Adjusting returns for winter season? Open low one and close high ones?

[Jackie1]

Is this still the method to follow for hear pumps, etc?

Warm air rises; cooler air sinks. Keep this principle in mind, and you’ll realize why opening the correct air returns in winter and summer will provide better air distribution-which, in turn, allows more even temperatures in your home.

When you use a forced air furnace for summer cooling, you should open the high returns. This allows the furnace to take warmer air from the top of the room back to the air conditioning cooling coil in the furnace. In the winter, open the low returns to collect cold air at the floor.

For a two-story home, you may also need to adjust the supply air for winter and summer. In the winter, warm air rises to the second floor, so less heating is required there.

I'm asking because someone told me recently just leave them be, and keep them set for the summer all the time.

What's the majority say?

[beenthere]

Leave both the high and low open.

[Jackie1]

Really???

[beenthere]

Yes. Why do you want the warmest air up at the ceiling in the winter. Why do you want the coolest air on the floor in the summer.

[Jackie1]

Ok, you make a point... But it's funny how all the info out there and in tri-folds say to change them. What you said makes sense. The warm air will rise, and the return will pull in that "heated" air, and make it easier to reheat it?

Do you have any links that follow this theory? Everything out there is misleading it seems.

[beenthere]

Don't have any links.

Keeping both returns opens, mixes the warmest and coolest air in either season. Helps even out the room/house temps.

[Shophound]

What beenthere is saying is right on for systems that have both high and low return air inlets. Most residential HVAC installations in my area do not use dual return configurations. Most common are either low central returns with upflow air handlers/furnaces in closets or high central returns with air handlers/furnaces in attics. Supply registers are almost always in ceilings, less so in walls, seldom in floors.

Before the Residential section of this forum was in AOP format we often had yearly, lively discussion/debate over the influence of return air inlet locations. I've always found it interesting how much fervor this topic (and separately but similarily powered attic fans) can stir up among participants.

In my experience and analysis, return air locations are only part of a larger picture. Supply air distribution volume, discharge air temperature, throw, spread & drop, do the lion's share of mixing air within a room to decrease any temperature difference between floor and ceiling. Much less understood by many but just as important as both supply and return air patterns is the enclosure mechanism charged with creating a separation between this air and the outdoor air, wind, and sun, commonly called the building envelope. In street level terms this "envelope" is composed of the floors, walls, and ceilings of the structure.

How well insulated and airtight this envelope is makes all the difference in the world whether the interior of a house can be delightfully comfortable with minimal mechanical and energy input, or barely comfortable with massive mechanical and energy input. A mindset gaining ground is to configure the building envelope to assume ever a greater role of providing indoor comfort, with a coinciding decrease of reliance upon HVAC intensity for the same purpose. This does not mean HVAC will disappear, nor the need for proper supply and return air distribution, but for a century where political and ecological climate variances are unpredictable and inevitable, the approach to improve building enclosures is real and required.