A zoning system allows you to control the temperature in your home with multiple thermostats, helping to keep each room comfortable and save energy by avoiding the need to heat or cool unoccupied rooms during the day. A zoning system also better serves occupants of your house, by accommodating different climate conditions in individual rooms as well as the temperature preferences of individuals. If you’re interested in implementing a zoning system in your home, here are six key design rules to keep in mind:
- Never put multiple floors in the same zone: You’ve probably noticed that your basement is naturally cooler than the upper floor in your home. This fact makes it clear that hot air rises and cool air falls, which means the best comfort will be accomplished if you keep different floors in different zones.
- Always keep new additions to the home in their own zones: Home add-ons typically have better (or at least different) insulation levels, so these spaces react differently to heating and cooling than older sections of the home.
- Group internal rooms together in a single zone: If there are rooms in your home that don’t have a perimeter wall, group them together since they're minimally affected by outdoor temperature changes.
- Install thermostats in the most-used room of any zone: Since the thermostat is what reads the temperature, it should be installed where you’ll be spending most of your time. This is helpful to ensure the greatest comfort possible once you install a zoning system. Consider equipping your zoning system with programmable thermostats.
- Create zones based on the type of room or its location in the home: Bedrooms may be zoned together so they can all be kept more comfortable at night than during the day. Another idea is to zone rooms with south- and west-facing windows together since they get the most heat gain from the sun in the afternoon.
- Aim for a minimum of two supply registers in every zone: This helps maintain adequate airflow, which is important for a steady temperature throughout every zone in your home.
For more information about installing a zoning system in your Mid-Ohio home, please contact Joe Behr Plumbing & Heating, Inc. in Lexington today.
Our goal is to help educate our customers in the Mid-Ohio area about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about zoning systems and other HVAC topics, visit our website.
