Close Air Conditioner Vents In Winter

Don t shorten the life of your hvac system unnecessarily by closing off your vents.

Close air conditioner vents in winter.

You don t close the ac vents in winter leave them open in summer or winter. It s even worse than wrong. Keeping some of the upstairs vents partially closed less than 50 percent of them will prevent adverse pressure changes in the ductwork and ease stress on your hvac system all while keeping other areas warm and comfortable. In extreme cold the lack of warm air in your duct work may cause freezing to occur.

When you shut off the vents you can increase the pressure in your ductwork which can back up into your hvac and cause issues. Instead of completely closing air vents you can maximize your home comfort and keep your home energy efficient by partially closing those vents. 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. The air is re introduced as icy drafts through lower vents.

They need to be open in the summer. By opening the lower registers and closing the top ones you keep hot air in and draw the cold air out. Since cold air is heavy it will automatically flow down to the lower register. Closing vents does not save you money.

Closing vents can actually cause your ac or heat pump to run inefficiently and eventually break. Hot air produced by heating systems in fall winter lose thermal values of 30 or more through the central air duct system. In a two story home heat usually rises to the top floor thus robbing the lower floors of well needed heat. 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.

In the winter you want the cold air to be drawn through the return registers leaving the hot air behind. 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. Adjust return registers for summer. 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.

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. Your home s hvac works best when the air can flow freely. Many arizona homeowners think this but it s 100 wrong.