Incorporating basement air into HVAC system

[rslaback]

I live in a single story ranch home with a completely finished basement. The basement is accessed by an open stairwell in the living room. The majority of the heat of the basement comes from a couple of electric wall heaters but there are also two ceiling mounted drops in the open family room area at the bottom of the steps.

The first floor thermostat is set at 74 degrees and it is comfortable until you go to the basement and then walk up the stairs. I originally thought I had a humidity issue so I did some testing and the humidity is identical at 45% on both floors. The difference is just temperature with the basement sitting naturally around 67 to 68 degrees.

I would like to incorporate some of that cooler air into the HVAC system for upstairs but there are no air returns in the basement, just those two drops. I'm thinking that if I were to add even a vent to the return air side of the furnace in the furnace room that I might see some gain but I am looking for suggestions on how to mix up the air in our home.

 

[PCustoms]

Where is your return air?

Is there any door between basement and upstairs?

 

[rslaback]

Where is your return air?

Is there any door between basement and upstairs?

There is a return in every room upstairs and a large one in the hallway upstairs. Those all duct into a center chase and get pulled to the basement utility room.

There is no door between the levels.

 

[HoosierBuddy]

All I can add is that my furnace is in my basement. The basement has a couple of vents feeding conditioned air in. There IS a vent installed on the return air plenum (this is the only return air directly from the basement). I leave it cracked to drag some air out of the basement. If it was wide open, it would pull way too much air from there and the detriment of the rest of the house.

My basement is also cooler than the main level, but it's unfinished other than my weight room, and I like it cooler there anyway.

Seems to work fine. I certainly don't need any extra heaters down there to keep it comfortable.

 

[Brandon_oma#692]

My old house had 1 giant return in the hallway just above the furnace. Nothing else. The first summer I took that ducting off the furnace to pull basement air in. Furnace fan runs a lot in the summer. Not the correct way, but kept the house cooler. I also added another filter as it seemed to restrict the flow even with a new plain filter. Coming up on 17 years later it is still the same. I need to pull new thermostat wire thru the wall so the thermostat can just be on fan on. My Mom asked me to come over this weekend and switch the fan on for the summer for her.

 

[75gmck25]

When I last had a forced air heating system it was located in the finished basement. There was a large return air vent at the basement level, and another one in the hallway above. It worked fairly well to keep the temps close to the same on both floor.

If you have a way to run ducting across the basement I would install multiple return vents in the basement, run them back to a central point in the basement, and then connect that main basement return to the furnace.