Derek Cole explains why North Carolina requires homes over 1,600 sq ft to have two return air ducts instead of one. Multiple returns improve airflow, prevent the HVAC unit from pulling unconditioned air from crawl spaces, and reduce energy consumption. Blocked or insufficient returns force the system to work harder and pull air from unintended places.
In 2008 or '09, they changed the code in North Carolina. Anything over 1,600 square feet, you have to have 2 returns in the home instead of 1 return. The house is big enough, and I would always recommend having multiple returns because I've— out of 15 years, I've never been to the home and been like, wow, we have too many returns here. That's never been the case. What has been the case most of the time is you go to a house and you say, "There's not enough return here. Stop shutting that door. You don't have return. The return's way over on this side of the house." So with 2 returns in this 1,700-square-foot house, we'll say, you have probably have 1 return on 1 side and 1 return on the other side. So probably how it's laid out is that you have a room or bedrooms on this side with the return. You have the kitchen, living room in the middle, and on this side you have rooms and in a bedroom with another return. See, I haven't even seen the house. So that's why you have 2 returns. You want to make it as easy as possible for the air to get back to the unit. So the bigger the return and the more you have in these different locations where it can be closed off, the better because you want to make it very easy. Otherwise, the unit's going to get the air it needs. It's going to suck it through the crawl space to the attic. To the outside, it's going to get the air it wants to get to operate. But you want to control it. You want it to be cool or warm filtered air from your return, not from the outside, which is unconditioned air, right? So that'll save you energy and the unit will not have to work as hard to get the air back to it. So that is why you have two returns. Two returns is not a bad thing. I'm glad you have 2 returns because you need 2 returns. Because if you have that one return on this side of the house and you had this other 1,600 square feet, all that air has to get back to this side of the house one way or another. And we all know it's going to be very difficult on that back room when you shut the door because that's your junk room. You have all your stuff in there, you don't want people to see it. It's going to be very hard for the air that's coming out to then get back to their turn. Is it— is there a jungle room?
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