One of the best ways to enhance the HVAC system in your Las Vegas, NV home is by having it zoned. Zoned heating offers superior convenience and efficiency through customized air delivery. We’ll discuss what zoned heating is and why it makes sense.
What Is a Zoned Heating System?
Your standard, central heating system creates a single, uniform temperature throughout your house. With just one thermostat, it routes heated air to every room until all of them reach the desired temperature setting. Unfortunately, this means that you’re paying to heat spaces that no one is occupying, including your empty guest room, home office, or den.
Some households regularly heat completely unoccupied floors. For instance, if all your bedrooms are upstairs, when everyone retires for the night, you’re wasting energy to heat empty downstairs rooms.
Zoning divides buildings into two or more service areas. Each service area or zone gets its own thermostat. Each thermostat is controlled independently of the others. When entering a new room or zone, you can raise or lower its thermostat setting to reflect your immediate preferences and needs.
The Basic Anatomy of a Zoned Heating System
Each of the thermostats in a zoned heating system communicates with a central smart control unit. This unit governs the movements of HVAC duct dampers. For example, if you want heated air in a specific zone and raise its thermostat setting, this thermostat will send a “calling” signal to the central control unit. In response, the central control unit will open the service area’s duct damper to allow conditioned air in. When the temperature you’ve set is reached, the control unit will seal this damper shut.
Air Pressure Mitigation in HVAC Zoning
Many homeowners with standard, central heating and cooling use their HVAC air vents to customize air delivery. By simply shutting these vents, you can manually direct conditioned air away from select areas when it’s no longer wanted or needed. Unfortunately, manual vent closures like these are bad for HVAC systems. They can quickly cause problems like short cycling, overheating, and shutdown.
Standard, central HVAC systems lack features for mitigating the additional air pressure that vent closures create. Zoned heating systems often incorporate oversized air ducts or bypass air ducts as mitigation strategies. With additional room to move through, unwanted air won’t create dramatic increases in static pressure, and the continued flow of conditioned air to other areas won’t be impeded.
Zoned Heating Systems Are Far More Efficient
According to the United States Department of Energy (DOE), zoned HVAC could cut your home heating and cooling costs by as much as 30%. By only sending conditioned air into occupied spaces, zoning greatly minimizes energy waste. With zoning, you can cut your spending and your carbon footprint while still enjoying maximum comfort.
Zoned Heating Offers Customized Climate Control
Standard central HVAC systems are known for causing heated arguments over thermostat settings. It’s rare for all household residents to have the same temperature preferences and needs all the time. Some people always run hot and others are constantly looking for ways to get warmer. Zoning will allow each person in your household to create and maintain the conditions they like in their immediate areas.
Extend the Benefits of Air Balancing
Closing vents in standard, central HVAC systems doesn’t just increase air pressure in ducting. It also disrupts the carefully established vent and damper positions that HVAC technicians set when providing air balancing services. Zoning both eliminates the extra and unnecessary stress that closing vents causes and extends the benefits of professional air balancing.
Zoned Heating Systems and Smart Home Integration
There are many ways to zone an HVAC system. Some of the earliest zoned HVAC systems had mechanical duct dampers only. Often located in garages, these dampers offered easy access and were easy to use. Homeowners could open, close, or adjust them throughout the year to better refine air delivery.
Currently, zoned HVAC incorporates cutting-edge smart technologies. These systems require smart thermostats in every service area, and their central zone control units integrate seamlessly with smart home systems.
Experience the Unmatched Efficiency of Smart Thermostats
According to ENERGY STAR, when used correctly, smart thermostats could help homeowners cut their energy bills by as much as 8% throughout the year. Much like programmable thermostats, smart thermostats can hold multiple, pre-set temperature changes. They can raise or lower your thermostat setting when you leave for work or just before you arrive home, and when you go to bed or get up in the morning.
Smart thermostats are both learning and Wi-Fi enabled. They offer these features and capabilities that even the best programmable thermostats cannot:
Remote temperature adjustments and monitoring
Energy tracking
HVAC performance alerts
Filter change and general maintenance reminders
Consumers can access and adjust their smart thermostats from location using connected devices and branded apps. Over time, these learning devices also become increasingly skilled in adjusting themselves.
Leveraging Multiple Smart Home Features to Minimize Your Carbon Footprint
Many modern properties are rich with smart home features. You might have smart curtains or smart blinds and multiple smart plugs, power strips, and lights. With the right HVAC zone-control technology, you can coordinate the functions and movements of your smart thermostats, duct dampers, and bypass ducts to seamlessly support everything else in your home. For instance, smart window treatments promote higher levels of home efficiency by automatically closing during the hottest part of the day to minimize summertime solar heat gains. Pairing these features with a zoned HVAC system will allow your heater and AC to coordinate their performance with that of your curtains or blinds.
Discover the Benefits of Geofencing
Geofencing is a common capability among the latest smart thermostats and zone control units. Geofencing creates imagined perimeters around homes to establish geographic boundaries. It then tracks how residents move through the spaces within them. If someone leaves a zone or room and retires to another area, the thermostat settings throughout these spaces will adjust to reflect these movements. Geofencing can lower your thermostat setting after you make a hasty exit or turn your heater on when you show up unexpectedly.
How Zoning Increases the Value and Appeal of Houses
Zoning is an HVAC improvement that’s guaranteed to save homeowners money over time. By limiting HVAC wear, zoning extends the lifespans of heaters, heat pumps, and air conditioners while simultaneously limiting the risk of costly repair issues. Zoning allows for lower energy bills, smaller carbon footprints, and timely identification of HVAC performance issues. These are all benefits that prospective buyers are sure to enjoy if you ever choose to list your home. Zoned heating systems bring homes on par with current market standards and boost their marketability for increasingly eco-conscious consumers.
With 24/7 emergency support and 100% satisfaction guarantees, we proudly serve homeowners in Las Vegas, NV and the surrounding cities. We offer exceptional heating, cooling, and indoor air quality services. We also provide new ductwork, plumbing, and smart thermostats.
To schedule an appointment or find out more about HVAC zoning in the Las Vegas area, contact Simply Air Conditioning Heating & Plumbing today!