Charlie: James from Ellington says, “I saw your video on balancing a home.” He says, “How does a company add more air to a home when balancing rooms? Is this a costly job?” He says his home was built in 2014, “But our two-bedroom, back bedroom stay pretty warm compared to the rest of the house, with low amounts of air coming from the vent.”
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Tom: It can be rather inexpensive and very easy or sometimes it can become more difficult, depending what they left you to begin with. If you have dampers in the right place and they’re just not set right, it’s very inexpensive to have someone come in, like Absolute Comfort Air does quite a bit and they’ll just reset all the dampers, because sometimes the dampers actually move or somebody didn’t set them and do the flow rate on all the flow coming out of all the registers. The other thing is if it’s really an extended duct work system that wasn’t designed real well, you might have to add some more or add a couple of return airs to balance the system out and add a couple of dampers, but still it should not be that expensive to do.
In the long run, you’d get your money back because you’ll be more comfortable and won’t be playing that thermostat game.
Charlie: Is it possible he might consider … I mean, a split for that bedroom?
Tom: Maybe, but I would definitely go with the static pressure test first. Always do that first, because it could easily be solved without having to add more equipment. Equipment’s always going to be more pricey, but depending if the unit is too small, that’s a different thing than the split systems, the ductless ones are a great way to go.