What Is Air Balancing And Why Is It Important To Your Home?

The architect or designer who drew up the plans for your home not only showed the construction crew where to place walls, doors, and windows. There is a page in your home plan package for HVAC needs. How the internal ducts should be laid out, the size of the damper to place in each room and other pertinent information about the recommended HVAC system for your home. On this plan page, each room is assigned a specific CFM number that relates to the air balancing requirements for your home.

Today we will take an in-depth look at Air Balancing, which is what this CFM number refers to. We’ll also see why air balance maintenance is just as important as maintaining your HVAC system.

The first thing we need to know is what Air Balancing is.

Air Balancing 101: What is Air Balancing?

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, each room in your home was assigned a CFM number when it was conceptually designed to your design. CFM is an acronym for cubic feet per minute, and the CFM number is the amount of air, in cubic feet, that your HVAC system needs to maintain an even temperature throughout your home.

When the CFM is reached according to the print, you will not notice any temperature difference in your home. When your CFM is reached, your HVAC will work more efficiently. When your CFM is reached, you won’t have “hot” or “cold” spots in your home, just a comfortable, even temperature.

If your home was originally built and the new HVAC system installed, and the installation team properly sized your unit to meet all per-room CFM requirements, you should have no air balancing issues. If the device was not sized correctly, it was the first stage of an unbalanced air system. That’s what we’re going to look at now, the things that contribute to unbalanced airflow.

What's Causing Your Airflow Imbalance?

Air balancing is a wonderful thing when done properly. If you have imbalanced airflow, you will see the following signs:

High energy bills. If your HVAC system is struggling to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the home, it can be a little more difficult to compensate. This excessive use causes you to consume a lot of energy from month to month.
Hot or cold spots. An unbalanced HVAC system will struggle to maintain a consistent temperature throughout the home. You will find that some rooms are colder than others during the winter months and some are warmer than others during the summer months.
Insufficient airflow. The rooms furthest from your HVAC system may have little or no airflow to the coil. This definitely creates an unbalanced air situation.

Also, when designing your home, some rooms may have more than one exterior wall surrounding the space. For example, you might have a corner room with two exterior walls, and that room might be on the second floor above the garage. Unless the design of this space is properly insulated to account for all exterior walls and floor, your HVAC will never properly balance your airflow. This space also has special duct requirements to ensure adequate airflow at the damper. If some or all of these elements are not addressed, you will experience indoor air imbalance.

How can I be sure I have an Air Balance Problem?

If everything you’ve read so far in this article sounds like what’s going on with your HVAC system, you need to have your professional HVAC team come to your home for an air balance test.

In this test, the air balance technician takes an accurate airflow reading from all registers, return air vents, and any other location where airflow can be detected. Based on the results, the technician can then begin to explain the process you need to achieve a perfectly balanced air system in your home. Dampers, exhaust fans, grill and fresh air must all be balanced in order for your HVAC system to operate at its maximum economic potential. Just one of these “out of balance” points can result in high energy bills as well as an HVAC system malfunction.

The Importance of Air Balancing

You’ve probably realized that air balancing is an important feature of your home’s HVAC system, and when your home is properly balanced, your home is more comfortable and costs you less to operate than an unbalanced system running 50 minutes per hour.

Your HVAC team should be able to come up with recommended solutions to your air balance issues, and that’s what we’re going to look at now. Ways to improve your air balance.

How can I improve the Air Balance in My Home?

Sometimes air balance can be achieved by adding more vents in the space where the unbalanced airflow exists. This may solve the air balance problem in that room, but it still doesn’t solve the problem within the HVAC system itself. For example, if you have air balance problems in one of three rooms and fix them by adding more air to the room, that will HVAC system working overtime to meet the temperature demands of the home.

There are several issues that can affect air balance, so there are also several fixes that must be used together to achieve an air balanced home. Things like;

Address the isolation package for each unbalanced part and adjust accordingly. You may need to add some insulation in these rooms with lots of exterior walls and floors to help them achieve the ideal air balance.
Look at windows in unbalanced rooms. You may need to upgrade these windows in rooms that are most affected by air balance issues. The insulating quality of your windows should be considered by the original builder of the home, and where these best windows were needed, they should already have been installed to meet the rooms’ CFM requirements.
Properly sized channels. Rather than simply adding vents to increase airflow into a room, consider the duct size and the relationship between that room’s location and the HVAC unit. Sometimes a duct just needs to be reduced to increase airflow into the affected space.

I hope you now understand a little more about Air Balance and what it means. If you suspect your home is having air balance issues, don’t hesitate to call the AC & Heating Experts Princeton team. Based in Princeton, New Jersey, AC & Heating Experts Princeton knows the brutal desert climate as well as the air balancing tools to combat it. If you are preparing to have a professional HVAC team review your air balance issues, give their team a call or visit their website and see how easy it is to properly balance the air in your home!

What Is Air Balancing And Why Is It Important To Your Home?

Air Balancing 101: What is Air Balancing?

What's Causing Your Airflow Imbalance?

How can I be sure I have an Air Balance Problem?

The Importance of Air Balancing

How can I improve the Air Balance in My Home?

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