Category: HVAC Systems

HVAC Dampers: Controlling The Airflow on Your HVAC System

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As long as your HVAC system is operating correctly, you probably won’t need to concern yourself about what a damper is, how it works, and how actuators make them control the flow of cold or hot air across your home.

HVAC technician working on a mini-split condensing unit

When it’s time to replace certain parts, like dampers and actuators, it pays to know what they are and what they’re used for. Let’s now discuss how the HVAC damper controls the airflow of your HVAC system.

The HVAC Actuator, Damper, and Other Related Subjects

Dampers, along with their actuators, help make a home or office much comfier by keeping the temperature just right at all times.

  • What is a Damper in HVAC Terms? A damper in HVAC terms refers to duct dampers or movable plates moved by actuators—devices that convert energy like electricity to motion—in order to help regulate or make consistent the temperature of your home, office, or building with an HVAC system and duct work installed.
  • Movable Plates That Move Air Around: To ensure the stream of cold air from the A/C or hot air from the heater goes through your ventilation in a regulated and consistent manner, the plates move and adjust accordingly. The dampers control the airflow to specific parts of the building to make hotter rooms colder or colder rooms hotter as needed.
  • Cooling Regulators: There are many parts of the HVAC system that can be considered “cooling regulators”, but in the case of dampers, they dampen or release the cold air to regulate the cooling or heating of any given area or room, usually by cooling zones.
  • Ensures Efficient HVAC Operation: In order to keep your HVAC system from overworking its heater or A/C from making things hotter or colder consistently, the dampers and the ventilation system mostly work in tandem to prevent the units from running constantly. Once it heats or cools the air, they can use and distribute that hotness or coldness across the home.
  • Inconsistency in Temperatures: You might want to know what a damper is once you find that in your home, it’s much colder downstairs or warmer upstairs. It’s especially important to put a damper on your ignorance about dampers whenever some rooms have differing temperatures. Your damper or actuator might be busted in such cases.
  • Control Airflow: You can close or open HVAC dampers like you would the vents of your ventilation system to control airflow coming from the duct work. Or you can have a programmable or smart HVAC control the airflow for you automatically until you decide to do a manual override.

Thanks to dampers, their actuators, and duct systems that regulates cooling or heating of the zones around a building, your HVAC unit doesn’t need to constantly turn on its heaters or air-conditioners to reach the ideal temperature.

Why a Home Would Need a Humidity Sensor

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Humidity is the amount of vapor in the air. When it gets too humid, your house can suffer from mildew and mold growth, particularly in places like the bathroom, basement, and the kitchen or other places with water sources.

Here are the reasons why a humidity sensor is important. They measure the amount of water vapor in the air, thus you can use your HVAC system to identify areas of excess humidity and do something about them.

Humidity Sensor 101

  • Detecting Deficit Humidity: The sensor doesn’t only measure the amount of vapor or deficit humidity in the air. It also detects the specific areas where the humidity is forming, allowing you to know where to vent, heat up, or dry away those areas to reduce moisture to normal levels.
  • Avoid Dry Skin and Sinus Issues: As soon as your home starts having humidity issues, you should set your HVAC system in a certain way to prevent molds and mildew from forming or getting any of your wooden anything from getting wet. This also prevents sinus issues and dry skin from becoming problems.
  • Ideal Relative Humidity Levels: The ideal relative humidity levels for interior environments that doesn’t cause structural damage to the wooden parts of your home or asthma, sinusitis, and dry skin on people is about 30 to 50 percent. This is according to the recommendations of healthcare professionals and building experts.
  • How to Use the Sensor: The sensor picks up where you should set your HVAC to dry out humid areas. This prevents mold and wetness from ruining wood panels, wooden floors, and structural elements of your home from rotting and breaking. The sensor can also detect areas that can worsen asthma and similar issues due to spores.
  • The Importance of Hygrometers: Also known as hygrometers, the sensor is a small, digital device that works like a thermostat but for humidity. Certain smart HVAC systems have a hygrometer measure the humidity to adjust the settings of the unit to reduce or ventilate all the water vapor out of your home.
  • Ventilation is the Solution: Your home starts becoming swampy, steamy, and humid usually through heavy rains and you needing to close the house to keep the rainwater from pouring inside. The ventilation part of your Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioner system is what helps remove all that humidity from the inside to the outside.

