We’ve all been in a house or building where every room is a different temperature. Often, these temperature differences are drastic. One room feels like it’s summer, while another room feels like it’s the middle of winter. It’s common for these temperature difference to be exasperated by older buildings, which tend to have drafty rooms and old, inefficient heating and air-conditioning systems.
Even newer buildings may have inefficient heating systems. Regardless of age, any building can have clogged ducts and/or a thermostat that isn’t located in a central location. When a thermostat is not in a central location and the house or building doesn’t have multiple zones, you may not get an accurate temperature reading of the building. However, the thermostat in that room controls the entire system, so the thermostat will turn the air on if that room is too hot and the heat on if that room is too cold. This can be a problem because it doesn’t take into account the temperature in the other rooms.
Multi-level homes and buildings make the problem worse because heat naturally rises and cool air sinks. If you have a multi-level home or work in a multi-level office building, you may feel like you need a bathing suit on the top floor and a winter coat under three blankets on the bottom floor.
This happens because the rooms closest to the heating and air conditioning system will receive a temperature close to an optimal one, while rooms at the end of the ducts will have less temperature control.
The weather also affects room temperature. Depending on the time of day, some rooms may feel warmer because the sun is beating down on them, especially if they have a lot of windows. Other rooms may get cold when it’s windy because there’s a draft.
The only real solution to this problem is to have a zoning system, which are becoming more common in office buildings and larger homes. If you would like to explore options to level out the temperature, L&M HVAC will be happy to help.