Now, upon pulling the furnace filter out to wash it, I found myself looking straight down at the dirt between the house and garage slabs (we're slab-on-grade). There's no ducting. This means that intake air is drawn from our nice warm house, runs across the cold dirt and cement between the slabs, and is THEN drawn up into the furnace for heating, and returned to the house.
Um... now I'm pretty much a greenie at this handyman thing, but this doesn't seem quite right. Shouldn't there be duct there? Seems to me we're not only losing heat and making the furnace work a little harder (and we're in California, where the gas prices have gone completely nuts), but that means dirt and/or mold can get ****ed into our system and blown into the house.
Second question: If it is indeed wrong, can an HVAC person install that little duct section through the vent in the front hall, or are we talking about ripping out a piece of wall here?
(Actually, the front of the raised area where the furnace sits in the garage is done in wallboard - pulling that out wouldn't be so bad, I don't greatly care how it looks - it's just the added HVAC professional's time and materials cost I'm whining about.)
Thanks, all! And Happy Holidays!
