For homeowners in Windsor, a furnace is an essential part of life during the winter, but it can also be costly. In an effort to cut costs, many homeowners believe that closing the vents in the low traffic rooms around their homes will reduce wasted heat, but unfortunately, it can damage your furnace.

The logic behind closing the vents around your home to get the most out of your furnace is sound, but because it is a forced-air system, impeding the flow can damage your unit and it actually won’t improve its efficiency; here’s why.

Conduction
Although the heat from your furnace will be directed away from the rooms with closed vents, it likely won’t improve the heat throughout your home. The rooms not receiving heat from your furnace will become colder, as you intended, but this also means that they will act as a conductive heat sink. For example, if you close the vents in one room heat from the adjacent rooms and hallway will be drawn there. Ironically this leads homeowners to believe they need to turn up the thermostat.

Flow
Your furnace operates based on a balanced supply and return airflow cycle that can be catastrophically disrupted when you close the vents around your home. The cycle gets disrupted because each return is supposed to supply a certain amount of air to your furnaces, and cutting off that supply by closing the vents drastically reduces the amount of air passing over your heat exchanger. If not enough air flows over the heat exchanger, it can overheat and become irreparably damaged.

Sound
If you close the vents around your home, it can impact more than just the temperature in your home and the condition of your unit. Having fewer vents open can cause your HVAC system to make a lot of noise, which can become extremely irritating. The reason for this is because you are forcing more air to go through fewer ducts, and most of them were not designed for that amount of flow, so noise is generated.

As we have explained, there really aren’t any benefits to closing the vents around your home, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have any control either. A heating professional can help you find the right balance of heat and efficiency for your heating system. A licensed technician knows how to balance the system’s output within the safe parameters of your specific unit.

Want to maximize your furnace efficiency and stay warm this winter?
Contact Fahrhall for heating service or a new high-efficiency furnace.

The home comfort specialists at Fahrhall have been proudly serving the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent regions’ HVAC needs for over 50 years. Our team of licensed professionals’ number one priority is providing our clients with reliable equipment and quality service.

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