Uneven cooling can cause uncomfortable temperatures throughout your home. Air conditioning and heating is often uneven in a two-story home, as it is difficult to keep each floor of a multi-story home at the same temperature using a single air conditioner and HVAC system thermostat. If the cooling in your home is inconsistent, there could be issues with your ductwork such as leaks in the air ducts, insufficient insulation in areas of your home, dirty filters in your HVAC unit, or blocked vents that prevent your central air conditioning unit from distributing cold air in a certain room or area of the house and redirect it elsewhere.
Don’t suffer throughout the summer with hot rooms upstairs and rooms that are too cold downstairs. Williams Comfort Air shares tips to better control your central air conditioning system for even cooling in your home. Solve uneven home comfort and cool your home evenly when you address problem areas throughout the house and use professional HVAC services such as heating and cooling maintenance and repairs, sealing service for leaky ducts, or installation of a zoning system to achieve better air conditioning and heating control with your existing central air heating air conditioning system.
There may be uneven cooling in your home for many different reasons. Home and HVAC system problems that lead to uneven home temperatures include:
Blocked Vents: Rooms that are hot may not receive enough cold air because vents are blocked by furniture, rugs, and other household items, or the louvers of the vent cover are closed. When cool air travels through supply ducts to a room in your home, a blocked vent will redirect that cool air to other surrounding areas with an open vent. Closed or blocked vents cause some rooms to feel hot while others feel too cool because they receive too much air conditioning.
Ductwork Leaks: Leaks in the supply ducts cause uneven cooling from your air conditioner in the areas of your home these ducts serve. Cool air made by the air conditioner escapes through loose connections and damaged air ducts, so it never reaches the intended area of your home. Hot air can also enter air ducts through leaks, adding heat to the area supplied by the duct.
Poor Insulation: If your attic does not have enough insulation, it will be difficult to manage the temperature across your house. Heat rises, and if the attic insulation doesn’t form a sufficient barrier to hold cooling energy in, cold air is lost right out your attic and roof which causes comfort problems on each floor of the house.
Dirty HVAC Filters: When system filters become clogged and dirty, they restrict free air moving through the heating air conditioning system. When the fan cannot move enough air through the system, some rooms and areas of the house feel hotter while others remain cool.
Air Conditioning Short Cycling: When the cooling cycle doesn’t last as long as it should, the air conditioner doesn’t produce enough cool air to effectively control the temperature across the home. An air conditioner that runs a short cooling cycle repeatedly wastes energy and sustains damage as it causes uneven home comfort.
Old Air Conditioner: Uneven cooling is a top sign your central air conditioning unit needs to be replaced. As the equipment ages, capacity is lost. A room on any floor that sits far away from the air conditioning equipment will not receive adequate cool air while a room that is closer experiences better comfort control.
A two-story or multi-story home naturally experiences difficulties with uneven cooling as heat rises from the first floor to levels above. Upstairs will always have more heat than downstairs. Most older air conditioning systems aren’t equipped to control the differing comfort needs of homes larger than a single level, as specialized zoning system equipment is needed.
If your family suffers from unbalanced cooling in your home, the tips below help you solve the issues impacting your air conditioner’s ability to keep the whole house comfortable.
Eliminate supply vent blockages. Doing so allows free air movement through the ductwork into each room of your house. Inspect every vent in each room – remove furniture and other items covering the vent and check the vent cover to verify louvers are open and air flows free.
The system fan is controlled by the thermostat and is usually set on AUTO, which allows the fan to run only during cooling cycles. Switch the fan setting from AUTO to ON, which causes the fan to run continually. Using the ON setting instead of the AUTO fan setting keeps air circulating across the living areas at all times for better management of temperatures.
Call your heating air conditioning professional to schedule ductwork sealing services. Sealing closes points of air leakage in ducts throughout your attic and other areas. Cold air will be held in and flow into the intended area and hot air from the attic is kept out to manage air temperature going into your living spaces.
Help your home maintain even cooling when you increase insulation in your attic and in other problem areas. Assess the R-value of current insulation levels and add insulating material where deficiencies are noted. Adding insulation at your address increases overall energy efficiency of the structure.
Practice good maintenance for your air conditioner and replace dirty filters as needed. A clean filter allows free airflow through the central air conditioning equipment to keep living areas supplied with ample cool air.
If your air conditioner is short cycling, call for professional repair service. A professional technician is able to inspect your heating and cooling equipment to find the cause of shortened cooling cycles. When repair service is complete, cooling cycles run at the correct length to provide the proper amount of conditioned air each time.
Call your heating and air professional to add a zoning system and solve the issue of hot upstairs areas and cold downstairs spaces. When a zoning control unit is added, your AC unit can be used to send more or less cooled air to individual areas of the structure. A thermostat is installed in each area to manage temperatures in that space without increasing or decreasing cold air to other areas. When you set the thermostat temperature in one space, the thermostat communicates with your AC unit, the fan, and dampers installed within the home’s ductwork to redirect cool, conditioned air to that space alone. With zoning, it’s easy to add more cooled air only where you need it to keep comfort levels even across the whole address.
If your older AC equipment is causing uneven home comfort, replacement is the only way to correct this issue. Installation service equips your address with an efficient AC system and fan to deliver consistent cooled air across the entire home.
Williams Comfort Air helps Indianapolis area homeowners implement the tips above for better indoor comfort. For duct sealing, AC repair, AC maintenance, and AC installation service, call us today.