Zone heating systems and air conditioning

The primary purpose behind a zone heating and air conditioning system is to allow you to control the individual temperature in every single room of the home completely individually. By using motorized dampers in a series and thermostats capable of operating independently of one another, zoning is capable of eliminating cold and hot rooms that are found in nearly every home while simultaneously cutting energy by as much as 25%.

The zone heating and cooling concept

For people that do not want to sacrifice their comfort but they do want to save energy and money, zone heating systems are a good option. Comfort is just as major a consideration as saving energy and money. From an energy standpoint, zone heating and air conditioning is an excellent idea because it is based on the understanding that it is virtually impossible for you to keep your entire home at a constant temperature without zoning the home in some way. Cold air sinks and warm air rises, and this means that upstairs rooms are typically between six and ten degrees cooler, and basement floors are typically between six and ten degrees colder. A single thermostat is designed to keep the temperature balanced only in the room where that thermostat is located, so it cannot tell if the rest of the home is struggling to maintain a cooler or warmer temperature.

How zone heating systems operate

What zone heating and air conditioning systems do, is divide a home into different areas with different heating and cooling needs depending on the time of the day. Rather than sending the same exact amount of cooled air or heated air into all of the rooms every time the air conditioner or furnace is turned on, the system is going to send the conditioned air only to the zones that are in need. Temperatures can be kept at an ideal level of comfort while the family is up and about, and then it can change into an energy-saving mode overnight or during periods of time where no one is in the home.

Differences in zone heating and cooling

With zone heating systems, you can either cool or can heat just one area of the home at a time as you need to. You are also able to choose different temperature settings for different zones. In most homes, you can create a two zone or a three zone system. Most homes do not require more than around three different zones. Most homes are typically zoned based on the occupancy of the room, though there are exposure factors that may want to be considered in order to create a zoning strategy. For example, large rooms with lots of windows facing toward the south may not require as much heating as other rooms in the rest of the home.

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