Importance Of Calculating Your Home’s Heat Gain and Loss

Your home’s heating and cooling system is a big investment, and your family’s comfort is important to you. Both are excellent reasons to make sure that the system installed in your home runs efficiently, maximizing your energy and financial savings.

Having a licensed contractor perform heat loss/gain calculations can help you make decisions regarding the size of your HVAC system, as well as insulation, windows and other features of your home. These calculations are critical, especially if you are considering a first-time system installation or a system upgrade.

Calculating heat loss and gain will determine the latent heat gain in your home compared to the sensible heat gain. Latent heat is moisture that is condensed from the air, lowering both the humidity and the temperature in your home. Sensible heat is the heat you actually feel from your system. Understanding the two as they are controlled by your HVAC system is a key to achieving and maintaining a high level of efficiency.

Using the results of heat loss/gain calculations, your contractor can determine the properly sized unit for your home. Based on these results, he can also recommend other adjustments within your home to maximize it’s efficiency and comfort. These can include ductwork, insulation, drafts and windows. Improvements in these areas may actually help you make the most of your existing system.

Knowing the importance of making heat loss/gain calculations, you have several options. You can do the calculations yourself if you understand heat units and measurements, as well as how heat is transferred and insulated.

You can manually make the calculations, or there are automated calculators and software you can use to make the process simpler. Of course, we recommend that you have an HVAC contractor perform an analysis and calculations for you. A qualified tech will be able to help you make necessary decisions regarding your heating and cooling system.