Why Should You Use a Humidity Sensor?

If certain parts of your home, like a dank basement where all your water pipes are installed or your bathroom regularly suffers from the growth of mold and mildew, you can use the sensor and your ventilation system to detect then reduce the humidity levels.

The sensor also checks whether your anti-humidity solutions or HVAC settings are truly reducing the vapor and steam within your rooms or not.

It Pays To Use Name-Brand HVAC Replacement Parts

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Make your HVAC system components run dependably for many years into the future by observing good maintenance of each and every one of them. You should have a trustworthy supplier of HVAC parts and supplies, in other words.

It’s because these individual parts won’t last forever and sometimes OEM isn’t an option because the original equipment manufacturer tends to intentionally render obsolete their wares 5-10 years after release.

The HVAC Parts to Watch Out For

HVAC refers to Humidifier, Ventilation, and Air Conditioner systems and devices that keep your home cold when it’s hot outside and hot when it’s cold outside. With that said, here are the HVAC parts you should get replacement parts for.

  • Thermostat: Most thermostats last about a decade. From there, it could end up failing due to heat anticipator failure, dust build-up, or the wiring wearing out due to age. Once your thermostat starts malfunctioning, it should be replaced to avoid running the A/C at the wrong temperature.
  • Contactor and Capacitors: As for capacitors and contactors, these electrical parts assist in providing power to the entire HVAC system. They will go through wear and tear by bearing such huge loads. Once they start failing, you might hear the system fan working but don’t feel any cooling or heating happening.
  • Igniter: In regards to the igniter, they’re the spark that ignites the fuel on any fuel-burning furnace necessary to make the heating part of the HVAC system to work. How long they can operate depends on how they’re designed. Some break down within 4 years while others last longer. Igniter failure is caused by debris, cracks, moisture issues, and voltage problems.
  • Flame Sensor: The flame sensor protects you from carbon monoxide poisoning. It shuts off the furnace if fuel is escaping from the device but not burning like it should. You don’t want this item to fail on you because the results can be deadly. Usually, a good cleaning can fix it, but sometimes they can crack, rust, or otherwise fail.
  • Blower Motor: The blower motor is the HVAC workhorse responsible for pushing cooled or heated air through your ducts. It can work for two decades or more. However, moisture or overheating can cause it to wear out early on before 20 years. It’s one of the more expensive parts of the HVAC system.
  • Compressor: The most important part of the A/C is responsible for pressurization of the refrigerant before it is pumped right into the condenser. This part can fail because of incorrect refrigerant charge, damaged or blocked refrigerant lines, or dirty coils. It’s not cheap to replace this part, so it pays to maintain this part to maximize its operation lifespan.

The Importance of Control Valves in HVAC Systems

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Most people are unfamiliar what the control valve is for. As far as the HVAC system is concerned, they’re an important part of the whole kit and caboodle. You want flow solutions that give you a wide range of valves you can use for your Heater, Ventilation, and Air Conditioner setup.

Let’s now dive deeper into the uses and importance of the control valve for HVAC systems. They should be carefully maintained or replaced as necessary.

What are the Valves Used For?

These HVAC control valves ostensibly control or manage the flow of liquids into and throughout the HVAC system, creating a frequent or controlled output pressure from an input pressure that’s irregular.

