Autumn brings your home much needed relief from summertime’s high temperatures, but seasonal shifts aren’t like switch flips. As the autumn transition progresses, we fall into the dramatic limbo of warm afternoons and cool mornings, leaving us unsure how to keep our home at a comfortable temperature. Even the most powerful systems can fall short in these ever-changing conditions, but you don’t have to give up on your HVAC system! If you can understand what’s happening and how to compensate, you can make your unit brave any temperature fluctuation.
Quick Guide: Climate Control for Fluctuating Temperatures
Wondering where to start with your home climate control solution in fluctuating temperatures? Let’s learn what’s going on, why, and how to handle it by breaking it down into sections.
What Causes Temperature Swings During Seasonal Transitions?
We all know the drill when it comes to the daily temperature cycle: colder nights, warmer days, and an ambiguous chill in the mornings and evenings. Temperatures can fluctuate drastically in a single day, meaning there is a variety of temperatures your HVAC system may need to contend with in a single 24 hour period. The biggest factor that leads to seasonal temperature changes is the axis the Earth rotates on. This 23.5 degree tilt to one side changes the angle at which the sunlight contacts the surface of the planet, in turn either spreading the heat out or concentrating the warmth from its rays on a single point. For more details, check out The National Weather Service’s breakdown of seasons.
Mini Split Systems: Zoned Comfort for Changing Conditions
For those of us in regions with consistent climates, choosing an HVAC system is a straightforward process. When you only have to worry about heating or cooling rather than both, choosing a single unit that covers your needs is a simple task. However, regions where temperatures are moderate but range enough to have hot summers and cold winters can make it difficult to find an HVAC unit to effectively combat the fluctuating conditions outside. If this causes some areas in your home to retain heat longer or stay a few degrees cooler than the rest, a mini split system may be the perfect solution to keep every room comfortable throughout the year.
What is a Mini Split System?
Traditional HVAC systems make use of central ductwork to disperse well-conditioned airflow from a single indoor air handler. The goal of a traditional HVAC system is to create a uniform temperature throughout your home. This uncompromising approach ensures total home comfort, but its execution leaves something to be desired in terms of efficiency. Mini splits turn unoptimized consistency on its head, instead utilizing a single outdoor condensing unit and pairing it with individual air handlers per “zone,” each zone most often being a single room. This gives you the ability to set unique conditions per air handler, meaning you can cater your HVAC use for fully individual results in each zone.
Benefits of Mini Splits in Seasonal Swings
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You can tailor your use to each zone, meaning you can keep the living room toasty while leaving the bedroom frigid
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Energy efficiency is optimized, decreasing your utility bills by not exerting unnecessary energy to keep every room at the same temperature when only some are in use
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Many mini splits are heat pumps that can transition between heating and cooling as needed to maintain your preferred temperature without manual input
Heat Pumps: One System for Year-Round Comfort
Close to the equator homes tend to need powerful cooling systems to tolerate the year-round heat, inverse of the potent heating performance required towards the north and south poles. For all those spaces in the middle where temperatures range from hot to cold at different points in the year, having combined equipment to handle the heat and the chill is integral for top-tier comfort. Heat pumps are a wonderful solution for the unique conditions in these areas, with one outdoor condenser that provides conditioned air that can be heated or cooled.
How Heat Pumps Work
The long and short of how heat pumps manage to both heat and cool air before it gets spread throughout your space boils down to the intelligent design. Designed in a way that can reverse the flow of refrigerant, most often thanks to a thermal expansion valve, or TXV, heat can be easily added in or taken out of the mix to effectively change the conditions within your home.
Perfect for Mild Spring & Fall Weather
By giving you the functionality to both heat and cool in one convenient package, heat pumps are ideal for areas that have dramatic fluctuations between fall days and nights. Most heat pumps even come with functionality that can swap between heating and cooling mode autonomously, meaning you can relax and know your system is doing the hard work for you while you simply enjoy the results.
Smart Features That Make All the Difference
Modern technology gives you a previously unattainable level of efficiency, with smart features providing automated comfort. Smart integrations with common virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant give us the option to change our thermostat settings using vocal commands. Additional smartphone and tablet applications put our indoor environments in the palm of our hands. Additional inclusions effortlessly cycle the system from heating to cooling to provide the best results given outside conditions.
Choosing the Right HVAC System for Your Space
Before pulling the trigger on a system that would best accommodate your climate control needs, make sure to take the following into consideration:
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How extreme the temperature gets in summer and winter respectively
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What size unit you need (BTUs will depend on square footage, ceiling height, number of windows, number of people, how many large kitchen appliances you have, and more)
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The layout of your home, including how many rooms, if you have central ductwork or can accommodate it, and installation clearance requirements of indoor and outdoor units
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Any quality of life inclusions you find non-negotiable or nice-to-have, from smart features to temperature schedules and everything in between
Stay Comfortable Year-Round with Smart HVAC Solutions
Keeping your home comfortable throughout the year can be a difficult task when you’ve got outdated technology, but putting off making a change out of fear only hurts you in the long run. Thanks to our customer service team, you don’t have to put the full weight of your family’s comfort on your own shoulders: simply give us a call or shoot us a message and we’ll get someone to help you find the perfect solution to optimize your environment in every season.
