Balancing Air Conditioning for Dummies

HVAC duct damper with handle

Among the more... irritating? features of the freelancers who pounded out post after post for eHow.com was the frequent assumption that, even though they knew nothing about a topic, they still knew more than some poor schmuck who entered a question into a search engine. The sad truth was that they often knew as little, and sometimes even less... Take, for example, today's nominee, eHowian C. O. Ryan, who attempted to explain to some poor homeowner "How to Adjust the Ducts on a House Air Conditioner," which we found infesting SFGate.com.

As was so often the case of freelancers who lack any sort of technical background (Ryan has degrees in writing and theology), C. O. assumed that the OQ was as clueless about HVAC as she. That's apparently why she went straight to the simplest possible answer:

"Find the small lever on the outside of the vent. Push the lever completely to one side. You will know whether you have just closed or opened the vent by whether air flows from it or not."

OK, we know that some people are monumentally stupid,¹ but we're almost certain that most are smart enough to look at the register and determine whether or not it's open or closed. What we are also almost certain is that the OQ had already tried that approach, and it hadn't worked for them. So what's left?

Well, C. O. turned up a brief mention of "dampers" somewhere and, like most people, had no clue what that was all about. But she bravely went ahead and regurgitated the information (from a professional's website) that,

"If parts of your home are noticeably cooler or warmer than other parts, the supply dampers for that HVAC zone may be only partly open. In that case, you may need a professional HVAC contractor to balance your system."

In the first place, if the dampers are "only partly open" it's a safe bet someone's already balanced it, or at least tried to. But let's take another look at that statement: it's obvious Ryan had no idea waht that means, probably because she'd never heard of dampers in the dutwork and was in too much of a hurry to look it up.

Well, reasonably handy homeowners can fiddle with the dampers themselves, which is VERY likely to be what the question was about in the first place, The business about opening and closing registers Ryan turned out? It's Dumbass of the Day level work.

¹ We know some people are monumentally stupid because there are actually Americans who like the Affordable Care Act of 2010, but think "Obamacare" should be repealed.

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