Are there some rooms in your home that always seem several degrees warmer than the rest of the house? Rooms upstairs and those facing the sun throughout the day usually get it the worst. In the HVAC industry, we actually have a term for those rooms: hot spots.
A basic air conditioning system won’t immediately fix hot spots, which can be frustrating. The last thing you want to do, though, is lower the AC further to try and beat the heat in those rooms. It’ll probably work, but now the other rooms in the house will be way too cold. Plus, you simply shouldn’t have to use more energy than you really want to.
There are two solutions for hot spots, one for each type of air conditioning setup: Duct and ductless systems.
Whether or not you have a duct system with your AC is the crucial factor in how you’re going to approach hot spots.
Duct Systems
These can include both central air conditioners and heat pump systems.
Duct systems are designed to transport cool air to the entire home, feeding air to each room individually through the use of vents. The problem, however, is that this is an “all-or-nothing” approach. There’s no way to tell the AC system to only cool certain rooms. In fact, trying to block the vents from some rooms by physically obstructing it will only create efficiency issues, so that’s not recommended.
However, there is a solution, and it’s the zone control system. These systems effectively modify your existing AC system with some added hardware to make individual room control possible.
First, thermostats are installed in each room individually. This is going to give you the ability to control the temperature for each room. Then, electronic dampers are installed throughout the vents. These will direct the flow of air according to the settings on your thermostats.
You can choose to block out some rooms entirely or even have varying temperatures at the same time. This makes it convenient for each member of the family.
Not only will a zone control system eliminate the hot spot problem, you’ll even be able to use your system more efficiently by only cooling the rooms you’re using.
Ductless Systems
In the category of ductless systems, there are only ductless heat pumps.
So, how does a ductless air conditioning system bring cool air to every room if there’s no system of ducts? Simply by having a unit inside each room! The entire system consists of one outdoor unit, and then an indoor unit for each room.
As you can imagine, this immediately performs the function of a zone control system right out of the box. Each unit comes with its own remote control and can be adjusted individually. Hot spots won’t even cross your mind, since you’ll only be adjusting each device according to your comfort.
Are you looking for the end of your hot spot problems? Contact Atlantic Refrigeration & Air Conditioning, Inc. today!