Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - cold air returns

We just moved to Texas and bought a brand new two story house. There are only two cold air returns. One in the living room and one in the uupstairs hall. In Iowa, we had cold air returns in ever room. We are having a lot of trouble cooling the upstairs. How many cold air returns are needed? Douglas BT

Cold air returns explicitly implies they take in cold air. If we apply this to your situation an example of this would be a paper cup with water in it. If you punched two holes in the cup, one near the bottom of the cup and the other in the middle of the cup, the water would drop to the lowest possible level. The water represents the cool air in the home because cool air drops just like water and the holes represent the cold air returns. Hot air rises and you can blow cool air at the ceiling all day, which one will drop to your cold air returns, the hot air or the cool air? This accounts for your difficulty to cool the upstairs. If you would like to know more concerning this, click on the little red house icon at the bottom of this message and read topic "Combination".