People love their fans. They love to set them on timers, to schedule them to come on in the afternoons, to circulate air to keep the house from getting stuffy. We felt the full force of that love last week when we released Advanced Fan Control, a feature that can do all of the above. Customers have already started using it. Many used to set Nest’s fan to Always On to bring cool air upstairs in summer or just keep air fresh, then they’d go to bed or leave the house and forget to turn it off. Now homeowners can schedule the fan to run from 6-11 p.m. or 8-10 a.m. and forget about it. It’s almost like having an air conditioner. Advanced Fan Control is proving to be one of our most popular new features—the love for fans is ubiquitous. But so is the misinformation. With all this talk about fans, we’re hearing from more and more customers who’ve been told it’s energy efficient to keep the fan on all the time, 24 hours a day. Whenever the topic is brought up, it’s a debate. Leaving the fan on seems to make sense, after all, especially in summer.

If the fan can keep things from getting stuffy, you’ll use your energy-hog of an air conditioner less, and less AC will always save energy. Turns out, it could cost you hundreds of dollars a year. While using the fan instead of the air conditioner really is energy efficient, leaving it on all the time usually isn’t. The average air conditioner has a 500 watt fan, which can use about as much energy over the course of a year as a refrigerator. The costs of running it 24/7 quickly add up. Newer systems have fans that use less energy, but keeping them on all day can cause other problems. In the summer, the ducts that run through your attic or close to your walls can heat up, filling with warm air. Without the AC to cool it down, the fan just blows hot air into your house. You end up running the AC more, not less, to counteract all that extra heat. Hot ducts can be a problem even if you don’t have the fan running all the time—you may be cool and comfortable in your bedroom, then when you turn on the fan on for the night, you fill the room with hot, stale air.

The fan can giveth and taketh away. That’s why Advanced Fan Control gives you a few different ways to control the fan, so you can find what works for your home. For those who want to circulate the air, we added an option that lets you run the fan for 15, 30 or 45 minutes every hour. You get the comfort benefits of a fan blowing all the time, but significantly reduce the fan’s actual runtime. For Nesters who want the fan on for a particular period of time - while they’re asleep, for example, or just in the afternoon when everyone comes home—we’ve created a simple scheduler and a timer. You can turn on the fan exactly when it’s most efficient—when it replaces air conditioning—and it’ll automatically turn off when you tell it to. The fan deserves all the love it gets—it can make a huge difference in your comfort and your energy bill. But as with all things wonderful and beloved—chocolate, Christmas, chocolate—you can get too much of a good thing. This post is part of our HVAC 101 series about how to make the most of your heating and cooling system.

Previously we covered finding holes in your ducts and insulation. R410A, the pink stuff 25,901 posts, read 21,074,479 times ^^ with just under 2 years old isn't the warranty valid? I'd check with the builder and his sub-contractor. You're talking less then two cooling seasons (maybe ten months total) of use! 227 posts, read 285,883 times Originally Posted by AksarbeN Yes, the warranty should still be valid. central ac units maintenanceWe registered it online through the builder, which according to them the warranty is 10 years.indoor air conditioner units Originally Posted by DubyaMone room cooling units Yes, it is on the outside condenser unit. Originally Posted by wit-nit We did and they will be sending out a tech on Thursday morning.

Luckily it is only one of our units, plus this week it isn't supposed to be too hot. Not sure what it was, since we had it turned off until the tech came over. , and they confirmed that this would actually cause this: Carrier air conditioner not cooling and making rattling noises From what I read elsewhere, a lack of refrigerant will actually cause the refrigerant line to freeze up. Since we likely lost most of our R410A refrigerant due to the leak, this is likely the reason why the line is freezing. How can i make that the cold air is distributed to all rooms in the house? we have 2 rooms in our house which do not get enough cold air and so they are very hot during the summer. At the same time the master bedroom is extremely cold. All other rooms are okay.So most of the cold air goes to the master bedroom and the other 2 rooms get only a little.I think I have a basic understanding of the problem but I cant fix it myself. The heating and AC companies are not a big help here.

