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A central AC has a straightforward job: distribute enough cooled air to the rooms of a house to create an even spread of comfort. There may be some minor temperature fluctuations, such as in rooms with lower levels of insulation or increased sun exposure. But overall, when you’re running your central AC, you can expect to enjoy comfortable conditions in all your living spaces.
If you start to notice uneven cooling in your house, with some rooms comfortably chill and others feeling far too hot, you might have a problem with the AC. The issue might be a basic one you can solve with troubleshooting, or it may require calling our technicians for air conditioning repair in Nashville, TN.
Below, we’ll look closer at what may be causing your uneven cooling troubles.
Dirty air filter
As soon as you detect uneven cooling from your AC, check on its air filter to see if it’s dirty and needs to be replaced. Clogged air filters are a major source of poor AC system performance: if your air conditioner can’t draw in sufficient air through the return ducts, it means less air gets cooled and less gets to the rooms. Put in a new filter (and remember to keep up with changes every 1-3 months) to see if this corrects the problem.
Faulty thermostat
It’s possible that the thermostat is to blame. If a thermostat becomes miscalibrated, it will sense incorrect temperatures in the house and shut the AC off early, cooling only part of the house and leaving other sections without enough conditioned air. If you have a zone control system, the thermostats may have lost their connection to specific zones so they aren’t getting cooled. You can have professionals recalibrate or repair malfunctioning thermostats.
Leaky air ducts
The air conditioner may be working fine, but air leaks in the ducts are allowing some of the conditioned air to escape before reaching the rooms. Solving this problem requires working with HVAC pros to test the ducts and locate the leaks, then seal them using special tools.
Short-cycling
This is when the AC gets caught in its start-up cycle and continually turns on and off rapidly without completing a full cooling cycle. If your AC is running only in short spurts and turning on and off five or more times an hour, it’s short-cycling—and it won’t run long enough to evenly distribute cooling. Short-cycling places immense wear on an AC’s part and raises electrical costs. It also warns of a potentially worse problem that needs attention, such as leaking refrigerant or a compressor in trouble.
Dying air conditioner
Uneven cooling is often a warning sign of an older air conditioner coming to the end of its service life. The average lifespan of a central air conditioner is 10 to 15 years. If you have an AC in that age range or beyond it, we recommend having professionals inspect the system to see if repairs are still a cost-effective technique. Often, it’s better to have a new unit put in place than to sink money into repairs for an AC that won’t last much longer.