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However, an oversized air conditioner won’t generate uniform temperatures or reduce humidity. It will also run inefficiently by cycling on and off quickly. Of course, a unit may also be too small to properly cool the space. To properly size a new air conditioning guide, start with this Consumer Reports worksheet.Mistake No. 2: Putting the Air Conditioner in a Hot SpotIt may seem convenient to put air conditioners in an unused spot on the southwest side of the house. However, such placement will make the unit work too hard. Instead, install the air conditioner in a shady spot on the east or north side of the house, where it will receive less direct sunlight.Mistake No. 3: Hiding the Air ConditionerThe air conditioner may not be pretty, but neither are excessive summer electric bills. Don’t try to hide air conditioners behind shrubs or other plants. It will hinder ventilation, clog condenser coils and make the air conditioner run less efficiently. Mistake No. 4: Ignoring MaintenanceAir conditioners are deceptively self-sufficient.

Many homeowners ignore basic A/C maintenance that can improve efficiency and comfort, and extend the life of the air conditioner.Clean or replace filters at least every two months. If it is used constantly or filters a lot of dust and pet hair, check the filters more often. how to determine size of central ac unit neededAlso check and clean the evaporator coil once a year. cost to move air conditioner unitRun a stiff wire through the air conditioner’s drain channels regularly, and check the window seals around room air conditioners each year.best ac unit manufacturerMistake No. 5: Leaving the Air Conditioner Running All DayUse a programmable thermostat or individual unit timer to start cooling off the house before you get home from work.

This is cheaper and more efficient than leaving the air conditioner running all day, despite rumors to the contrary.Mistake No. 6: Blindly Closing Unused VentsOpinions vary on the efficiency of closing vents and doors to unused rooms. In many cases, this can decrease the efficiency of a central air conditioning system. Consult an expert before closing off any parts of the house for the summer. Also be careful about closing off any rooms that may have a thermostat.Mistake No. 7: Turning the Temperature Way DownIf you are comfortable at 78 degrees, don’t come home and turn the thermostat down to 70 degrees. It will not get you to 78 any faster. It will just skip past 78 and waste ever more energy getting to excessively low temperatures.Mistake No. 8: Heating Up the ThermostatMake sure lamps, televisions, stereos or other heat-generators are not close enough to the thermostat to accidentally drive up the temperature reading and overwork the air conditioner.Mistake No. 9: Not Using Ceiling Fans or Running Them BackwardsMany people think their air conditioner is a substitute for ceiling fans.

Instead, they should be used in tandem. According to Energy Star, make sure the fan is switched to push air downward (typically counter-clockwise). It may seem more logical to reverse the fan so it is pulling hot air upward. However, the downward airflow creates a “wind chill effect,” which makes you feel cooler.Mistake No. 10: Using the Wrong FansOn the other hand, exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom can push cool, conditioned air out of the house. They should not be used more than absolutely necessary in the summer. I moved into a 30 year old home last December. There is a problem with the HVAC. I have included a very crude drawing of the floor plan The problem is that I can't maintain a comfortable temperature in the different rooms of the house. I don't really care about the basement because I seldom use it. The thermostat is located in the great room. It is not in direct sunlight. Suppose for the sake of discussion that I want the temperature to be 70 degrees.

Suppose that it's cold outside and I set my thermostat to 70 degrees. The great room, kitchen will be about 70 degrees. The bathroom will be warmer. The den will feel about 65. The upstairs will be about 75 or so, and I can break a sweat. It gets late at night and the bedrooms upstairs are too hot, so I turn the thermostat down to 65 to compensate. The air-conditioner kicks on and the temperature in the bedrooms is now about 70 (which is what I wanted), but it gets very cold downstairs. When it is warm outside, I still have the problem that it is much warmer upstairs than downstairs. Why does it seem impossible to maintain a comfortable temperature throughout the house? What do I need to do in order to maintain the same comfortable temperature in all the rooms? hvac heating air-conditioning central-heating central-air It's a balancing problem, fairly typical for a one-zone heating system spanning an entire house. Mind you, I'm a bit concerned with a setup that kicks on the A/C in heating season - being from a primarily heating climate, we typically have a "winter/summer" or "heating/off/cooling" mode switch either on the system/boiler/furnace or on the thermostat to prevent that sort of foolishness.

If it's REALLY so hot in winter or cold in in summer that we want to change the mode, WE choose to change the mode, rather than leaving it up to a machine to decide. Presumably you have forced air heat, since the same system is cooling. One approach to improve balance is to run the fan more to distribute air around the house and balance temperatures even when heat is not being delivered. A more basic step is adjusting the airflow to different parts of the system for heat delivery that more closely keeps things even - but if the same system is cooling this may be difficult to get balanced in a manner that works well for both, since heat rises and cold air sinks, left to itself. The system may be oversized (so it quickly heats or cools the location of the thermostat, and then shuts off the fan, rather than running a large percentage of the time when it's cold out), but all systems are prone to being somewhat oversized much of the year in order to be large enough to heat on the coldest days and cool on the warmest days.

A good HVAC professional may well be worth talking to in order to tune your system as best it can be tuned. Moving to continuous circulation (perhaps at a lower fan speed) seems like it might be needed in this house to reduce stratification, at a guess. The only major downside if your system is not too noisy will be the electric bill for running the fan. As a quick stopgap, examine your thermostat to see if it has a "fan" switch, typically with two positions - Auto (blows only to heat/cool) and "on" or "Continuous" - if the switch exists and is wired correctly, that should put the fan in continuous circulation mode - but you may want to alter the system to make that quieter and/or more efficient with a lower speed or even an entirely different fan/blower. And it may still need to be balanced to work better. If you only have a single thermostat / HVAC zone it will be difficult to maintain a precisely uniform temperature across many rooms, but it sounds like your system needs to be balanced.

Balancing is the process of adjusting dampers and valves so that the rooms heat and cool evenly. An unbalanced room will blow too much cold (or hot) air into one room and not enough in another. Since you mention AC I assume you have forced air heat and central air, in which case the balancing process involves adjusting dampers at each register and/or in the ducts. You can hire a company to do it, or buy 5 or 10 thermometers and do it yourself. You also need to make sure that air is circulating properly throughout the house. There should be at least one large "return" vent that collects air to return to the HVAC. When the system is on you can hold a piece of paper up to a vent to see which direction the air is going (your hand is surprisingly bad at telling airflow direction). There may be one return register per floor, or possibly even one in every room. In any event, you need to make sure not only that the conditioned air is reaching each room but that it can get back to the HVAC unit.

Closing doors makes this worse, obviously. You may need to know where your incoming and return vents are located. In my house both incoming and return vents are located on the walls but near floor level. So for a/c, the cold air comes out the registers and before it has a chance to rise and cool the the floor it is returned for another pass. If my system was inefficient maybe the cool air would fill enough of the floor, but it is ironically so efficient that it massively pulls the cool air back down to the basement where the air handler is and recools the air leaving the basement cold while the main level stays warm. I have added an addition return vent at the ceiling level, but this has not improved things that much. Humidity has been reduced, but not temperature. I think I will try to block some return vents, thereby making my system more inefficient and hope that that causes the cool air to stay on the main floor a little longer before being sucked back into the basement.