Is your A/C or heat working as intended on one floor of your home, but not the other? Or are you noticing a temperature imbalance between rooms?
No matter what the uneven heating and cooling situation looks like, it’s extremely annoying to need a tank top in one part of your house, and a winter coat in another! But don’t fear. We have some quick fixes that will (usually) do the trick!
Room Too Hot/Cold
If your issue is a stubbornly hot or cold room, the first place you should check is the vents! And yes, we know that asking you whether your vents are open is the HVAC equivalent to being asked, “Did you try turning it off and back on again?”
But we’re not asking whether the vent is open; we’re asking whether it’s blocked. The culprit could be a piece of furniture, or by dust and dirt. Be sure to vacuum out vents regularly, especially because allergens from pollen to pet dander can circulate through your home.
If the vents are clean (and you’re offended by our suggestion that they weren’t!), and if your house is hot upstairs and cold downstairs, try partly closing the vents on the first floor. This will force more air to the second floor. Don’t close all of them, though, because this can create too much air pressure in the ducts.
Also, keep this in mind: Openings/leaks around doors and windows could cause a single room to be too hot or too cold.
Most of House Too Hot/Cold
OK, but what if the majority of the home is too hot or cold, but you know your HVAC system is still working?
If most of the home is too hot, try changing your thermostat settings. If you have the fan set to “auto,” then the fan will of course turn on and off in cycles. This may not be sufficient if you’re having issues with uneven cooling. To keep the air moving, set your fan to “On.”
If your home is too cold in some spots, your issue could be a dirty furnace filter or even a furnace that’s too small…or too big! Yes, if your HVAC technician wasn’t an expert, unlike the techs at Weather Master, they may have installed an inadequate furnace. If the furnace is too big, ironically it may not stay on for long enough to heat your home evenly.
Installing a Zoned System
Speaking of our techs, they have another potential solution for you to restore heating and cooling evenness: to install what’s called a zoned system.
This means that different areas of your house are separately controlled by their own thermostats. Valves in your ducts are electronically opened and closed to allow more or less heated/cooled air through. Pretty savvy, right?
The techs at Weather Master install zoning systems all the time. We’re installing even more now that the temperature swings back and forth in the fall here in North Carolina! We use the Harmony III™ system. This monitors both temperature and humidity so that your home can be completely consistent…or, so that you can set different areas of your Raleigh, NC area home to different temperatures!