(Conscientious contractors will often use “false” vents to provide access to the damper handles, so shine a flashlight in all the ceiling vents in your finished basement to check if what you thought was a functional vent is actually an access panel). In other homes the dampers, if they exist, have been covered up by drywall during remodeling projects or when a basement was finished into a rec room or some such thing. In some homes (especially newer construction) there aren’t balancing dampers attached to the ductwork-a rather poor cost-cutting measure in our opinion. This should be pretty straightforward for most folks, but there will be some situations for some readers in which damper adjustment isn’t an option. You can’t adjust anything until you find your dampers. Locating Your Dampersįirst thing’s first. We’ll assume you’ve never fiddled with your dampers and will walk you through the entire process from start to finish. There’s a wee bit more to it than just that, however, especially if you’ve never done it before-so let’s dig into some practical tips and tricks. Practically speaking, adjusting your dampers is as simple as turning the lever to open or close the damper. So what does that mean in practical terms for you? It means more cold air from the AC in the summer, and more hot air from the furnace in the winter directed precisely where you want it. The benefit of this arrangement is that it closes down the duct closer to the source of the hot or cold air and helps more efficiently redirect the forced air somewhere else in your home. Unlike a register (which is located at the end of the duct run where the ducting meets the floor, wall, or ceiling of a room), however, the damper is located very close to the central unit. Below you can see an example of a manual balancing damper. A balancing damper is just a simple mechanism inside the ductwork that closes off a given duct-they are called balancing dampers because you use them to balance the flow of air throughout the system. That’s where balancing dampers come into play. But closing the vents in rooms is nowhere near the most efficient way to control the flow of air through the system. Most people are familiar with the registers and vents you see in the actual rooms (and with the concept of closing a vent in a particular room to slow or stop the flow of air through the heating and cooling system into that room).
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