Does the Location of a Thermostat Make a Difference?
It’s easy to understand why a thermostat is such an essential part of home’s comfort system. After all, how else can you communicate with your air conditioner or heater and set it to match your family’s needs? But because thermostats are designed as small and unobtrusive parts of a home’s interior décor (they aren’t painted flashy gold or with bright primary colors), it’s also easy for people to underestimate their importance. Worse, it’s easy amateur or sloppy installers to underestimate them—and this leads to the problem we’re looking at today, the poorly located thermostat.
Why thermostat location makes a major difference
A thermostat is where the comfort system in a home registers the average temperature of the building so it knows when to active the fan, compressor, burners, heating elements, etc. that provide conditioned air to the rooms. If the thermostat is registering temperatures that do not accurately reflect the average temperature of the home—what are called “ghost readings”—it will cause the HVAC system to behave oddly. The result will be a home that’s too hot or too cold, as well as a spike in the homeowner’s energy bills.
The 3 most common thermostat placement mistakes
These are the 3 errors that installers may make when locating thermostats:
- Exposure to direct sunlight: It can be a cool day outside, but direct sunlight falling on the thermostat will create radiant heat that will cause it to register a much warmer temperature.
- Too close to drafts: Thermostats that are near exterior doors or windows will be exposed to drafts, and they will read the house temperature as colder than it really it.
- Too far from the center of the house: To read the average temperature of a building, a thermostat needs to be close to the center of it. Placed too far away, thermostats will read outlier temperatures.
Call HVAC professionals to install new thermostats
If you have thermostats in your home in the wrong place, the best choice is to contact experienced HVAC technicians to install new thermostats in better locations. The upgrade will make your HVAC systems perform better overall.
Magic Touch Mechanical offers award-winning customer service for air conditioning and heating to Scottsdale, AZ.