  • Heating Coil Energy Transference: When energy isn’t effectively transferred to the heating coils of the HVAC system’s boiler, the water temperature won’t become hot or high enough to result in boiler condensation. The control valve helps reduce the flow measure and decrease the required equipment for water cooling or heating.
  • Control and Balancing Valves: The control and balancing valves exist to (obviously) control and balance the flow of hot and/or cold air produced by the HVAC device into the duct system of a given home, apartment, or building. They also make installations more straightforward.
  • HVAC Boilers and Coolers Regulation: HVAC coolers and boilers depend on these valves in order to heat up, ventilate, or cool down homes in residential areas, buildings in commercial areas, or factories in industrial areas. The valves regulate the flow of heat and cold to ensure the correct amount enters to all parts of a given structure.
  • Working Cost Reduction: Using control or balancing valves to adjust and regulate the hotness and coldness of your HVAC system reduces the working costs of the whole system. It makes the setup more adjustable and adaptable to changing weather or even climate change.
  • Control and Regulation Saves Dollars: The valves basically ensure that the whole system is efficiently working so that you don’t have to pay extra on your electricity bill because it keeps restarting and heating up when it’s cold or cooling down when it’s hot from scratch.
  • Works with the Environment Instead of Against It: The valves work by ensuring that the correct amount of flow goes to each coil and they can ensure free adjustment in accordance to the hotness and coldness of the environment so that your HVAC system isn’t working against nature to keep you cold or warm.

The valves ensure that each air conditioning, ventilation, and heating action uses efficient use of energy to produce the desired amount of comfort when push comes to shove. It also adjusts the flow in light of the needs of your residential, commercial, or industrial structure.

Inconsistent Temperatures? You May Need a New HVAC Actuator

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The actuator converts energy into motion to manipulate a mechanism or system. The HVAC actuator, therefore, converts energy into motion to make the HVAC system work properly. They’re specifically responsible for closing and opening the dampers to direct hotness or coldness to the proper areas.

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Replacements for faulty HVAC actuators might be called for if your HVAC system has a tendency to produce inconsistent temperatures. Bad actuators don’t open or shut the dampers in time or as needed.

When is an HVAC Actuator Faulty?

Directing hot and cold area to the proper areas they’re needed the most require actuators to move the dampers when needed, like when distributing heater hotness in winter or A/C coldness in summer.

  • Inconsistent Temperature and Bad Actuators: If your HVAC unit and system produces inconsistent temperatures, one of the prime suspects of that symptom is a bad actuator. Actuators do wear out or develop cracks over time as they’re used. Check your actuator if your HVAC temperatures are all over the place.
  • Only Actuators Produce Inconsistent Temperatures? No. Inconsistent temperatures can also root from dusty vents or other broken heater or A/C parts, leading to rooms becoming too cold or too hot. However, it’s usually the actuator that does it if cleanup doesn’t solve the issue.
  • Strange Noises from Your Unit: Your actuator might be acting up if you’re hearing banging or clicking coming from your HVAC system. You can consider such noises as a cry of help from the actuator itself as it fails to convert energy to kinetic damper movement.
  • Thermostat Temperature Adjustment is Difficult: If you’re having issues adjusting your thermostat settings, it could be your thermostat acting up or it could be the fault of a faulty HVAC actuator, particularly if your thermostat isn’t really affecting hotness or coldness at all.
  • Inconsistent or Weak Airflow: If your airflow is absent, inconsistent, or otherwise weak and your vents are in pristine condition with zero dust whatsoever, then you might be faced with an actuator that’s incapable of moving the air consistently through vents, whether it’s hot or cold air.
  • Higher Energy Bills Overall: The actuator is such an important part of your HVAC system that it makes the whole unit work harder in order to cool down or heat up your rooms when it’s malfunctioning in redirecting air via damper movement. This inefficiency naturally results in higher bills.

At any rate, how the actuators move the dampers is also based on the thermostat settings. It can open or close partially to redirect hot and cold air depending on how hot or how cold the thermostat is set. Ditto if it’s an automatic or smart thermostat.