Although controlling the temperature of smaller living spaces sounds simple enough in theory, it’s all too easy to forget about other environmental factors that affect your home’s interior climate. For inner city apartments in particular, even the elevation of your apartment space can play a larger role in maintaining your interior apartment temperature control than you may think.
Naturally, HVAC insulation becomes a little bit more complicated when you have to factor in shared walls, ceilings, and floors. So how exactly can you take control over your apartment’s climatic conditions?
Thankfully, apartment owners do have some options at their disposal. Our HVAC specialists will be sharing their top temperature control tips for apartment dwellers below. Read on to learn how you can keep your apartment comfortable from summer to winter.
Apartment Temperature Control Tips
1. Invest in a suitably sized HVAC unit
2. Check the seasonal mode of your fan
3. Use draft stoppers and floor coverings
4. Swap out your window coverings
5. Stay on top of your HVAC maintenance
1. Invest in a suitably sized HVAC unit
Finding the right AC size for your apartment is as simple as looking around your living space. Consider the total area that your HVAC unit will have to cover. If your living or bedroom spaces have a total area of around 10-20m2, then a 2.5-3kW unit should be able to provide adequate heating and cooling for those spaces.
The existing temperature control elements in your apartment should also be considered when selecting an ideal HVAC unit. For example, if you know that your apartment has floor, wall, and ceiling insulation, then chances are that you will be able to retain heat or chilled air in your apartment with general ease. This means that you likely won’t have to run your AC or heater for a longer period of time in order to maintain a comfortable interior temperature.
As heating and cooling can eat up most of your household energy usage, apartment dwellers can benefit greatly from investing in a smaller unit that’s more energy efficient. That’s what makes split system air conditioners an ideal heating and cooling solution for apartments and other smaller home spaces.
2. Check the seasonal mode of your ceiling fan
One of the more unknown hacks for keeping your home cool in summer and warm in winter is to simply flick your ceiling fans from summer mode to winter mode with the changing of the seasons. If you’re thinking ‘well, my ceiling fan doesn’t have seasonal modes’, then guess again!
Grab a ladder and check out the canopy of your ceiling fan, otherwise known as the fixture that attaches your fan unit to your ceiling. You may find a little switch or button on the side that can be flicked upwards or downwards. This switch controls whether your fan spins clockwise or counterclockwise.
You should set your ceiling fan to spin counterclockwise during summer, as this creates a downward draft that keeps cool air circulating from the ceiling to the floor. Contrastingly, ceiling fans that spin clockwise create an upward draft, which traps any warm heat in the lower half of the room, inhibiting hot air from rising up and out of your ceiling.
Setting your ceiling fan to the right seasonal mode is crucial for apartment dwellers in particular, as you likely have external temperatures threatening to enter your home space from all sides, be it through poorly insulated shared walls, floors, or directly above your ceiling.
3. Use draft stoppers and floor coverings
Speaking of combating external temperatures, if your building sadly is a little lacking when it comes to insulation, there are thankfully a few measures you can take to still keep yourself comfortable in your own apartment space. One of these is using draft stoppers on all doorways to trap heat from room to room. Simply inhibiting the flow of air from every room in your apartment can make a world of difference when it comes to controlling your interior temperatures – especially if you’re living in an apartment with two or more bedrooms.
Another measure is to invest in plenty of thick floor covers like rugs or runners. Floor coverings can not only help keep your feet warm and cosy, but they can also act as natural insulation and a physical barrier that inhibits heat from escaping through your flooring.
4. Swap out your window coverings
We all know that keeping doors and windows closed is a great way of cutting down on your AC usage and thus, saving money on your energy bills. But did you know that heat can even escape through closed windows?
If the air outside of your window is chilly, then any hot air on the interior side of your window will become colder by proximity. This phenomenon is called ‘heat transfer’, and it’s one of the most common obstacles impacting the efficiency of your home’s heating and cooling systems. A home space with plenty of uncovered windows is likely going to be a lot harder to keep warm in the winter.
Thankfully, there are plenty of thermal regulating window coverings that you can use to combat heat transfer. Window coverings like thermal curtains or blockout curtains can have an astoundingly positive effect on your apartment’s insulation.
5. Stay on top of your HVAC maintenance
Finally, your apartment’s heating and cooling system is only at peak efficiency if the system itself is in good working order. This is what makes HVAC maintenance an important part of your household cleaning routine.
You should ideally be cleaning the filters of your HVAC unit every two to three weeks. This can help ensure that your unit is free from any obstructions and that your unit won’t have to work extra hard in order to maintain its output. Blocked or clogged filters can decrease the lifespan of your HVAC system and even lead to moisture or frost build-up on your evaporator coil if you’re using a evaporative cooling system, or can even lead to leaks in split system AC units.
Jacob Refrigeration’s Apartment Temperature Control Tips
With all these apartment temperature control tips at your disposal, it should be a lot easier for you to keep your apartment comfortable over this coming Melbourne winter. If you’re still finding that your apartment is inexplicably draughty or are concerned that your HVAC system isn’t performing at its best, then contact the team at Jacob Refrigeration to schedule a thorough inspection of your heating and cooling systems today.
