Are you wondering why certain places in your house are chilly while others are too warm? The common problem of uneven heating or cooling, and its frequent cause, unbalanced airflow, not only makes your home uncomfortable; it also can drive up your energy bill!. So how can you fix this problem? Simple; a few minor adjustments can improve the airflow and make your home comfortable all year long. This process is known as balancing airflow.
If your home has a forced-air HVAC system, and most U.S. homes do, conditioned air is generated by an A/C, heat pump or furnace, and then blown through your home via a duct system. Air is then returned to be reheated or cooled via return ducts that are part of the same system. Balancing airflow means changing the amount of air being pushed into different areas to meet your needs.
Balancing airflow can improve air quality in your home can save you money because it makes your HVAC equipment work more efficiently. When you’re trying to heat or cool your home with unbalanced airflow, your equipment has to work harder than necessary, thereby making it more expensive to run and shortening the life of the system.
A perfect example of a situation where balancing airflow will help is a room that gets intense sunlight through windows. You don’t require as much heat being pushed into that room in the winter as the sun is already warming it. Heated air can be redirected to other, cooler rooms in your house. In the same way, that sunny room will need more cool air pushed to it during the summer months. Makes sense right? And balancing airflow is simple. Just adjust the dampers on your vents, closing vents where less conditioned air is needed and opening them fully where you need more air. Adjust the vents occasionally to get the room temperatures where you want them. Balancing airflow in your home takes a little trial and error but is worth it in the long run.
With more than 40 years in the heating and cooling business, Mowery Heating, Cooling, and Plumbing has been dedicated to providing the highest quality total indoor comfort solutions to families and businesses in the Indianapolis area.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in Brownsburg, Indiana and surrounding areas about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems).
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
