I never thought to check the direction of the registers, great idea! One issue we ran into with a single-zone system in our old townhouse was that the upstairs was always SO hot compared to the downstairs. One trick that helped a bit was to cover the air return downstairs with white poster board. The reason for this was that the A/C unit was located about 5 feet from the downstairs air return so when the A/C unit kicked on most of the air was pulled from the downstairs instead of upstairs (path of least resistance). So by covering up the downstairs air return it forced most of the hot air to be pulled from the *upstairs* air return. One other issue that contributes to high temps upstairs is keeping doors closed. It’s all about air flow in order to cool down the house and if you close all your doors during the day or while you sleep it severely decreases air flow and keeps the hot air trapped inside each room. We also installed an attic exhaust fan which contributed to the high temps upstairs.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on programmable thermostats. I see here that you set a program to fluctuate the temperature, but I’ve read some people that think it’s more efficient to leave the house at a constant temp to keep the A/C unit from having to work “overtime” when it needs to, say, drop the temperature from 78 to 72 when you get home from work. Just curious.

Thanks again, I’ll be adding this to my Google Reader feed list

http://lifehacker.com/software/diy/make-your-own-air-conditioner-181510.php

Cheers!
Sam
http://www.flipbrownguy.com

As for pine trees, being on the east coast I don’t want pine trees as I’ve seen way too many snap and land on houses and cars during hurricanes!

Thanks for dropping by!