If your home isn’t evenly comfortable throughout, you’re in good company. Many homes have hot and cold spots due to a number of design and aging factors. Instead of managing the discomfort by layering your clothing, you might find solutions by assessing the situation and adapting your HVAC system to the conditions unique to your home.
Common Causes of Uneven Temperatures
Two-story homes can be particularly challenging, since heat rises, and homes with uneven solar exposure have daily thermal variations. Areas with leaky doorframes or windows contribute to disparate temperatures, and the placement of the thermostat affects the comfort in rooms distant from its location, especially in larger, sprawling homes.
How to Fix the Problems
- Evaluate your home for its sunlight exposure. Unequal distribution of windows causes heat gain or loss. Thermal windows, insulating window coverings, or reflective window films can help ease unequal temperatures throughout.
- Seal leaky window frames with caulk and check the windows themselves for a tight fit. Fresh weather stripping on exterior doors slows air leaks, and draft blockers at their base stop-air infiltration. Expanding foam can seal places where pipes and wires enter your home.
- Sprawling and two-story homes almost always benefit from a zoned HVAC system to eliminate hot and cold spots. HVAC experts divide the home into zones and install duct dampers that open and close based on the need for conditioned air. Each zone has its own thermostat that connects to a central control panel that sends the heated or cooled air just to the zones that need it.
Zoning a home immediately improves comfort and lowers energy bills because you won’t need to condition your entire home to keep a single space comfortable. It’s far better to install a zoning system than alter the temperatures of rooms by closing the supply and return registers, something that will adversely affect the ductwork and mechanical components of the HVAC system.
The pros at Roth Heating & Cooling can help you identify ways to solve the hot and cold spots throughout your home. We’ve provided outstanding HVAC services for Portland-area homeowners since 1976.
