A short podcast episode hosted by Derek Cole that introduces residential HVAC zoning. Speakers explain why upstairs and downstairs in a house often have different heating/cooling demands (heat rises, thermostat location matters), describe the discomfort and inefficiency of single-zone systems, and summarize simple zoning fixes—adding thermostats, installing dampers, or converting to a two-zone system—to improve comfort and save energy.
Hey, this is Derek Cole, your friend in comfort and energy savings, asking you to get into the zone. And no, I'm not talking about autozone, dude. I'm talking about zoning your H VAC equipment. You zone your plumbing, you zone your electrical. So you zone your heating and air. Same concept, only heat and cool the rooms you're in at that time and save you some money. Be more comfortable.
Different demands upstairs than you have downstairs. So when you look at a house and think about it, heat rises obviously, right? So when he arises upstairs, typically will be warmer than downstairs, right? So chances are I've seen this before. The thermostat is downstairs. You have a unit that runs the whole house up and down. So to get upstairs comfortable, you then have to make downstairs freezing.
Zoning can fix this issue. We can actually take a thermostat and put it in that room or put it in another, add a damper or two, and we can guarantee comfort in those rooms.
Downstairs, heat rises. You also have the attic upstairs. So you have these forces you're going against. You have the attic, you have windows, you have upstairs, heat rises. And downstairs, of course, cold air falls. And you don't have an attic downstairs. And the crawl space is not that much of a heat load compared to an attic. So it's different demand. So how you solve that problem is either two units or what we've done quite a few times, which is zoning. You make downstairs one zone, you make upstairs one zone. It's very simple. If you have a unit that covers up and downstairs right now, you can very simply make it a two zone system. That way you have a thermostat downstairs, you have a thermostat upstairs, you can keep it that temperature you want, you give it that temperature you want, and it can make it work that way.
