Hi I started a new thread on this subject as there was a discussion on the 'General Thread' some time go when I asked people if they were interested in buying 'shut off vents' for the A/C system. This is because its a shame that we are heating/cooling rooms when no-one is staying there. The vented systems and the outlets in the rooms from the Fadesa systems, were permanently open. These are the 'pre-installed A/C systems.


This incurs costs (and wastage) when, say, a bedroom wasnt used. I tried to find a vent with a little lever that I could use to just shut it off.

No luck so far....

but...

we've had problems and the engineers have come to fix the problem, and at one point we took out the vent...

Surprise surprise there is a shut off system built in!!! Its far more than a grill on a wall... its a 'cassette' which has a very simple set of vanes that move together to close it off, push one and they all move to open/close.

Just gently pry off the vent, with a screwdriver, and pull it out and its easy to do it.


Why the manufactures didnt put a simple lever here - beats me! I am sure that most people wouldnt know this .... and its also stupid to have this action that no-one uses. Better to have 2 models a simple grill (already there) or one including the mechanism with a simple lever. They could make more money this way!!!! Whats the number for Dragons Den!

We have shut off the 2 bedrooms, saving energy - and the living room therefore has a faster flow of warm air and so heats up much quicker too.....

We have a 3 bed place and already had a split system with a separate A/C in the main bedroom, so that we didnt need to heat/cool the whole place when we are here just the 2 of us. Now with a bit of messing about taking off the vents we can close thh bedroom doors and save money AND heat/cool faster when its just us 2 here......

Im thinking about devising something that allows me to open/close the vanes without having to pull out the 'cassette' each time.

Regards
Jon

Hi John, just a quick thought is it possible that by shutting off the ventillation to the 2 spare bedrooms you could be encouraging mould and or damp to those rooms. Regards Bryony

Good point, Bryony, we'll have to check regularly. Hopefully all will be OK as we havent had damp when we have left the flat empty... although my wife did notice that there was some damp on the cold floors last year..... quickly gone once the heat was on. Maybe we will open vents for the first couple of days

Thanks
Jon

Good post - has irritated me when there has only been the 2 of us and we are putting aircon into 3 bedrooms. I remember your info some time ago about vents you could buy and kept thinking about doing that but now you have shared that advice we can forget about it. Waiting for the next installment so we can learn how to access/ control the vent easily - good on yer Jon !!

Can you not just push the vents closed without removing the cassette from the wall? (Like the vents in a car?)

Hi you can do that - but its not a good 'seal' - best to simply prise off the vent - cassette with a screwdriver and close the vanes at the back.... its only a 2 minute job. However I can see myself coming up with a Heath Robinson' fix with some cord and a couple of holes at the front........

We looked into this a while back and was hoping to find some sort of cover to go over the vents in the rooms we were not using. However we were told by a plumber friend that doing this would restrict the "even" intake and output of the air and cause the aircon unit to overload itself and would probably use more energy than normal? This put us off, but if you are not experiencing any problems, we may look into this again?

Jon, our vents are White with a fixed one for intake and an output which you can alter the fins on to change the airflow direction. Does this sound like the same as yours?

I don't think so if you close the in coming vent to restrict warm air and leave the out vent open. Your room is not sealed so air will come in to balance any air lost and that should also help to remove any dampness and stale air smell thus combating to some degree mold. All round a good solution as the bank manager says Perfek

Hi John and Lynn

It sounds like we have the same vents.... I suspect Fadesa got a 'job lot'.

I had the A/C installers over last week to fix a problem with the AC and it was only then that I found out that the vents had this built in system. Ive posted before looking for easy shut off vents - as I planned to replace them.

However - even though the design is bad - we already have that facility and its easy to gently pry off the units and open/shut them.

Re overloading the system, the engineer told me it wasnt a problem, to have several vents shut off - and have all the air squirting out of fewer vents. I hope he is right!

I will say that the living room heats up very quickly now....


Good luck
Jon