Why You Might Have Hot and Cold Spots in Your Home This Winter

December 20, 2022
Uneven heating in Deptford Township, NJ

Staying warm in your home during a cold Deptford winter can be difficult to do. Sometimes, though, it seems like your home is working against you when you encounter hot and cold spots in certain places. What causes uneven heating in your home, though, and what can you do to correct it? While there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer, here are some general principles from the pros at JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning that can be very useful in helping you make your home more comfortable and reduce your home’s energy usage.

Leaky Windows

Windows amount to a giant hole in your home’s main source of protection from cold air. To prevent issues with cold areas in your home, it’s important to make sure your windows are properly sealed against air leaks. Using caulk and weatherstripping, you should carefully seal the inside and outside edges of your home’s windows so that no cold air can sneak into your home. If you have older windows, JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning recommends considering new windows that have extra layers of glass to reduce energy transfer between the inside and outside. Taking these steps ensures that the heat energy in your home stays inside and the cold air outside stays outside.

Blocked Vents or Ducts

After your furnace converts chemical energy into heat energy, it needs to be able to send that heat energy throughout your home. If it can’t perform this function, you will have uneven heating in different rooms in your home. That’s why it’s so important to keep your vents and ducts clear at all times. The first step is to make sure that all of your vents are open. Closing vents can cause too much pressure to build up in your HVAC system, leading to unexpected system breakdowns. Even in unused rooms, you’ll need to keep the vents open at all times.

The second step is to make sure that none of the vents are covered by furniture or other obstructions. These items can limit the warm air that can enter your home, causing hot and cold spots. Finally, make sure that your ducts are clean. You can utilize a professional duct cleaning service to remove dust and debris from your ducts so that they can deliver the full volume of heated air to your home.

Lack of Attic Insulation

While the warm air is traveling through your home’s ducts, it’s important that it stays warm until it arrives in the individual rooms. To help with this, you need to make sure that your attic has adequate insulation. Adding insulation to your attic helps prevent heat transfer between the warm air in the ducts and the cold air in the attic. This means that the air will arrive in the rooms in your home at a higher temperature so that you can run your furnace for a shorter period of time. On top of that, insulation helps to hold heat in your home for longer, allowing the air in the different rooms to mix so that you don’t have any more hot or cold spots.

Incorrectly Sized System

While most fixes for uneven heating are fairly minor, there is one major problem that can cause uneven heating. If your HVAC system isn’t sized correctly for your home, you’ll likely find cold spots in certain rooms because the furnace can’t produce enough heat to fill the needed capacity. Poor system sizing most often occurs when the installer incorrectly measures your home. To avoid this problem, you need to make sure you choose an experienced HVAC contractor when you install a new system so that you end up with a system that can keep your entire home comfortable at all times.

Keeping Your Home Comfortable All Winter Long

At JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning, we take pride in making sure our customers stay comfortable on the coldest winter days. We install, repair, and maintain heating and cooling systems. Our team also installs thermostats, inspects ducts, and offers custom sheet metal work to help optimize the layout of your home’s ductwork. For over 35 years, customers throughout the area have been trusting us with their home comfort needs, and we’ve responded with professionalism and integrity. That’s why we’re able to maintain a rating as a Lennox Premier Dealer and why we consistently receive outstanding customer reviews. To learn more about keeping your home comfortable, contact us at JAMCO Heating & Air Conditioning today.

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