On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:40:43 -0700, Harry K
wrote:

On Jul 11, 12:10 pm, mm wrote:
On Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:43:22 -0400, mm
wrote:



However, the second and most important reason why there are not cold
air returns in the basement is one of safety.

The ONLY cold air return is my house is in my basement. The basement

I was wrong about this. There is an air return 2 1/2 floors directly
above the one near the basement floor. (for heating and cooling, if in
practice it works that way.) Both grills are in the stairwell, one
near the ceiling on the second floor and the other near the floor in
the triangular space below the top half of the basement stairs.
...

Not an HVAC specialist but that sounds wierd to me. Just 'shade-
treeing' it I would think only the bottom one would be effective
(coolest air and nearest the furnace) as it would be the easiest air
to move.

Yes, it seems that way to me too, and in my last poast I was going to
start in on theorizing like you're doing when I remembered that when I
removed the grill for painting a few years ago, it was dirty.

So I just got up now and the new one, which is taller than it is wide
and goes from about 5'6" to just short of the 8 foot ceiling, is dirty
too, and almost the same amount of dirty everywhere. Even nearest the
ceiling was about as dirty as 2 feet below that.

It is obviously being used during the heating season, and for all I
know during AC use too.

Harry K