The Home Furnace Q & A has evolved from our main site – The Home Furnace.   While the site does provide a lot of info, we found that the format didn’t lend itself to providing more in depth coverage of certain topics.  Many people land on this site looking for the same information.  So, we are going to take the questions from the most common searches and answer them here.  Things like, who makes the best furnace?  What way does my furnace filter go?  How do I know what size furnace I need, and so on.

Depending on the age of your home, you’ll have return air vents on the upper level.  Likely a few sets.  A vent at the floor and right above it, a vent at the ceiling.  Now that it’s time to crank on the home furnace, you need to adjust the vents.

As you know, or you really should know, hot air rises.  In the summer, we want the upper vent—the one at the ceiling level—to be open and the bottom one closed.  That clears out all that hot air that is sitting above your head.  Of course, you don’t want hot air collecting in your home in the summer, so you set the return air vent to pull that hot air back into your HVAC system.

But now that the colder weather is nearly open us we want to take advantage of the natural buildup of warmer air.  Why waste it?  Especially when we now have to pay for it?  So, close the ceiling vent so the air stays right where it can be of some use, and open the vent closer to the floor.  That way you are clearing out the cooler air that you now longer want.  Oh, and just a little side note.  Got a ceiling fan upstairs?  If you reverse it, it will circulate that warm air for you.  Just put it on the lowest level, and let it move that heat around.  Let it wrap around you like a blanket instead of sitting like a cloud above your head and providing little benefit for you!