Properly Heating and Cooling Your Home: What You Need to Know

Clint H., Lombardo Homes Division Construction Manager, contributed to this story.

Properly heating and cooling your home is important for two major reasons: lower utility bills and a comfortable home temperature throughout the seasons. Who wants high utility bills and a freezing home in the winter or a stifling home in the summer? Not us!

Since the adoption of the Michigan Energy Code in 2009, new home buyers have experienced a dramatic decrease in energy consumption. The changes in home construction have created tighter building envelopes, allowing the tempered air to retain in the home for longer durations. Along with the sealed building envelopes, the code also requires the ductwork to be sealed, which eliminates air leakage throughout the heating system.

We get it. That’s a lot of jargon and technicalities. So, what does it mean for you, the homeowner?

Lombardo Homes employs a mechanical engineer to design our HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) systems to be sized appropriately to efficiently heat and cool your home. Our heating systems are designed to heat your home to 72°F when it’s 6° or warmer outside. When cooling your home, the system is designed to keep your home at a comfortable 75° when the outside temperature is 90° or cooler. These standards on which your system is sized assumes all windows are draped, which helps trap the cool air from your A/C or warm air from your heater.

During times of extreme outside air temperatures – approaching 6° or 90° – the equipment will run continuously. This is not harmful to your equipment. Oversized units would run in short spurts, which would shorten the life of your equipment and create hot and cold spots in the home.

There are three things homeowners should know about heating and cooling your home:

1. Rooms above the garage (unconditioned space) will feel cooler at the floor level relative to other rooms on the second floor that are above conditioned space. Per residential warranty guidelines, temperature is measured at five feet above the floor, so feeling the floor is not an accurate way to determine the temperature of a room.
2. To ensure a balanced temperature throughout the home, it is recommended to keep the fan setting for the thermostat in the ON position, which will circulate the conditioned air of the home.
3. The air coming out of registered will be at the conditioned level – the setting of your thermostat – but might not feel that way if you put your hand over the register. Your body temperature is 98.6°, so the register will feel cool to your hand, but the air is actually coming out at the room temperature.

Even though the unit is designed to efficiently heat and cool your home, all homeowners need to make adjustments to encourage airflow and keep the home at a comfortable temperature. Leaving doors open in the kitchen or laundry room during warmer seasons allows proper airflow and offsets the heat generated by appliances. In the winter, however, the airflow required in those rooms is minimal, and doors should be shut in order to contain the heat produced by appliances. If you have a two-story great room, you may have a similar problem due to the natural rising of heated air. You might think hot air rising would cause the second floor to be warmer, but it doesn’t – the ceiling of the second floor is the attic, which allows heat to escape faster than the first floor ceiling. Homeowners can make these seasonal air balance modifications simply by adjusting the damper located in the register or in the basement at the supply plenum, which should be labeled accordingly.

All homeowners are unique in what their desired comfortable temperatures are, but it’s important to understand that systems cannot be designed on a case-by-case basis. Each home is designed with the same criteria to ensure the maximum efficiency and comfort. For more questions regarding heating and cooling of your home, contact us at info@lombardohomes.com.