If your home has noisy ducts supplying conditioned air to its rooms, you shouldn’t have to accept that as a fact of life. Usually, there’s one or more reasons for noisy air vents and ducts, causes that can be addressed to quiet things down.
How Does Your Central Air and Heat Work?
It starts at your furnace or A/C. A powerful fan draws air into the equipment where it’s either heated or has the heat energy removed for cooling. The fan operation pushes the conditioned air to rooms throughout the home via supply ductwork, vents and registers. Air is then drawn back to the equipment via return air ducts. The air needs a clear, unimpeded path both on the supply side and return side, though in many homes, the return ductwork and registers aren’t sufficient to carry the necessary volume of air.
What Causes the Noise?
Noisy air vents and ducts often result from air not having a clear path back to the equipment. Like a river that increases velocity and gets very loud as it enters a narrow canyon, air routed through insufficient return registers and ducts will create a racket. Increased noise may also result from uneven air pressure between inside and outside, caused by an imbalance in supply and return air. Moving air makes noise when it’s being sucked into the home, or escaping from it.
Action Plan
These issues often are a result of poor design, where builders didn’t plan for enough return registers in rooms, but rather installed one or two big registers in central areas. If this is the problem, you’re looking at either tolerating noisy air vents and ducts or investing in new ductwork, registers and vents. Fortunately, the problem may be something simpler and cheaper. Registers may be blocked by furniture, rugs or boxes, your duct system may be dirty, or your HVAC air filter may be clogged. These issues can be easily addressed.
For more answers to questions about your HVAC system, please contact us at Ace Hardware Home Services, Inc., providing excellent service to the Dayton-Springfield area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Dayton, Ohio about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
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