Poll on Ceiling HVAC Vents

UGH!

circular, cause I love a tight hole

I don’t give a shit.

I don't care about the shape of the vents but I have always hated air conditioning units on the roof of houses, they belong on the side or back of the house. Do they do that to keep people from stealing them or what?

Roof units are more efficient than updraft units R4. I hate the idea of the furnace in the house.

Seriously, OP?

R4/R5: Well there's air conditioning units being on the roof, and then there's whole package units where the blower, heater, cooling are all outside. I know some relatives of mine who put the air conditioning unit on the roof so it wouldn't take up space or create noise in the backyard.

On updraft units I've never seen the furnace on the outside R7.

The vents at R1 are the cheapest vents available. FFS, spend you get bills back in change when you buy one for a fiver.

Spent more money and get something that has a more substantial, less tinny look.

And those "nice" round ones you like probably looked.nice when your grandmother turned heads -- in the 1950s and early 1960s.

There are other options as well,.

Does anyone know what the, for lack of a matter word, long slits that that are on the upper wall or ceiling in new builds are?

R8: I think I'm confused here. What do you mean by "updraft" unit?

R9: NO! Circular vents belong on ceilings, square/rectangle on the floor. There is only one way!

R10: Can we see you slit so we have a better idea of what you're talking about?

Updraft is a unit on the ground R11. Photo 10 between the beams R11

Not sure my link at R12 worked properly.

R12: That link takes to my saved homes. Could you please try again? And it is rare, but there are package units on the side of the house as well. But most are on the ceiling. And of course, they're rare period in consumer homes, most package units of any type are for commercial properties.

R13: That one works. And I believe that is either an actual ceiling vent or a return vent but it's definitely a vent of some sort. I'm not sure if I like it.... I do love the blue on the interior of that place. You may want to start a Tasteful Friends thread about it.

It seems awfully thin for a return vent R15.

R16: Must be the vents then. Though I can't imagine they're very efficient at moving conditioned air around. Some good old circular ones in my OP would do the trick and provide true comfort. Perhaps in a stylish chrome...

R13: According to this, they are called linear diffusers. Learn something new every day....

The images at R13 show *linear slot diffusers .* There may be a better name for them (and one would hope), but thatś the one I have seen.

Thank you R18 and R19.

Apologies, R18 for the duplication

I'm R13 @ R20.

I like the idea of the slot diffusers, though Ie yet to see a domestic use where they were not sited in strange places.

This is a link to a listing from 2 or 3 years ago of newsman Jim Lehrerś historic house. In the second floor bedrooms you see them used and they drive me nuts, running sort of in the center of the ceilings. A seemingly subtle solution can be really fucking distracting.

Vents are located where they can be placed depending on the layout of the house. In most a/c installations, the compressor is outside the house on the ground for ease of service and the airhandling equipment is in the attic. In a single story home, the air vents can placed anywhere on the ceiling as long as the ducts can be routed between the beams. Two story homes need a chase - either a dedicated area for ducting or the back of a closet - in order to carry the air two levels below the attic.

Square corner ceiling vent units in the corner of the room with "L" pattern vents are the most efficient way to diffuse the conditioned air to the other parts of the room. If you used a round one in that position it would be less efficient distributing the air, sending some of it down the wall, not across the ceiling of the room. Homes don't always have a closet in the middle of the room above the one you're trying to get air to, so they tend to be routed through the corners of rooms, hence the square ceiling vents in the corners of the room. For a ceiling vent on a straight wall, a square or half-round vent with an inverted "U" shaped pattern spreads air to the three exposed sides of the vent.

The units on the side of the building (more popular in urban Europe before they caught on in the States) are called split units with the mechanicals outside the structure for lower noise and the fan in the box on the inside wall. There are also newer, narrower ducting styles that allow installation and venting through the walls rather than the ceiling, most often used in older homes where retrofitting duct work would cost more or look worse and/or work less efficiently.

I´ve used high velocity systems in a few houses and love them. Very quiet, very comfortable, and the distribution tubes are similar in size to a vacuum cleaner hose, then encased in insulation for a 4 or 5 inch diameter flexible duct that can be installed most anywhere. Itś the least obtrusive of systems.

In some difficult settings you may need to make a vertical chase from attic or roof through a room or rooms on the second floor to reach the ground floor; normally, though, this can be tucked into a closet or some void and finished off easily, without having to build big ugly box ducts criss-crossing the ceilings.

Heating should come from the floor and A/C should come from the ceiling to be efficient. My father had a home that had baseboard heat and A/C. That was a very efficient system.

Honestly don’t care. I’m picky about design - but personally find the round ones uglier than the square ones,

R21: Don't be sorry, everyone posts on everyone in real time all the time. :)

R25: So there IS a gaping hole (sort of) type of vent. So we have round, square, slit, and hole vents. Kinky....

R23: I guess they wanted to have the least damage to the colonial character and charm of the place.....

Have we established a "slit" is a vent R28?

Of course, R29. It's surely not decorative; and "diffuser" is the output end of things, not the intake end.

Friday Poll Bump. Shame that Slit can't be added to the poll...

I honestly don't have a preference.

As an anal-retentive OCD design queen, I have strong opinions about all of this. The first one being that there are never enough good design solutions for mundane things like air vents - and I mean it. The 'builder' rectangular vents that the OP speaks about are indeed hideous and cheap-looking, and the round ones look outdated. Linear diffusers only work in some homes - mainly modern/contemporary homes - as R23 points out (what a house!). The high velocity system that R25 shared looks decent from a purely aesthetic point-of-view. But STILL - not enough good looking options. That's why designers are always trying to hide them and why you almost never see one in a design magazine spread - they photoshop them out!

R33: I prefer classic over outdated when it concerns the round ceiling ones. They're unique since so many homes either have the rectangles on the ceiling or just have the floor ones (which are terrible for air conditioning cooling anyway, but that's a different thread).