Discover the role of interior designers in determining the placement of air supply and returns in various spaces, including conference rooms and offices. Learn about the conventions and rules of thumb they use to ensure optimal air circulation and comfort for occupants.
Key Insights
- Interior designers play a pivotal role in determining the placement of air supply and returns within a room, taking into account aesthetics and furniture placement.
- A common convention is to place the air supply close to the outside wall or a window, allowing fresh air to circulate throughout the room before exiting on the interior side or near the door.
- While not engineers, interior designers use these rules of thumb to approximate air supply and return placements, with adjustments made by engineers based on the designers' plans.
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Did you know that even when a project has a professional engineer designing the heating and cooling system, that the interior designer still might be in charge of determining where the air supply and returns go? Why is that? That's because the interior designer has a holistic view of the project. They understand the aesthetics, where the furniture is placed. For example, they may not want an air conditioner supply to blow right on the occupant of the room.
Or maybe they do. And so that helps them decide where things go. But they need to kind of understand what the conventions are of supply and returns.
So let's zoom into the conference room, for example. The basics are, if we look at this X, that is a supply. That's kind of the universal sign for supply air.
That's air coming into the room. And the slash down here is the air coming out of the room. So they need to know that convention.
Also, they need to know a couple of rules of thumb. And the big one is that the supply typically happens on the far end of the room. And typically, the second kind of rule of thumb is closer to the outside wall or a window.
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So it brings in that fresh supply of air that lets it circulate through the room, and it often exits on the interior side or closer to the door. We have that going on in the conference room. Supply here, right by the window, and return over by the door.
Let's take a look at the restroom here. Same thing. We've got the supply right here, kind of closer to the outside wall, and the return over by the door.
Let's go ahead and think about this a little bit for our offices. Let's grab this supply, copy it, and let's bring it in. Where do you want to put it? Here is the office, and we know the junior executive is sitting right here.
Maybe we don't want the air to blow directly on them. So let's place this right there next to that light on the left side. And let's go ahead and move that office label from right here over to right here.
That looks pretty good. And now we want that return. Where does the air come out of the room? Let's go ahead and grab this return, copy it, and bring it over.
Now we could have it right up here by the door, and that would meet that kind of rule of thumb that is kind of closer to the interior, closer to the door, but then we're not getting air across the room. So let's put it in this top corner here. Click, and now the air can go from one corner to the other, and we'll get a better feeling and better movement of air in the room.
Now we're not engineers, but knowing a couple of those things will help us determine where these go. And of course the engineer will get our plans and make their comments and maybe make some changes, but at least we'll be close in the range where we want to be. Now let's go ahead and do the same.
We'll copy this supply return over to the executive office, and that executive is going to be sitting maybe over here. So let's put that supply kind of right here. So it's in front of the window, but not directly blowing on that executive.
And now we were going to go ahead and grab that return, copy. Here's our return air, and we'll put it up here kind of close to the door, and they're diagonal from each other to kind of pull the air through the room.
