Said It Here

How to cool a house without ducts or ugly wall units

Adding air conditioning to a ductless home forces homeowners to choose between undersized plenums or wall-mounted units that ruin the interior aesthetic. Without proper system options, spaces like basements and movie rooms end up with poor airflow and uneven temperatures that cool air from upper floors cannot reach.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Installing VRF mini-split wall units
  2. 2
    Dropping soffits in the space
  3. 3
    Keeping basement bedroom windows open as an exhaust
  4. 4
    Placing a box fan at the top of the stairs pointing downward
  5. 5
    Using an additional fan in the living room for circulation
  6. 6
    Using multiple window units
  7. 7
    Running ceiling or box fans to push air into adjoining rooms
  8. 8
    Using portable heaters in the winter since heating is not an issue

In their words

Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.

“The house has no cooling or ventilation system, not even a vent hood over the range.”source ↗

“I'm worried that the plenum is not large enough to support a ducted system.”source ↗

“I hate the look of those wall mounted units and would really like to avoid them in the home if at all possible.”source ↗

Elijahtherabbit · r/hvacadvice · 1 upvotes

“Just moved into a new place (rental) with a swamp cooler, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to get more airflow into the basement.”source ↗

“The movie room especially gets very little airflow, and you can definitely tell it isn’t cooling as well as the main floor.”source ↗

“I’m wondering if there’s a good way to encourage more of that cool air to move down the stairs.”source ↗

skittleman55 · r/hvacadvice · 1 upvotes

“I currently use 3 window units in my home. 1 in living room, 1 in large open upstairs bedroom, and 1 in my dining room with a bedroom attached. Recently my power bill has skyrocketed.”source ↗

“The window unit for my dining room is in the attached bedroom. It keeps the bedroom cool but the dining room we still have to run fans to cool it.”source ↗

ProgressImmediate140 · r/hvacadvice · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

r/hvacadviceair conditioningairflowbasementcoolingenergy billshome improvementhome renovationhvac

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