It goes without saying that there is a certain standard by which you hold your home’s heating system—you want it to offer your household enough warmth to raise the indoor temperature to a comfortable level. After all, that’s what your heater is for, right?
But the amount of heat is just the beginning. Providing adequate comfort to a house requires moving the heat around to different rooms via the ductwork attached to it. If some rooms are getting too warm while others feel like meat lockers, it’s called uneven heating, and it’s not something you should settle for. Unfortunately, it is a fairly common problem that homeowners encounter, and it almost always calls for professional heating repair in Leesburg VA.
Why Does Uneven Heating Occur?
There are several possible reasons this might be happening. We’ve explored a few below.
Broken Zone Control: Do you have a zone control system in place? This is a system that incorporates dampers in your air ducts so that you can individually control how much heat or cooling reaches each room independently. If one room seems colder than it should be when you have your heater on, it may be that one of the dampers in the ductwork is stuck closed.
It may also be that one of the local thermostats is miscalibrated or malfunctioning in some way. Our professionals are happy to take a look into your system and see what’s gone amiss.
Breached Ductwork: This is actually a more common problem, and very likely what you’re dealing with. That’s right, it might not be a problem with the actual heater itself but rather the ducts. Up to 30% of the conditioned air you’re paying for that’s moving through your ventilation system can be lost through duct leaks.
In this case, you’ll not only receive uneven heating, but you’ll pay extra to heat air that you’re not even enjoying. Fortunately, our technicians can handle duct repairs and duct sealing to get your ventilation system back in good shape!
Clogged Air Filter: We have some good news about this one—it’s a problem you can fix on your own! The air filter in your furnace or heat pump collects dust, dirt, and other debris over time. And when it gets blocked up with all of this, it will restrict airflow, keeping heated air trapped in your system and ducts.
Less airflow causes uneven heating, with the rooms furthest away receiving the least amount of heat. We recommend that, depending on the type of filter you have and the level of contaminants in your home, that you change out your air filter for a clean one every 1-3 months during periods of HVAC use.
Short-Cycling: Short cycling describes when your furnace or heat pump starts up and shuts off in rapid succession before it can complete a full heating cycle. There are many reasons why this might happen, but the result of it is that the heater won’t run long enough to distribute warmth evenly throughout the house.
This symptom is one you can detect just by listening, so if you do hear this rapid turning on and off of your system, be sure to contact our pros. We’ll get to the root of your short-cycling problem and recommend repairs that can not only improve the efficiency of your heater but also solve your uneven heating problem!