Derek Cole explains why closing a bedroom vent won't fix a hot room under a hot attic. The real solution is better attic insulation and insulated ductwork. Closing supply vents causes pressure problems and forces air to leak from crawl spaces or attics instead.
So I wanted to answer a question from our YouTube channel. So the question was, okay, so we have a small, small vent in a bedroom that sits right below a very hot attic. The attic has no windows to let out the hot air, so the bedroom can get very, very hot in the summer. The vent in the room does not work. However, there's a small vent of cool air due to the attic being so hot. My husband is convinced closing the vents, or at least covering them up, will help. Do you have any suggestions beyond using a fan to help cool the bedroom without closing or covering vents? Also, why did they make vents that close if you're not supposed to close Vince, very good question. Um, so a couple things, and the reason, um, I want to do it this way versus typing out an answer to the question is because it's, it's got a couple layers to it. Uh, so first of all, hot attic insulation is your best friend. So make sure your insulation is good in the attic. Make sure you have the proper insulation. Make sure it's evenly distributed throughout the attic and it's not piled up in one spot or another. Make sure it's covering that bedroom because it sounds like you're having an infiltration problem of heat from the attic into the living space. That should not be an issue. Insulation is a, it's a very efficient, inexpensive way to build that barrier between the hot attic and the room you're trying to keep cool, or cold attic or cold crawl space, and you know, vice versa. So make sure you have the proper amount of insulation in the attic, in that room, above that room, so that heat stops coming into that room. So check on that first. Second, you're right, you should never ever ever close vents. So why did they make it where you can't close them? Well, a couple things. One, some folks use the vents to balance out the air in the home. When we install a duct system, we actually install balancing dampers in the duct so you can adjust it from the duct system and not from the grill. We keep the grills open as they should be. I mean, even if you go to some of the big box stores and look at some of the decorative grills or the more expensive grills, very few of them have dampers in them where you can close them. But regardless, I would not close the dampers because that's not what your system is made for. Your system is made to heat and cool the home. You have enough runs of ductwork to get the CFM out that the system produces to keep your home comfortable. Um, same way you should never block a vent. So if you were Example, if you were to do a smoke test, say it was in the floor and you're doing tests on a wall. First of all, most vents you see are angled towards the outside wall because it's trying to handle the spot of the home where the heat or the cool air comes in, infiltrates, and that's the outside walls. Very few times will you see them on the inside wall unless it's an older home or even a, or a mobile home. And those folks usually aren't comfortable because it's not attacking the outside wall. That is where your infiltration is coming from— the window, the wall, whatever's on the outside, is whatever's on that perimeter is what the vent or AC unit or heating unit is trying to attack and trying to condition that space. So if you did a smoke test on that vent on the floor, you got a wall right here, could be window, it doesn't matter. You'll see, you see the air come up, it'll hit the ceiling almost like a mushroom. You'll see it come up, hit the ceiling, and then curtain down and condition that wall. So you see it come up, hit the ceiling, wall, up, ceiling, wall. That's why plastic diffusers, which blows the air into the middle of the room, is not a good idea because it's trying to— again, it's trying to condition, attack the outside wall. So you should never close your vents. You should never use plastic diffusers. You should never block your vents because it's getting in the way of it's doing its job, trying to condition the outside wall. So that's why you never want to close them. Your home, your AC system is made for the proper amount of grills in the house, the airflow in the house, and you start messing with that, you start messing with comfort. And you could potentially— I mean, if you close the vent, it could back up into the system, cause the pressure issue, and then it's having to work harder to get the air to where it needs to go. Because it's going to get the air out if you close the vent. It's still going to get the air out somewhere. It could be in an attic, it could be in the crawl space. Uh, the air is going to get relieved. Somehow. So you want to make it like water. You want to make it as easy as possible to go where you want it to go and not where you don't want to go. Kind of similar to the return in your house. The return in your house, you want it to get the air it needs to get easily, and you want that conditioned clean air coming back to unit You don't want to restrict that in any way because then again, it's going to get the air it needs. It's going to suck it from the crawl space, from the attic, from outside. You want to be— the conditioned air that comes through your filter. So you never want to restrict airflow. I hope that answers your question. A couple things I'll do: again, don't close the vents. Never close vents, and make sure you have the proper insulation in the attic in that space. I would even, you know, check the flex duct that's probably going to the vent in your bedroom. It's a piece of flex. Make sure that's insulated. Make sure you have the insulation attic around it. If you have both of those, I would contact the HVAC professional to come and see what's going on with your system because you need to be comfortable. Uh, I mean, this system is built for you to be comfortable. So if something is wrong, it needs to be addressed, it needs to be handled, and you need a professional to handle it. You don't need I'm not talking about like cousins, best friends, uncle's brother can look at it. Uh, this needs to be a full— might be that, that person, but it needs to be a full-time professional HVAC person that is, uh, good at design and good at solving problems. Because this is a problem. You should not be uncomfortable anywhere in your home. And there's always a solution, but we have to find out what the best solution is for that situation. Thanks for the question. Keep me, um, keep me informed. Keep replying, uh, whatever platform you want to, but let me know what's going on with this system, uh, what you found. And if you contact a professional, let me know what they have said. To the solution because I'm interested to see what the solution is going to be.
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