Wood floor return grilles
Our beloved vintage homes often suffer a pox on the house because of unsightly and usually damaged wood floor return grilles, often wood eggcrate variety featuring square or rectangular openings. These often weathered much abuse including heavy foot traffic, massive upright pianos being rolled over them, children leaping down the stairs on top of them and other indignities. The style common to the era is typically either referred to as eggcrate or grid and in the original incarnation is usually found with very loose or sloppy joints and held together with very unsubstantial nailing. Unfortunately, even the best of today's modern joinery requires for structural integrity the overall dimensions be no larger than about twelve by twelve inches. But most craftsman, Victorian, or colonial houses from yesteryear have openings that are much larger. However, we make these wood floor return grilles with welded steel support structures underneath optionally, an elegant solution to a very prickly problem faced by many homeowners.
Originally, the wood floor return grilles were flush with the surrounding hardwood flooring. However, once the floor is in place and after it has lived through a few refinishings it may be difficult to install that style, although we have those available. If that is your preference be sure to give us a call to discuss and note that we may need to see a photo of your situation in order to offer accurate advice. However, if you want to just take wood floor return grilles out of the box and drop them in the openings with a minimum of worrying about dimensions then the surface mount is preferable over the flush mount, and a little more affordable as well.
In assessing your particular situation you'll not only need to measure your duct opening very accurately, but also determine if the edge of your opening is closer than one inch to the nearest obstruction such a a baseboard. Importantly, make certain that the steel structure will be able to successfully project down into the opening one and a quarter inches without bumping into something. If these situations seem problematic there may be an easy way around it but you'll need to call us to discuss.
wood floor return grilles, eggcrate style
with welded steel support system
If your opening is over 12 inches square and is being used on the floor, then you'll need this solid welded steel framework that will provide support so you won't have to worry about people walking or standing on the grille. There are a lot of vintage houses with very large eggcrate grilles, usually broken. This is the perfect solution! Available on the rounded edges style.
Pricing: call for quote, but just for example a 12" by 12" opening would be $287.20
eggcrate return air grille
This common style of floor air return was popular during the heyday of gravity style coal fired heating system. Because of the lack of a fan heated air would rise or fall through the heat registers via the process of convection. As a result duct openings had to be much larger than the sizes we are typically familiar with today. When a duct opening is located on the floor it becomes problematic to provide a vent cover that is strong enough to support much weight as the duct opening size gets larger. One factor contributing to strength of the grille is the type of wood. Oak is generally a good choice, being a strong wood and one that works with a wood floor of similar material. Certainly that is much better than a soft wood like pine. Also, the quality of joinery is important. Eggcrate grid floor vents from back in the day often had very crude joints and did not even have glue in the joint to help out! Our joinery is on a complete other level and is made with highly calibrated machinery as well as glue joints. It is sufficient to support weight up to twelve inches. For dimensions above that we offer attached welded steel support structures (shown above), which extend the weight capacity to previously unknown heights. Furthermore, we offer surface mount as well as flush mount choices
wood air return duct openings
If you have not already done so, it is a good idea to clean out the duct opening. Masking off the area and giving the opening a light coat of flat black spray paint will go a long way to projecting a professional appearance as everything in the opening will recede into shadow.
