hello and welcome back to the air of authority
my name is andrea and today i'm going to answer a question that we got from our ask an expert
page on our website and the question comes from a customer named yvette and she asked this
question i was wondering if you could tell me how to switch my dampers now that we
have the heater on because it's set for summer right now and is pushing all of the
hot air upstairs and it is stifling up there thanks yes that is a fantastic question
so let me call my dad right now and he's going to tell you how to switch
your dampers for the winter time typically in most homes the main trunk supply
trunks these are the this is the duct that is blowing warm air or blowing cold air depending on
the furnace or air conditioner will have a damper in it and if you look at these sheet metal dampers
they have a little wing nut on them if you're familiar with what a wing nut you know what a
wing that looks like i'll show a picture i'll show a picture of it got a little wing nut on it
and the very center of the bolt that goes through that wing nut has a flat spot on it and that tells
you the position of the damper so when you look at it and it's been smashed that means the damper
is in that position okay and as you rotate it you visualize okay that this is the damper imagine
there's a damper in there and it's doing this so depending on which duck you're looking
at and what season you're looking at you can look at it and say oh horizontal that
means that's open if i turn it at an angle it's going to cut down the amount of air going through
that duct so what you do is you loosen the wing nut you adjust it sometimes it takes a pair of
pliers you know you turn it so you can adjust that damper hold it there and then tighten that
nut down so typically here we are right now we're going cooling season to the heating which means
you know a lot of times maybe the air upstairs the duck going upstairs is wide open because
we needed all the cooling we could get up there for the summertime well now warm air naturally
rises anyway and now we're blowing all the the warm air up there and you go no that's it's
just the opposite i want all the warm air being introduced into the home in the lower levels
of the home for the most part and i can almost just wait for the natural heat rising in the home
is enough to to keep the upstairs bedrooms warm you know so so does that make sense so yeah so if
the if that little wing thing is in this position that means that it's open if it's in this position
it means that it's closed yes if you're leaving that air isn't getting through there you're
looking at a duct that's going horizontal over your head you know now if you're you're
looking at a duct and it comes off the furnace and goes straight up like like it's going to
go to the second floor okay well think about the position inside the deck you just kind of
have to visualize where that damper is but uh and many times you can get someone to go upstairs
for instance into the bedroom yes i feel there i'm feeling air oh now i really feel that you know
you can you can have tag team it and you can uh have one somebody reporting back to oh yeah that's
good that's good like that how how many dampers does the standard house well some have none some
have none because you know that would have cost about maybe three or four dollars to install when
it was in all the run hopefully most people have a damper in each one of the supplied ducts so
you might have a supply duct go to the right and you might have them go to the left you know
that you might have one going upstairs hopefully you've got one in each one of those some homes
go back and look at all the runs you know if you have exposed ductwork some will have a damper
in every run that goes which is great you can dial it in for each and every run but uh so every
house is different and typically dampers going to the upstairs are open in the summer and closed
in the winter if you have that kind of issue totally right okay thanks very good let her
know okay cool all right thanks dad bye bye
