If you have roommates or family members who live with you, there’s a good chance that everyone has different preferences for heating and cooling the home. There’s also a possibility that certain areas in your home require different temperatures. For instance, basements tend to run colder than ground-level rooms. When you have a traditional HVAC system, heating and cooling is consistent throughout every area of the home. If you’re looking to upgrade your existing HVAC unit, consider HVAC zoning systems.
What HVAC Zoning Entails
HVAC zoning systems are designed to separate your home interiors into at least two zones. All of these zones can be controlled via your thermostat. Let’s say that you’re watching something in the living room while your significant other is reading in the bedroom. With a zoning system, you and your significant other can set different temperatures for these areas. Zoned HVAC systems provide you with more control and help you save money on energy.
Before you purchase one of these HVAC systems, make sure that you divide your home into smaller zones. Once you’ve done so, a thermostat is placed in each zone. Even though the individual thermostats control separate zones, each of them is connected to a single control panel.
The process of separating your home into zones occurs by having HVAC zoning dampers installed in the ducts. Dampers consist of valves that allow for better control of airflow. If one of the zones in your home needs cool air, specific dampers will open to allow cool air to move to the intended location. In the meantime, all other dampers remain closed.
HVAC Zoning System Benefits
There are several advantages of upgrading to an HVAC zoning system in your home, the primary of which is that you can more effectively regulate the indoor air temperature. You can set the preferred temperature for every zone without needing to worry about the HVAC unit evenly distributing hot and cold air.
Zoning also helps you save some money on your monthly energy bill. In fact, it’s possible to lower your heating and cooling costs by as much as 30%. Energy is saved by only running the HVAC system when it’s necessary. When using a single-zone unit, attempting to raise the temperature in your basement would also cause the temperature to increase in every other area, which wastes energy.
An additional benefit of a zoned system is that you can perform selective ventilation. If you or someone else who lives in your home is suffering from a respiratory condition, it’s possible to restrict the room from being ventilated. Without proper ventilation, it’s much less likely that allergens would enter this area.
When Zoning Is Necessary
You may be wondering if the costs associated with obtaining a zoning system are worth it. Some homeowners benefit more than others. An HVAC zoning system may be right for you if you have multiple levels in your home or believe that different areas of your home are unevenly regulated. Some other reasons to select this type of HVAC system include:
- Attic serves as bedroom
- You have unused spaces
- Elderly individuals live there
- Everyone has different preferences
Proper Number of Zones
The simplest way to identify the number of zones that are right for your home is to speak with an HVAC professional. It’s possible that your upstairs rooms are at much different temperatures than the downstairs rooms. In this situation, it might be best to divide each floor into a separate zone. You could also create different zones for every room, which allows for even more control over how much energy you use. There isn’t a limit to the number of zones you can add.
Once you’ve installed this type of unit, make sure that you properly monitor the indoor air to ensure the system is running properly. If it is, all that’s left is to set different temperatures in every zone. After you input this information, your HVAC system takes over. HVAC zoning units don’t require more monitoring than traditional units.
Ducted Zoning
If you have a central HVAC unit in your home, a single thermostat will control your indoor air temperature. Since this system can’t be used to change the temperature in specific rooms, you won’t be able to conserve energy effectively. Zoned systems eliminate this issue altogether.
If certain rooms throughout your home are separate from the common areas, you might want to have the temperatures in these areas differ from the rest of your home. Say that you have a home office or gym. These rooms may need to be at varying temperatures to keep you comfortable. When you find yourself in this situation, you may want to have a zoned system.
Professional HVAC technicians can convert a central HVAC unit into a zoned one by installing louvers and dampers within each duct. While you’ll likely want to install individual thermostats in every zone, some modern thermostats provide multi-zone control from a single unit. If you obtain a multi-zone thermostat, sensors will be installed throughout each zone to send data back to the main thermostat.
Ductless Zoning
Ductless zoning is straightforward and may even be simpler to obtain than ducted zoning. When you have a ductless HVAC system, every ductless unit in one zone is controllable from a primary thermostat. If you have a window unit and mini-split in a single zone, any changes you make to the temperature will be reflected across every unit. This approach allows you to avoid manually switching each unit off and on.
If you’re looking to convert a ductless unit into a zoned system, dampers and louvers don’t need to be installed. Instead, you’ll require a smart AC controller. These devices use modern technology to connect every HVAC unit and form a zone. Once the system is set up, you’ll be able to control the temperature from your desktop computer or smartphone.
If you want to implement zoning throughout your home, our HVAC team at Allbritten provides Fresno, CA, residents with efficient heating and cooling installation. We want to keep you happy and satisfied, so we’ll help you determine if an HVAC zoning system is right for your home. Our team will also give you a better idea of how long the installation process will take and what each step of this process involves. We strive to be fully transparent in everything we do. Once the project is finished, we’ll make sure that your home looks just like it did before we arrived.
Along with our installation services, we offer repair, tune-up, and surge protection services for all types of HVAC systems. Other services you can request from us include leak detection, drain cleaning, plumbing repair, indoor air quality, and duct sealing. Call our HVAC technicians at Allbritten today to learn more about HVAC zoning systems and why you should choose them for your home.
