Rooms that are above a garage, rooms that are poorly insulated, rooms containing many windows, and rooms facing North or West experience more heat loss because they are being subjected to colder factors around the room itself. A garage is cold during the winter so rooms right above the garage tend to be colder. Rooms with many windows have less insulation on the walls and the windows cause more heat loss to occur. Rooms facing North or west on a corner of the home receive more arctic wind gusts due to the direction of the wind blowing during the winter. Oftentimes, rooms are also colder when they are the rooms located the furthest distance away from the furnace. The 2nd floor of the home may also always be colder than the first floor of the home due to the 2nd floor being further from the furnace. There are a couple of different factors that can help to alleviate these issues.
Making sure the system is installed with the proper ductwork is vital to making sure that air is being properly delivered to all areas of the home. Making sure the furnace is properly sized for the home is another essential variable. A bigger furnace is not always the correct solution and can actually worsen the temperature differences in the home. Running the furnace fan on “ON” mode instead of “Auto Mode” on the thermostat will have your system constantly running the fan motor at a lower speed. Doing this can alleviate temperature distances by continuously mixing the air in the home across the different floors and bedrooms to help alleviate the temperature differences. Lastly, there are different types of furnace technologies that can be chosen when you are ready to replace your existing system that may be better suited to the needs of your home such as a variable speed furnace. In many cases, these temperature differentials can be ALLEVIATED but not totally ELEVIATED due to the factors listed above. However, solutions do exist to make the problems less drastic.
