Does Closing Air Vents Help Cool Other Rooms?
If your home becomes unevenly cooled during the summer, you are likely to go around closing less-used rooms’ air vents to try to push the airflow toward your most-heavily used rooms. It seems rational on the surface, but does closing air vents help cool other rooms? Let us learn a bit more about your HVAC system’s operation and the reasons why your vents will never give you what you want with this approach.
Understanding HVAC Airflow
Your HVAC system is designed to provide airflow to your home in a balanced fashion. When you ask for a temperature setting on your thermostat, the system works to deliver conditioned air to all zones in a balanced way by means of a duct system. The delivery is carefully calibrated to offer the best performance, energy efficiency, and comfort to the space as a whole.
By shutting off certain air vents, you’re altering the pressure within the ducting. New systems are intended to push air freely and continuously through open channels. Shutting this airflow off can throw this out of balance and have your system work harder. Instead of asking, ‘does closing vents help heat other rooms?’, it’s better to understand your system’s natural flow.
The Effects of Closing Vents
You can envision closing vents as “redirecting” air to favored rooms, but the case is not so simple. Instead of pushing extra air to other rooms, the system could be over-pressurized. This added load could make the motor operate inefficiently or even prematurely fail.
Also, clogging more than one vent will create patchy areas of heat in winter, for example. The clogged area can be sealed with heat and air and become warm, which will create improper overall flow. This will cause your HVAC system to cycle unnecessarily or struggle to keep your house at an even temperature. Does closing air vents downstairs help cool upstairs? The answer lies in understanding that this method throws off the system’s balance rather than helping.
Why It Doesn’t Work
The biggest issue with vent shutting is that HVAC equipment is not designed to “redirect” chilled air when the channels are shut down. Shutting vents creates pressure inside the ducts, which makes for leaks or cracks. That power is wasted rather than conserved, and this raises your utility bill.
Rather than cooling or heating a particular space more efficiently, closed vents produce inefficiencies that detract from the system’s performance and life. In addition, the imbalance can detract from your indoor comfort rather than enhance it, at the cost of increased bills and reduced heating/cooling capacity. Instead of experimenting with closing vents, consider giving your HVAC some attention, like scheduling maintenance, such as a flush air vents service, to ensure the system is running optimally.
Turn to Smarter Solutions for Zoned Cooling
Rather than closing off air vents, focus on fail-safe methods that do the most to assist your home in cooling. Zoning systems, for example, divide hotspots in your home into separate temperature zones, so you can control airflow exactly where you want it. Installing ceiling fans or replacing your outdated thermostat with a programmable one can also make it simpler for you to manage temperatures without piling on too much demand for your HVAC.
All in all, the secret to maintaining your HVAC system’s efficiency is to have regular maintenance and clean air filters on a regular basis. If there are still a few rooms warmer even after doing these, consult an HVAC professional to determine personalized solutions depending on your home’s configuration.
