In this short film, Derrick (also referred to as Derek) Cole introduces the concept of HVAC zoning as a way to improve comfort and reduce energy costs. He explains that heat naturally rises, causing upstairs rooms to be warmer than downstairs, yet many homes have a single thermostat located downstairs that controls the entire system. This setup forces occupants to overheat the upstairs or over‑cool the downstairs to achieve comfort. Cole proposes zoning as a solution: installing additional thermostats in specific rooms and adding dampers to control airflow, allowing each zone to be heated or cooled independently. The result is targeted comfort, lower energy consumption, and a more balanced indoor environment.
Hey, this is Derrick 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 HVAC equipment. You zone your plumbing, you zone your electrical, so you should 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 heat rises upstairs, typically would 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, so you do— 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 2 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 unit that covers up and downstairs right now, you can very simply make it a 2-zone system. That way you have a thermostat downstairs, you have a thermostat upstairs. You can keep it that temperature you want, you keep it that temperature you want, and they can make it work that way.
