Homeowners with multiple-story or larger houses can benefit greatly from a well-designed zoning system. These sophisticated home temperature-control systems allow you to divide your home into separate areas, or zones, that are controlled by individual thermostats. A series of motorized dampers in the ductwork system opens or closes the ducts to provide heating or cooling as desired within each zone.Here are some key principles for designing and implementing a well-designed zoning system in your home:
Keep zones to an area no larger than a single floor: Zoning systems work best in smaller areas such as individual rooms. If you put more than one floor of your home in a single zone, you'll lose the primary benefit of the zoning system as rising warm air and sinking cool air will continue to cause inconsistent temperatures.
Put newly constructed or remodeled rooms in the same zone: Newly constructed or remodeled rooms will probably have better levels of insulation and other thermal characteristics than older rooms, so keep them within the same zone.
Put zone thermostats in the room that is used most often: It makes sense to keep a zone's most-used room comfortable and to install the temperature controller there. Thermostats in hallways won't always give the best level of temperature control since they might be affected by factors such as sunshine or extreme outdoor temperatures.
Put rooms with outer perimeter walls in separate zones: Rooms with walls that make contact with the outdoor environment are more likely to be affected by exterior temperatures, resulting in inconsistent heating and cooling.
Combine rooms with similar heating loads within the same zone: Rooms with different heating and cooling loads will still have inconsistent temperatures if they are placed within the same zone. Keep rooms with similar thermal characteristics in the same zone as much as possible.
Air Assurance has been a professional heating and air conditioning services provider in the Tulsa area for more than three decades. Contact us today for more information on well-designed zoning systems and the many benefits they can provide.Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow, Oklahoma area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). Image courtesy of Shutterstock