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Ducting 2nd A/C Unit and adding vents
BLUF: I bought a 40 foot volante 365md. it comes stock with ine 15k unit that feeds a S track style duct system. There is also a 13.5k ac unit in the master bedroom that is ductless that just dumps.
Issue: this current setup only has two vents that feeds the living room, kitchen, dining room area. This just cant keep up in the texas heat. The bunk house has one but doesnt flow well but does ok. The one bedroom has one vent, but the 13.5k second unit can turn the bedroom into a meat locker.
Thoughts: I think a total of 18.5k cooling is adequete enough, but just not set up correctly. I need more flow in the living room from the 15k unit and the 13.5k needs to be able help cool the bathroom and bunk house.
Solution: I added 2 more vents in the living room. Very basic procedure, just daunting cutting holes im your ceiling. I dropped the lower unit and measured how far over the duct went, this gave me a good idea of where it was up front, and used the back vent to come up with a basic idea of where the duct ran. the Ducts are 8 inches wide and the hole would be around 5 inches, that gave me a pretty good margin of error (any machinists just read "3 inches of margin of error" and passed out lol") Used a 5 inch whole saw and cut into the existing ducts, add some foil hvac tape, added a vent and was done. Only real tip here is measure twice, measure 2 more times, then take a break, measure again and cut.
Next I pulled my 13.5k lower down and drilled a row of 1.5 inch holes into the side support, then used a vibrating flush cut saw to turn these into one rectangle hole that maches how the ducts looked in the living room ac. Uses aome foil to seal it off and make it pretty. The 13.5 can now be dumped into the bedroom or close it up partially and it flows well to the other small rooms up front.
I also built two diverter plates for each unit. The one on the 15k is a standars 50/50 split, the 13.5 takes abiut half the air and sends it to the duct, lets the other half flow to the dump. If u havent seen them before, they are just bent pieces if material that take the flow from the uppper diacharge and bends it towards the ducts versuses juat dumping in a box and pushing the air into the vents. Ive had good exoeriences with these in the past, and had wverything down already so why not
Future ideas: i want to cgnage the 13.5k lower to a ducted lower, this will require a control unit and a thermostat. This is for 2 reasons. 1. when using a thermostat, the fan will cut off when at temp, currently a dump system always runs the fan and just cy les the compressor. 2. i can open up my hole to the vent more, the current lower restricts my hole size.
I added pictures as well.
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