Have you ever wondered why one room in your home is always colder than the rest? This problem happens to nearly everyone at one time or another.

Ideally, the flow of air in your home is kept in perfect balance and your rooms are uniformly warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Sometimes, though, that’s not quite the way things work out. Have you ever walked into a room and found it to be either oppressively warm or chillingly cold, despite the rest of the house feeling as it normally does? This is most likely due to unbalanced airflow in your home’s heat and cooling system.

Homeowners often think that they have to live with temperature inconsistencies in different parts of their homes because they are reluctant to spend tens of thousands of dollars to upgrade their heating systems and insulation. But in many cases, the solutions are so simple and inexpensive that people may overlook them:

• Check the arrangement of the furniture and drapes to make sure that heating vents or radiators are not blocked.

• Shut the damper in the fireplace firmly when you aren’t using it.

• Feel for drafts along windows by holding a lit candle along the gap between the window and the trim. Watch if the flame bends or flickers, indicating a leak, and then caulk or weather-strip to close the gap. If a window still feels drafty, pry off the interior wall trim around the window and spray foam sealant between the wall and window frame. Then press the trim back into place.

• If you need to heat only a specific part of a room such as the desk area in a home office or a couch near a TV, get an energy-efficient portable electric space heater.

Electric heaters, such as e-Flame USA’s wall mounted Sundance model, and Montreal insert, immediately warm up a cold room. These units are a cost effective solution that are easy-to-install and compliment any room.

Temperature imbalances can be caused by a myriad of factors. Thankfully, there are just as many ways to solve them. Now is the perfect time to do it too — start fixing issues now before the winter chill hits!