If a home has a central return vent for all the air going to the air handler, a good HVAC design will include return air pathways from the bedrooms. Well, I should say it’s only a potential problem because a good installer will be working from an actual HVAC design, which should specify exactly how air gets back to the air handler. The problem with bedrooms occurs in houses where the HVAC design did not include return vents in each bedroom. The furnace or air handler (AHU in the drawing below) pulls air through the return ducts, conditions that air, and then sends it through the supply ducts back into the house. Ideally, it’s a closed system with as little duct leakage as possible, and the air that it’s conditioning comes from inside the house. The air that it’s conditioning, though, isn’t just whatever it can get. If your bedroom has a supply vent from your HVAC system but no return vent or other pathway for the air to make its way back to the unit, what happens to that air blowing into the room when you close the door? The problem with bedroomsįorced-air heating and cooling systems use ducts to move conditioned air from the furnace, heat pump, or air conditioner back into the living space inside the house.
It doesn’t expand the way a balloon does, but it does get blown up. Yet, because of the way your heating and air conditioning system was installed, it may be acting like one. Your bedroom really doesn’t aspire to be a balloon.
