures and the hot or cold switch lever that you set the central air condition unit will automatically switch to hot or cold as you have controlled it.

In a two story home heat usually rises to the top floor thus robbing the lower floors of well needed heat. Many arizona homeowners think this but it s 100 wrong. You don t close the ac vents in winter leave them open in summer or winter.