Vents on Top

A friend of mine is building a house right now and the builder is putting the vents in all the wrong places.  You'd think that the foreperson would be, I dunno, reading the BLUEPRINTS! She plays the piano and has all sort of large furniture that each room was designed to accommodate.  But the builders took the big open walls as a sign of absence and decided to move all the vents to middle of these walls.

sigh

I can't say that I've EVER heard of a good building experience, and this one is slowly joining the pack in disappointments.

But it did get me thinking- it wasn't really much of a problem when I lived in California.  I never heard of vents being in the way.

Why was that?

Then I remembered...

RIGHT!  the vents are usually in the ceiling or behind doors on the walls.

In Minnesota, though, the vents are all in the floors or below windows.

Hmm, interesting.

But I suppose it makes sense:  in California, you mostly use the air conditioner, so you want the cold air to fall into the room- if it started on the floor, you'd never cool the room.

And, similarly, in Minnesota, you mostly use the heat...so, you want the heat to rise into the room...if it started on the ceiling, you'd only heat the top floor and attic.

I would never have thought that architects and builders were thinking that far ahead...particularly with the slip-shod way they seem to build houses.

Of course, you also don't have basements in California (usually)...people tend to get trapped underground when the earthquake hits.  I have found, though, that most of the newer homes in Minnesota are not being built with tornado-safe basements- they're all walk-out style, with windows all along the sides and a sliding door.

So, basements are more of a status symbol now...or an extra set of rooms.

But they're always cold....probably because you can't really sink duct work into the foundation to make the vents come out of the floor...

so the room is always cold.