Bedroom Ventilation

[John Chenoweth]

Are there Federal or State regulations that prohibit installing grills in bedroom doors of manufactured housing to improve air circulation and ventilation? The situation is actually several manufactured housing units that are linked together for living/sleeping quarters at a remote job site. I know that people generally recommend sleeping with bedroom doors closed, so "venting" the doors would defeat that safety control, but I am mainly interested if "closed doors" is just a best practice or actually specified by law. Thanks.

[Mac]

Most manufactured housing HAS a grill above the door or some other ventilation, to allow return airflow from forced air into the room. You should be able to get that stock.

[Roy Bonney]

This is covered in code section 3280.715. The purpose of the vent is to provide the required return air for the heating system. The vent thru the door is code compliant, as is undercutting the doors. If you would like to read the code section, go to www.huduser.org, for more info.

[Bill Fry]

Its strange that MF housing is the only type
of housing with this code requirement.I have removed this 'vents' from numerous MF homes at the request of the home owners.Undercut doors and or over door vents may help air circulation but they also bring in light,noise and reduce privacy to bedrooms.

[Mike]

Why is it that site built homes do not "need" this vent and MH do? Is there any "real" reason?

[Roy Bonney]

Every heating system has to have "return air". The method of getting this air to the furnace can be different. In most stick built homes, it is routed thru an additional return air duct, but this then requires not only another duct system, but another floor register in each room. In some stick built, the floor cavity is used as the return duct, this of course is not practical in manufactured housing, as the floor cavity has the bottom board for its base. Failure to reheat the air from each location, leaves dead areas in the home, increases both the heating and cooling expense, and can create moisture issues in those dead areas. Most manufactured homes utilize a return grille above the furnace, the air thru out the home is then pulled by the circulating motor from within the home, then back thru the heating system to be reheated.

[Bill Fry]

Actually you do not "need" these vents.All you need to do is not leave your bedroom/bath doors shut 24/7.Anybody knows you leave doors shut all the time in any home it gets stuffy.In my experience with single story stick built there is usually one return air duct located somewhere in the central section of the home.
I rarely see individual floor returns in every room even in three and four story new construction dwellings.I have seen them in older homes but nothing going up these days.Thats simply not needed all though I'm sure it exists in some applications. A grill over the furnace\AC blower to pull in air does the same thing.HUD codes address a lot of things.
Unfortunely for folks with those ridiclous
undercut bathroom and bedroom doors this is one of them. I can guarantee you the folks who dreamt that one up don't have them in their home.I for one wish the HUD code would address things of more inportance such as standard building codes and or materials.HUD code is a federal mandated code so that should pretty well sum up its weakness.