Air Balancing: What It Is and Why You Might Need It

While you want all the rooms in your home to be comfortable, they don’t all have the same heating and cooling needs. Rooms can be larger or smaller, as well as different distances from the central air handler. That’s why air balancing is so important. Ductwork has to carry the appropriate amount of air to all areas without leaving some rooms with poor conditioning or creating intrusive levels of airflow.

Air balancing starts at the duct design stage, but a qualified HVAC professional can test airflow to discover any problems. Homes throughout the U.S. often lose 30 to 50 percent of their airflow to leaks and balancing issues, so an air balance test can deliver a big boost to your system efficiency. How in-depth your test is can vary. At its simplest, it can just be an inspection to make sure vents are open and delivering conditioned air to your rooms. Airflow may also be measured mechanically at the vents themselves.

For a thorough test, your ductwork can be sealed and pressurized and the airflow at each register recorded. When the central air handler’s airflow rate is known, this can give you a complete picture of where your air is going and how much is being lost. Sealing air ducts is one step in reducing air loss, but for real air balance, you may also need dampers installed at vents and at duct branches.

Because a change in the air dampening at any given branch affects the pressure throughout the entire system, a professional contractor should take careful measurements and adjust as needed. When the airflow through your ducts is balanced, you should have just the right amount of heating and cooling in every room in your home.

At Sobieski Services, Inc., our goal is to help our customers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey learn more about energy and home comfort issues – especially HVAC and plumbing issues – so that they can save money and live in healthier, more comfortable homes.

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