hvac boosters

[TeleFragger]

anyone use one of these?
http://www.smarthome.com/3011.html

my son's room is 18x15 and has 3 vents... to which he has the hottest room in the summer and coldest in the winter... seems there is barely any air blowing through his vents...

I was going to call someone to come out and cleanout the ducts.... then inspect and see what the problem could be.....

but this looks pretty good...

my neighbor (around the corner) has this (as he has the same house) and says it doesnt work that great

[jasv]

I installed one for the same reasons and didn't really see any improvement.

[TeleFragger]

so save the cash and pay a hvac guy to come out, clean the ducts and evaluate what is actually going on then huh....

[jasv]

I didn't want to jump to that conclusion but I would probably go that route.

[bdraper]

It the room that is in question on the second floor? Do you have a unit for upstairs vs downstairs?

The reason I ask is we had a two rooms upstairs that was as you describe "hottest room in the summer and coldest in the winter"... Turns out it was not our ducts but the unit itself... way undersized. It ran all the time in the summer. It finnally gave out due to a freon leak and we had the unit replaced. A friend of mine came over and did the sizing and found that instead of a 3 ton unit for upstairs we needed a 4 ton unit. Now the rooms are nice and cool in the summer and warm in the winter and best of all my electric bill and gas bill went way down...

[jasv]

It the room that is in question on the second floor? Do you have a unit for upstairs vs downstairs?

The reason I ask is we had a two rooms upstairs that was as you describe "hottest room in the summer and coldest in the winter"... Turns out it was not our ducts but the unit itself... way undersized. It ran all the time in the summer. It finnally gave out due to a freon leak and we had the unit replaced. A friend of mine came over and did the sizing and found that instead of a 3 ton unit for upstairs we needed a 4 ton unit. Now the rooms are nice and cool in the summer and warm in the winter and best of all my electric bill and gas bill went way down...

My issue was upstairs also. I ended up sealing the duct and installing a separate mini-split unit to handle the upstairs rooms.

[TeleFragger]

I have access to a 5 ton unit... but that is ac only... heat would still be a problem then...

[Rupp]

Put a window air unit in and that will solve half of the problem.

[Guest]

I have a couple of those booster and didn't see much improvement either.

[anogee]

I have a single story house with that problem. The cause is simple, the builder didn't install large enough ducts because it was cheaper not to. The solution, which I haven't done yet but will soon is have a HVAC person redesign it and fix it. I hear that they use a smaller duct but at a higher pressure that can actually be installed in the old ducts. Since the air moves faster and there is less mass to heat or cool, there is less heat/cool loss.

[Steve Q]

Part of the issue may be a lack of adequate cold air return. If the booster fan is trying to pump air into a closed room with no cold air return, it will be ineffective. If you have a cold air return in the room you might improve the results by also putting a booster fan on the cold air return so it sucks air out of the room.

Steve Q