Whole-house zoning has been around for decades, but is used in less than one percent of American homes. But what is this? Whole house HVAC zoning is basically a series of electronic remote controlled dampers connected to your heating and air conditioning system to deliver specific temperatures to specific areas of your home when you need it, not just one temperature for the entire floor. Many families complain about “hot spots” in particular areas of their home where the temperature is either too hot or too cold depending on the season. But with multiple thermostats, the temperature can be adjusted from room to room, much like turning a light on or off. After all, we don’t click a light switch in the living room and hope it lights up the kitchen. That just wouldn’t make sense. And yet we continue to build and buy houses with this same wasteful concept in mind.
The versatility of whole house zoning is enormous. With multiple thermostats on a first, second, or even third floor, temperatures can be adjusted to suit the comfort of everyone in the home. For example, not only your children’s bedrooms and play areas could be set to 78 degrees, while the master suite area could be 72 degrees, but also the kitchen, dining room, and utility room could be kept at 75 degrees. In fact, many houses these days have mother-in-law suites at one end of the house. And with a properly installed whole-house zoning system, the mother-in-law suite could require constant heat to 79 degrees before the system cools down again to reach the temperatures mentioned above. That’s total control of your home comfort system!
While it is possible to install a thermostat in each room, most homes that have whole house zoning installed typically use three to five zones per home or floor. The system’s ductwork must be relocated to a particular zone or an electronic damper with its own thermostat to condition that particular area of the home. The more zones involved, the higher the initial cost of whole house zoning installation. And typically, one thermostat per floor is the “master” thermostat, while the others are “slaves.” But the basic function of each zone is to open the electronic damper in the attic, basement, or basement and deliver enough hot or cold air to satisfy that particular thermostat, close the damper, and then continue to do the same for the other zones. until each thermostat is satisfied.
Finally, since every room in our houses has at least one light switch because that makes a lot of sense, wouldn’t it also make a lot of sense that the appliance in our house that uses the most energy, our heating and air conditioning system, , have a way to control the temperature where we want, when we want, no matter what room we are in? With whole house zoning we can take full control over the comfort of our home while maintaining tighter control over our utility consumption.