Problem: “One or two of the rooms will get uncomfortable during different parts of the day while the rest of the space stays relatively comfortable.”
I am sure we have all experienced this in our homes and/or places of business at one time or another. The most important thing to remember is that the only room that typically stays comfortable is the room where the thermostat is! If your thermostat is in a hallway, for instance, until the hallway heats up or cools down, the heating or cooling is not going to come on. When this happens the temperature in the rooms/areas furthest away, maybe facing east in the morning or west in the afternoon, will heat up or cool down without the thermostat being able to sense the change.
“What could I do that would help keep temperatures more even?”
If this is a place of business where there are multiple offices I would set the circulating fan to “continuous” during the occupied periods. In most cases, your thermostat will have a “Fan On/Auto” switch; set it to “On”. Most commercial type programmable thermostats have a feature built-in so the ‘fan’ can be programmed to operate continuously during the day and then return to ‘automatic’ at night. The action of the air constantly ‘stirring’ helps keep the temperature of the air more even by forcing neutral temperature air into rooms that are warming up or cooling down and then re-circulating that air through the air conditioning system. Now the thermostat can sense the ‘mixed’ air temperature and cycle the cooling or heating more appropriately.
If this is your home, operating the circulating blower continuously may be annoying, noisy or cause you to feel drafts and so on. There is also a possibility that relative humidity could rise as well.
We like to feel exceptional comfort while in our homes; controlling temperature and humidity is paramount where we live, sleep and raise our families.
Therefore my recommendations for your home are two-fold:
- Your thermostat should have a ‘fan circulate’ feature. This option is similar to the commercial thermostat above but with the exception that the fan is on a timer. It will ‘periodically’ turn the fan on and then back off after four to five minutes; stirring the air throughout all of the rooms in your home.
- To help keep control of humidity possibly rising, install an ‘A/C Enhancer’. It controls the fan functions and speed throughout the cooling cycles optimizing humidity removal during cooling cycles and also ensuring that the cooling coils can drain before the fan can resume operation.
There are other benefits of the fan operating periodically throughout the day as well; if you have a high-efficiency air filter or an Atmos Air System the air gets ‘treated’ more often. For more information on these and other products and services please visit our website or call us today at 798-8000 for a free in-home evaluation of your comfort needs.
