I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why my bedroom feels hotter than any other place in my house.
At first I thought that maybe my exterior wall is getting hit by excessive afternoon sunlight, but a quick visual inspection outside determined that not to be the case.
In fact, I actually get shade from a neighbor’s trees on this portion of my house during the hottest times of the day, so that couldn’t be the reason. Even though I have been living in this rental for a few months now, the summer weather is starting to show the weaknesses in the indoor air circulation from one room to the next. We live in a southern climate so we need air conditioning on demand whenever the house starts to feel uncomfortably warm during all times of the day. It gets so hot that we run our air conditioner at a low temperature while we sleep at night. No matter how low we turn the thermostat, the bedroom feels warmer than anywhere else in the house. I decided to call the landlord, but he refused to do anything about the air circulation. As long as the air conditioner technically works, he’s not going to do a thing about it. That’s when I called my heating and cooling contractor that I’ve been using for the past 20 years. He told me over the phone that I most likely needed a damper for the ductwork. Sometimes the ductwork doesn’t evenly distribute the air leaving the air conditioner throughout the whole home, leaving some areas more affected than others. Thankfully, he could install the damper and remove it whenever I decide to move so it’s not a permanent modification that would make my landlord angry.