Have you ever walked around your home and noticed hot and cold spots happening? This sort of uneven cooling can be very frustrating. You might find that your favorite room in the house is blazing hot while a random hallway you never use is icy cold. If you have uneven cooling, you don’t just have to accept it. This is often a very straightforward HVAC problem to fix. Here are some ways that General Air Conditioning & Plumbing can help you address uneven cooling.
Understanding Uneven Cooling
Before you can tackle your uneven cooling problem, it’s useful to know a little about why this issue happens. Standard residential air conditioners are not capable of blowing air out of their vents at different temperatures. Instead, their ability to control temperature is based on the amount of time they run and the amount of cooled air they produce. They then spread this air throughout your house with a system of blower motors and air ducts.
This means that uneven cooling usually happens because your AC isn’t running the appropriate amount of time or properly dispersing air in your home. Furthermore, you can run into issues when your air conditioning system isn’t designed properly for your house. Therefore, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to uneven cooling. You can potentially have multiple issues working together that make your home so uncomfortable.
Identifying the Cause of Your Uneven Cooling
If you’ve noticed hot and cold spots in your house, it’s worth taking a closer look. Here are some common causes of uneven cooling that you need to keep an eye out for.
Drafts in Your House
Are you feeling hot spots near certain windows or doorways? Sometimes, the warm areas in your house aren’t due to your AC system at all. They can be caused by small gaps around windows or doors that are letting hot air in. If your home isn’t airtight enough, your AC cannot cool certain areas no matter how long it runs.
Blocked AC Vents
Another useful thing to do is take a good look at all your AC vents. Make sure none of them are covered by the back of a sofa, a rug, or other home furnishings. You should also check to see whether you can feel cold air blowing from them and see if any of them have accidentally been closed. If you have a blocked AC vent, parts of your house will be hot because your system cannot deliver air to it.
Poorly Placed HVAC Vents
Checking HVAC vent placement requires some complex knowledge of how AC systems work, but just looking at your vent design can provide some helpful clues about what your problem might be. Have you noticed that the room that is always hot doesn’t have an HVAC supply vent? Is the room that is always cold missing any big return vents to send cold air back into your system? These sorts of design mistakes can cause cold air to pool in certain areas of the house while others get neglected.
Excessive Sun Exposure
Make sure you don’t overlook the sun’s role in uneven heating. Even the best AC will need to do a lot of work to combat direct sun exposure for hours. If you have a sunny part of your house, it’s common for it to feel a bit warmer in these rooms.
Poorly Placed Thermostats
Your thermostat plays a big role in regulating temperatures. If it’s reading a temperature that doesn’t accurately reflect the rest of the house, you can run into issues. For example, if your thermostat is in the kitchen, it might think the house is hotter than it really is and make the AC unit run for so long that the other rooms of the house end up feeling too cold.
Leaky Air Ducts
Does air from one vent feel significantly warmer than air from other vents? This can be a sign that one of your air ducts is leaking. Any gaps in your ducts let treated air escape into your attic and walls, so the areas serviced by that duct won’t feel as cool as the rest of your house.
Short Cycling HVAC Units
Short cycling is one of the most common causes of uneven cooling. It occurs when your AC system is too big for your house. The powerful AC system will dump a lot of cold air into your house too quickly, trick the thermostat into thinking the house is cool, and then shut off before it can properly mix all the hot and cold air in your house into an even temperature. Usually, you’ll be able to recognize this issue because your AC unit will switch on and off too frequently.
Undersized HVAC Units
Just like an oversized unit, an undersized one can cause problems. If your AC unit is too small for your house, it will run almost nonstop. This can cause pools of cold air to collect in certain ducts close to the AC, but no matter how long it runs, it cannot cool down the farther corners of your home.
How to Address Uneven Cooling
When you’re dealing with uneven cooling, there are a few things you can do to troubleshoot the problem. If it’s a minor issue, you might be able to find it simply by examining your home’s AC system and doing something simple like opening a vent wider. Here are some simple adjustments you can try that may potentially solve one of your hot or cold spots:
- Opening or closing some of your AC vents
- Adding blackout curtains to sunny windows
- Changing your AC filters
- Planting shady greenery around your house
- Removing furniture that’s in front of your vents
- Sealing up drafts around windows or doors
However, keep in mind that the majority of uneven cooling issues are caused by a mismatch between your home and your HVAC system. This means you can’t solve them just by changing how your home goods are arranged. If you want to truly eliminate your uneven cooling problems, you’ll need to have professionals assess and alter your air conditioner.
When we have clients with hot and cold spots, the first thing our HVAC technicians will do is examine their homes carefully. We’ll pinpoint the reason for the uneven cooling and then help you address it. In some cases, you might just need repairs to something like a blower motor or a torn AC duct.
In other situations, you might want us to help you design a system that cools your home more effectively. For example, if your uneven cooling is due to all your cold air getting trapped in one hallway, we might recommend adding an extra return vent to get that cold air circulating again. In situations with extremely uneven cooling, we might even suggest installing a new AC or adding zoned cooling.
When you’re ready to start the process of addressing your home’s uneven air problems, turn to General Air Conditioning & Plumbing of Palm Springs. We have decades of experience helping people cool their homes. Coachella Valley residents turn to us whenever they want a convenient HVAC experience with high-quality service. To learn more about our AC repairs and installations, call General Air Conditioning & Plumbing today.