So what type of company can help here? Preferably in the Gilbert, AZ area. Do you have the same question?  You need to get your house balance. An HVAC tech should be able to balance your house or find out what is restricting the air flow to those roomsRayKoolray heating and air Answered 2 years ago Take a look at your system - 1) if you have individual fan units high up on the wall in each room, then turn up the temperature setting a bit on the cold room, and turn down in the other rooms that are hot until it feels right - pretty much ignoring the dial readings. It may be you are on a single loop refrigerant system, so some rooms which are "first in line" on the system are stealing the cold refrigerant and leaving not enough for the tail end charlies.2) If you have a duct system, either from an outside central air unit or from an A/C evaporator installed on your central furnace system, then look for flapper valves on your duct runs - you may have adjustable ones like inthe following link leading to different house areas that you can adjust - of course, doing so affects air flow to all the rooms on that particular leg of the ductwork -http://klimatshop.sk/en/regulation-da...You may instead have a splitter valve in a wye in the ducting that controls airflow between the two branches.

/Opening-Regis...in each room where the cold air comes in, adjust the louvers closed some in the cold rooms, and open more in the hot rooms. You will probably have to readjust these in the winter for heating comfort. Look like inlink above, usually have a small lever or tab to adjust the louvers. If louvers are rigid, you can replace with adjustable ones or duct tape some cardboard partially (never fully) covering the louver or placed cardboard under the cover to reduce cold air flow into the cold rooms. Since you have one cold room, sounds like maybe the thing to do is experiment with cardboard blocking part of the airflow, and if that works OK then get an adjustable louver and put it in - making sure to seal the seam with the duct so the cold air does not escape into the subfloor where it can cause condensation problems.4) If this did not help, then use the Answer This Question button to reply back with more detail on what your system looks like, how many duct runs to what rooms, etc. and we will see if we can help more.PS - on the louvers/registers - some houses have the adjustable type only on inlet or return air vents so checkboth (one is in or near floor

, other is high up on wall or in ceiling) - some have no adjustments which is really short sighted on the part of the installers, to assume they have perfectly sized the system based on simplified formulas which are based mostly on square footage of rooms, not sun exposure and such. One question that you could answer is there just a central air return with a filter in the ceiling, I would think not in your climate but you neve know. If so it is entirely possible it is something as simple as the doors to the warm rooms being to tight. I have seem problems when the space at the bottom of the door is too tight and all the adjusting you do to the registers or dampers in the ducts will not help. Leaving the door open to those rooms can helpIf there are separate returns and supplies in each room it is a trial and error job for a homeowner to adjust them and an HVAC contractor could probably do it faster. +1 to Don's feedback.Don't try to play musical vents as that usually nets a worsened effect.

Get a qualified HVAC contractor to inspect the system and see if additional ducting of return airs are required. Your right, HVAC companies are really not much help at all in regard to getting all the rooms and floors the same temperature, and airflow. It's not their focus or their expertise. They repair and sell hardware. I had the same exact problem here in Central Florida. I had rooms that were to hot in the summer and the same ones were to cold in the colder months. I have a 2 story 2800 sq ft home with 4 bedrooms. I did a lot of research, and I tried to fix it myself, but in reality I made it worse. I finally found a company here in the Central Florida area called AirFlowBalance, LLC. This company is not an HVAC dealer or repairer. Their sole focus is to balance the airflow and temperature in a home by using a nonevasive proprietary process, with patented devices. Now, when I set my thermometer at 75 degrees, every room is 75 degrees. I no longer have to bump up or down the temp from room to room.

No more thermostat wars with my family! Also, I was very supprised at how affordable it was and the whole job was done under 3 hours. They also have an online estimate page on their web site. I hope this helps, and I am not sure if they have an office in AZ. As Blackberry inferred, it is all in putting controls into the duct system. It used to be standard to install in-line control flappers in duct systems to regulate the flow - manually for cheaper systems, electrically with separate thermostats throughout the house for higher end installation. These daysalmost all installers take a stab at it with formulas that are far from detailed enough to really address the individual room issue and install fixed size ducting with no controls, then say there is nothing they can do about it when you get really unbalanced rooms. This tends to be especially notable between top and ground floors with heating (because heat rises up stairs and ducts), and with solar heating affecting different rooms at different times of day in the A/C season.

The extra damper or valve controls typically add about 10% to the cost of the installed HVAC system, and makethe difference between a pleasant HVAC environment and constantly being nagged by the change in temperature as you go from room to room. This is standard practice in all but cheapo commercial buildings, but is essentially ignored with residential systems except in mansions. The first thing is that a HVAC company can help you with the problems you have, but only the right company can help. I've been in the industry for over 20+ years and companies that fully utilize heat loads have answered these issues. Personally, I do that on a daily basis here in Arizona. So with that being said, you need to answer some basic questions to start. What is the orientation of the room according to the sun?Do you have dual pane windows in the room?How many supply ducts do you have in the room?Do you know the size of that supply ducts and registers?What is the R-Value in the walls?Do you have a ceiling fan in the room?