Sunday, October 15, 2006

The vent debacle

I noticed immediately in the house that the vents had to be replaced when we moved in. Many of the registers did not even close, meaning the basement would always be cold and the upstairs would always be hot, and we would be wasting money hand over fist. Everyone knows you have to close your downstairs vents in the summer and your upstairs vents in the winter. (You knew that, right?) So why didn't these people? Oh yeah, they never used the furnace. Or the air conditioner.

So anyway, back to the vents. One day at Lowe's, I wandered into the vent aisle and bought one that I thought looked right, although I hadn't measured. It was wrong, of course, so I measured the vents upstairs and went back to Lowe's to return the 10x6 and purchase five 14x6 vents.

Got them home, and what do you know? You can't measure the vent, you have to measure THE HOLE IN THE WALL. Duh, Syl. So back to Lowes we went, returned the 14x6 and purchased the 12x4 vents that would prove to be correct. I was one short because I had counted wrong, not that it mattered because I had purchased all of the wall vents they had in that size. That's right, apparently this size is odd for some reason. So I installed the five I had and only needed one more to complete the upstairs and be done until next spring, when I will have to replace the downstairs vents so I can close them.

So I ventured to Home Depot today, all for naught. They have 12x4 floor registers, but not wall registers. And floor registers can't be screwed in, so they tend to just fall out of the wall. So I went to Menards for the first time in many moons and actually found the right vent.

Now the only thing left to do is glue the bathroom vent on. It's currently propped up with the bathroom trashcan because I don't think I can screw the vent in through the wall tile. I will glue it up like the last one was, and we shall be done with this particular project, which took several weeks longer than it was supposed to.

Ah, but here's the kicker. I can feel that there is a vent behind the cabinet that the previous owners added into the kitchen. I could feel the air coming through it, making the floor cold, and I can feel the heat now, making the floor hot. This makes me worry about the dry goods I have stored in that cabinet, although the cabinet is not good for much else.

If one was to add in a cabinet, wouldn't one close off the vent one was placing the cabinet over?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think, one would, IF one was doing things right. If one (like the previous owners, builders, and home improvers at our TC house) was in the habit of doing a half-assed job, one might not. Hopefully you will not find many other examples of half-assedness in doing your projects. (But if you do, you gotta blog about 'em.) :)