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Adding return to finished attic

1890house | Posted in General Questions on

In November we bought an 1890 farm house. We absolutely love this house, but old homes do come with quirks of course. So the home is 4 bedrooms 2 bathrooms with a finished attic that is being used as a bedroom. There’s no return in this room and now that we’re getting into the heat of summer it’s getting quite warm in there. The vent is on the floor and we don’t think there’s any other existing ductwork to properly connect a return to. I hate the idea of a window unit, but I’m not sure how to fix this issue. Thanks in advance for any advice!

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  1. Expert Member
    Michael Maines | | #1

    It's pretty common to only have one or two returns in an older house, mainly due to the difficulty of finding places to run ductwork, and probably also to keep costs down. If the return is centrally located and there are return air pathways--either grilles in the wall or gaps under the door--the system usually works adequately, if not in an optimized way. I specify these return air pathways over doors when we don't have returns in the room: https://www.tamtech.com/product-tag/rap/.

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