Winter temperatures can create variations in your comfort within a home. Do you home have rooms that are always colder or warmer than other rooms, and wondered what you can do to balance them out to be closer to the same?
Every home is different in the way heating systems are set up and so efficiencies can vary home to home, your basic furnace setup forces warm warmed air (heat) out and returns cooler air to be rewarmed and circulated back through the home. Your thermostat controls have multiple settings Temps: (Cool, Heat and Off) Fan: (Auto, and On) and Temperature setting: (UP or Down).
The basic purpose of the Forced air systems is to warm the air through a heat exchanger where the fan will circulate air passed it throughout the home based on your thermostat settings, once the thermostat senses the correct temperature it will shut off the burners then the fan until it is called on again to repeat this cycle. There are many reasons for unbalanced temperatures within a home, (Register too close to Thermostat, Cool air return too far away from Thermostat, not enough or covered cool air return vents, doors closed to non-vented rooms) and so on. A good Quality HVAC company can help you determine where improvements can be made to help your homes heating system efficiency.
*One trick I learned to help balance your home’s temperatures is to simply set your Fan controls to the ON position, this will increase the time heated air is circulated in your home, your Fan will run continually and the burners will only kick on when the thermostat calls for an increase.
Summary:
Running your fan continually will allow the warm air to be circulated throughout the home over a longer duration of time decreasing the stagnant pockets of cold and warm air throughout the home due to the lack of circulated air flow. You should see a more comfortable difference in your homes overall temperature in a matter of a few hours.
First check items: (Before running fan in ON position)
1.) Make sure your return vents are not covered. (Use a tissue in front of vent to determine Returns)
2.) Filter is clean
3.) Clean Fan blades that are covered in lint or debris
4.) Have System Serviced by Qualified HVAC Professional annually
Running your fan continually should not be considered a replacement for proper Preventative maintenance, I recommend having your Furnace checked and cleaned annually by a qualified HVAC technician so questions you might have can be answered professionally.