Air balancing – Tips to help balance temperatures in your home

An unexpected cold spot in your home in the depths of winter is not necessarily a sign that your house is haunted – you might just need to follow some of our air balancing tips.

It can be incredibly efficient to use air conditioners for heating your home, as they circulate warm air much more effectively than most traditional methods of central heating like wall-mounted radiators.

Equally in the summer, the active air conditioning blowing cool air around your property can help to reduce hot spots.

But there are still a few things you can do to avoid hot and cold spots in your home, whatever the weather is doing outside.

Air balancing tips for aircon owners

If you have an air conditioning system already installed:

·      Adjust the vents to change the direction of the air output and target any awkward spots in the room.

·      If you have a separate upstairs thermostat, set it slightly higher as warm air tends to rise and a small differential is to be expected.

·      Keep your aircon well maintained, with clean filters, so it works as efficiently as possible when circulating the air.

In general, air conditioning systems should be more effective at tackling hot and cold spots as they circulate air of the desired temperature actively, rather than relying on convection currents of warm air to get it around the room.

If you don’t have central air conditioning

If you’re still working with more passive systems like radiators, there are still some things you can do:

·      Pay attention to where the cold and hot spots are and try to spot any draughts that may be causing them.

·      In summer, keep windows closed in the hottest part of the day; in winter, keep them closed when it’s coldest outside.

·      Heat your entire home evenly. A lot of cost-cutting advice says to only heat the room you’re in, but this gives you uneven temperatures and risks a humidity or damp problem in your less frequently used rooms.

Finally, make good use of everything at your disposal e.g. close blinds in summer when the sun is directly on your windows, and close curtains in winter to keep warm air in.

If you don’t find your home comfortable, consider air conditioning. It gives you much closer control over the temperature of your rooms and can tackle other aspects of air quality too, and it’s much more cost-effective than many people realise.