Venting for air-conditioners placed under raised deck with enclosed sides.

[SMS]

I own a rental townhouse in a complex where the builder did not put in A/C units. The location for the A/C units, for those that wanted them, is under a wooden deck that has about 5 feet of height underneath. The underside of the deck is enclosed on three sides with siding, and on the fourth side is the building.

The problem is that as people have added A/C units, they've cut openings of various sizes and shapes in the siding, and covered the openings with wire mesh. It looks terrible, and these homeowners will be paying for the replacement of the siding.

The question is how to replace the siding and how to include venting that is not unsightly. A long time ago we were having problems with moisture under the decks, and installed 24" high x18" wide aluminum vents in the siding, and painted them to match, and it looked fine, but these vents don't let in enough air, or let out enough exhaust, for an air conditioner, so whoever installed the air-conditioner removed them.

I was thinking of some large louvered vents made out of aluminum, like

24" high x 48: wide that we can paint to match, but I can't find anything like that. I can do three 24" x 18" side by side, on each side of the deck, but that is a lot more work.

I know that I can order custom extruded aluminum louvers in any dimensions, but I'd like to stick with standard products.

[Chris Hill]

Just remove the siding. Venting will never be good enough to allow ac units to be enclosed.

[Ed Pawlowski]

page 634 Up to 60 x 60

[HeyBub]

How about louvered siding? That is, the whole wall one giant louver? Made of wood.

[cshenk]

"SMS" wrote

How many units and how much time do you mind spending?

What I would do is prebuild (can be bought premade) several screens with the dark colored fine mesh material you use for window screens. I would actually make wood frames which you can pre-paint (using something fairly sturdy like 1x2 wood) then take the siding down and add L joint screw in brackets to the studs. Use a staple gun to add the polymer dark mesh at the backside (wont show, will be on the inside). Add siding and have it cut so you can just remove the screen panels to fix as needed and put them back up. (could use butterfly holders too but that would require you make a backing to hold it against).

To keep pets from damaging them, get fancy and use a trellis like wood overlay on the outer part with thin (usually 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick stuff). This would go on the front side and be painted to look like the siding and wood frame, or in contrast to the siding. (My house is almond-sand with dark brown trims, dark brown garage door and front door, and a dark brown sunroom). You can get that pre-made too but it's pretty simple to do yourself.

More expensive would be regular window screens where the screem material is laid in with thin rubber tubing in a tunnel to hold it in place. Thats faster to assemble at the start of the job if you have alot to do, but will take longer to rescreen when the time comes and will not keep a dog etc from going through it.