oh hai guyz! I'm a total HVAC newb, so I'd love some input from someone who knows more about this stuff.
My HVAC is sucking in exterior smells. Like if a skunk walks through my yard, or the neighbors have friends over who smoke, or if there's forest fire smoke in the air. That smell gets sucked in and distributed around my house immediately. It's bad.
The house was built in 2008 or so and it's a "mid" efficiency furnace I think. Not High anyway, vents out conventional chimney in roof not side wall. I run the furnace fan 24/7 to help even out the temperatures in my house, because it's 2 stories and if I don't the back bedrooms get scorching hot in the summer, and stay quite cool in the winter. So, I run that furnace fan 24/7.
I leave my ventilation fan, that one that sucks from cold air return and exhausts outside OFF all the time.
My furnace has two fresh air intakes. One that goes to the side of the furnace and is open and another that goes directly to the cold air return side of the furnace. after investigating these two intakes, it's clear the one that goes to the cold air side of the furnace is sucking in quite a bit of air.
So, I want to continue to run the furnace fan 24/7 to keep house temps even, but I want that one intake to draw in less/no fresh air. Can I shut it down without causing a big issue? Will that somehow mess up the air balance in my house or something? Have I been explaining this well?
Here's the two air intakes because I know people love pictures.