# Finishing basement: HVAC advice



## mknope (Jan 31, 2015)

Hello everyone, I'm new to these forums and I'm hoping someone can give me some advice or direction with finishing my basement.

I'm trying to maximize ceiling height as much as possible but some of the air ducts hang down and prevent me from raising the drop ceiling as high as I'd like. 

The first three pictures are of the crawl space. As you can see the previous homeowners built a box to support the duct tubing that goes into the crawl space. I'd like to completely eliminate the box. I don't know what kind of options I have here. Does the duct tubing need to have such a large diameter?

The last three pictures are of the ceiling in the main part of the basement. Are there different duct pieces that I can get that are more low profile?

As I mentioned before, I'm trying to raise the drop ceiling as high as I can. If anyone could give me some direction, I'd greatly appreciate it!


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## kok328 (Feb 1, 2015)

Welcome to the forum. 
IMO what you have is as good as it's going to get in terms of clearance.


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## schlich (Feb 1, 2015)

kok is right nothing you can do. and welcome to the group


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## nealtw (Feb 1, 2015)

Welcome to the site. With everything going on here the dropped ceiling is the right choice
The first 3 pictures deal with the drop to hide the pipes, he had attempted to build a drop, I idea, wrong consturction. But when built properly thay should be drywalled and the the ceiling can go in with min. drop. This is normal in most basements. He has done a better job of the drops on pictures 4 and 5 and that should be drywalled too.
Picture 6. I think you just drop the ceiling low enough for that on. but right beside that you have a section of floor that has be lowered and the joists are 2x4. Take some pictures of that and tell us what that's about if you know.


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## slownsteady (Feb 2, 2015)

I was thinking that you could switch to a rectangular duct that has a lower profile, but I wonder if you could save enough space to be worth the trouble. Maybe the pros can weigh in on this.


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## nealtw (Feb 2, 2015)

You would like to get all the drops so they are more than 80 inches from the floor after the drywall.


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## frodo (Feb 4, 2015)

you can switch to a lower profile  duct.  as long as its wider

same sq inch's.


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