An HVAC zoning system allows you to set different temperatures in different areas of your High Point, North Carolina, home. This helps you reduce energy waste in rooms that aren’t occupied. Zoning also increases the comfort level, since occupants of different rooms can set temperatures independently to match their needs.
What Is HVAC Zoning?
An HVAC zoning system divides your home into several zones. Depending upon your requirements, you can create a zone as small as a room or as large as the whole story of a building. Each zone has a dedicated thermostat and an electronic damper. You connect all the thermostats and dampers to the central controller of the HVAC system. This arrangement allows you to heat or cool different zones of your home to different temperatures.
The dampers, which you place in the ductwork, control the circulation of conditioned air to different zones. The system shuts down and reopens these dampers to achieve the desired temperatures in each zone.
Benefits of HVAC Zoning
Imagine how much energy you would be wasting if all the lights in your home were connected to a single switch, and you didn’t have the option to turn them on and off individually. It’s the same case with your central heating and cooling system, where you don’t have the choice to regulate temperatures in different rooms of your home.
All the members in your home may not feel comfortable at the same temperature setting, and this is more so when they are in different rooms. Yet all of them are forced to stay in a single, centralized temperature. A zoning system removes this limitation. It offers you the flexibility to precisely control the temperature in different portions of your home. This greatly enhances the comfort of members occupying different rooms of the house.
Now consider the fact that your HVAC system is heating or cooling your entire home, whereas only a room or two remain occupied at any given time. You can imagine the level of energy your system is wasting. A zoning system can help you avoid all this wastage and save you up to 30 percent in energy costs. It also reduces the load on your HVAC equipment and increases its life.
What Homes Benefit the Most?
Almost all homes can benefit from an HVAC zoning system. Larger homes stand to benefit more due to higher energy savings. If you have a multi-story home, you are a good candidate for a zoning system. Similarly, if there are several rooms that remain unoccupied most of the time, zoning can help you cut down the wastage on heating and cooling them.
Another scenario is a household with members divided over the issue of a comfortable temperature level; some may like it cooler while others may prefer to stay a bit warmer. Zoning is the right solution for such homes.
Often, the temperatures in different parts of the house vary due to its direction and architecture. A large window on the north or south side, for instance, impacts the natural heating and cooling of the room. Using a zoning system can reduce the consumption of energy in such cases.
Installing a Zoning System
Installing a zoning system involves placing separate thermostats and electronic dampers for each zone and wiring them through a central zone control panel. In some cases, you may also have to redesign the ductwork and use some air pressure balancing devices for better efficiency.
For proper functioning, a zoning system must maintain the correct airflow balance in the ductwork. This should not be a problem with HVAC systems with variable-speed air handlers, since they automatically regulate the airflow according to the number of zones making a request for hot or cool air. However, for HVAC equipment with single-speed air handlers, you may have to install zone bypass ducts in order to maintain the correct balance of airflow when only some of the zones call for the treated air.
Let the HVAC experts at Charlie’s Heating and Cooling assess your zoning requirements. We can suggest and install the right zoning system for efficient heating and cooling of your home. Give us a call at (336) 629-5453.
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