Heating & Cooling By Zone
Submitted By: Kristen Altbaum (kaltbaum@comcast.net)

Challenge
We were trying to heat and cool our home more efficiently. After adding 450 sq feet of living space to our kitchen/family/great room, our a/c unit was no longer strong enough to effectively cool the area on the hottest days of the year. This 9 ft. tall room is positioned farthest away from the furnace and a/c unit, and has a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows on its south facing side. We live in this room 90% of the daytime. So, we considered increasing the size of our furnace and a/c unit, but that wouldn’t have been cost effective. We also tried closing off most of the floor registers in other parts of the house, but that wasn’t effective either.


Solution Details
We had a Honeywell TZ-4 TotalZone® Zone Control System installed in the same closet as our furnace. The unit is approximately 11 inches high, 13 inches wide and 2 inches deep. The installation took a couple days. There’s the installation of thermostats in the different zones and these all have to be wired to zone computer box (which sits on top of, and is wired to, the main furnace). The zone computer box controls the opening and closing of electronically controlled “doors” inside the hvac ducts. Sometimes more hvac ducts have to be added. We had a whole house allergen filtration system installed at the same time.
 
tz4
Zoning segments the house into particular areas that can be individually controlled using different thermostats which are all programmable. So, instead of having one thermostat for the whole house, there can be 2, 3 or 4 (in our case, 4) in areas such as bedrooms; basement; living; family room/kitchen. We’re lucky because we have pocket doors that keep the zones separate so the air does not flow in and out of the different zones so easily, but that isn’t required. (We have 3 children who regularly walk in and out of these rooms and leave the pocket doors open, so they aren’t always closed.)
 
In addition to only heating/cooling the rooms that are being used, the channeled air creates a comfortable space faster and more efficiently, so we don’t have to wait as long for the room to cool down, for example, and individual rooms achieve warmer/cooler temperatures.
 
We learned that our bedrooms never need to be cooled during the day, since they’re positioned on the east side of the house where big trees produce a lot of shade.
 
We have one upstairs bedroom and it is its own zone. That’s nice for comfortable summer sleeping.
 
Think of lighting…you would never want one switch for the entire house.
 
In the majority of cases, zoning does not require a new furnace.


Benefits & Payback
Estimates are that you’ll save approximately 30% on your heat and a/c bills. I believe that to be true in our case.

I can’t remember what we paid for the system 2 years ago, but I think it was around $2500. The beautiful thing is that we no longer have guilt about heating or cooling the entire house when we are only in a portion of it… and that… is priceless.


Informational Links

Honeywell Temperature Zoning Brochure
Honeywell Temperature Zoning Systems - Find a Dealer

Installer: Big Air - located in Pacheco. 925-952-4435


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