The Benefits of Zoned Forced Air Systems | Plumber Sherwood Park
Hey there. Welcome back to the Hinse Brothers Mechanical YouTube channel. I’m Trevor, and this is Adrian Hinse. He, hi, Trevor is the, the main sales guy and service rep for Hinse Brothers, and also one of the brothers in Hinse Brothers Mechanical. Today our topic is the benefits of zoning, forced air heating and cooling systems. Something that you might’ve been curious about in the past, and now we’re gonna go over these answers today with Adrian.
He’s gonna give us all the information that we need and helping us make a better decision when we are either updating, upgrading, or, you know, putting in a new system in our home. Next we have a quote from Franklin d Roosevelt. When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. I like that one. Lately I felt a little bit like that.
Yeah. In the, in the most recent months here check this out, 80.81% of Albertans did not have an AC 10 years ago. Well, on that fact, actually recently it’s gone up about 20%. So temperatures have been going up, as you’ve noticed in Alberta, and people are really getting on the air conditioning train and wanting to cool their houses off, you know, better sleep higher level of comfort throughout the day, not to mention recent activities of people offing out of home has really drastically made a difference there. Yeah.
Because when it’s, when you’re in the house and it’s just uncomfortably hot, you don’t want to be there. You wanna be outside, but then it’s even hotter out there. Where do you go? Not working, not at your home. So, and I think just people are more accustomed to a cooler temperature now.
Like they like it being cool and comfortable, whereas in the past, people were like, ah, it’s only for a couple of weeks of the year. Why should I bother? And now it’s like, oh no, those, those few months of the year it, when the reality hits that it’s actually a few months, it’s like, okay, yeah, we should get it less of the summer warriors going on here. That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So now let’s talk about zoned air number one.
What is zoned forced air?
So a zone system is actually gives you the ability to separate the different zones in your home temperature wise. So you can have a thermostat in different rooms or levels in the house. Okay. Offering you the ability to give yourself a customized temperature in those rooms and, and levels. Nice. Well, that would be, that’d be good because, you know, like we see, well, we’ll probably talk about it later on.
It’s tough to get the, the air just right in every room of the house.
Number two, why would you want to go with a zone forced air heating and cooling system?
Couple of main reasons for going with a zone system in your home would be number one, efficiency levels. So when you zone your home, you’re actually mainly just focusing on the areas you’re using. Hmm. So if you’re basically using two areas in the home, most of the time you can focus on those areas by only heating or cooling those areas.
Okay. And maintaining the other levels, keeping them within extreme temperature limits. So efficiency wise you’re able to only cool off or heat areas that require it. So if you’re upstairs typically that’s where you’re getting the most heat in your home, right? So you can focus all the cooling in that area and you’re not cooling off the basement or the main level at the same time causing other people to be uncomfortable or cold.
Right. So drastically affects your efficiency and comfort levels as well. Yeah. That’s usually the struggle. Yeah. You know, trying to keep the upstairs nice and cool while downstairs is freezing. Yes. Yeah. Third question.
What are the benefits of zoning a two story home?
So two story or multi-story homes are particularly an issue because of the heat mainly. I don’t know if you’ve had a two story home, but living up, you know, usually the bedrooms are on the top floor and they accumulate heat. Right?
And so in an effort to maintain a livable temperature at the top level the basement is basically ice cold, you know, 15 degrees downstairs or 25 degrees upstairs. Yeah. 10 degree difference between those two areas is not uncommon. Right. With a zone system, you can have basically all the areas within a, a couple of degrees or one degree.
That would be nice. Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. That would be nice. Yeah. Next question;
is zoning a system better than splitting the home with two separate systems?
So, zoning the system there’s a few different ways you can do it. So with boiler systems, there’s different zone controls. You can set up different rooms with heating.
Problem is they don’t offer cooling Right. With a boiler system unless you’ve got a chiller included. But when it comes to forced air if you’ve got a central air system and you’ve only got, you only want to go with one piece of equipment, one furnace, and one air conditioner, you can use a zone control and dampers, which allow you to move the air to different rooms in one duck system. So whereas I do kind of favor having multiple pieces of equipment for backup in extreme temperatures, so in the middle of winter it’s nice to have two furnaces, I’m not gonna lie to you.
Right. but with that, in the summertime, you also require two air conditioners or three of each or something like that. And, and your upfront costs are much higher, right? Wear and tear would be a little bit less as well. But you definitely have to consider those options. You know what’s most important is saving that money up front, being able to provide that comfort level on all the different areas or having a little bit of safety factor in there as well.
So there’s a few different ways we can approach it. We can come over, give you an assessment, give you some options. Yeah, no, that’d be really good. You know, I’ve seen some with the, the two furnaces and two air conditioners and I’m thinking, well that’s just a, a lot of, a lot of upper costs and also a lot of ongoing costs because you know, you gotta have gas to burn in those appliances or you know, the electricity to, to power them.
So that’s one thing to consider. And if you can do it with a zone system might be a good way to, to curb the cost a little bit. Now the next question is you know, someone who is watching might be asking this question themselves is a zone HVAC system, right? For me, well, that’s all depends on your ability to deal with climate change or deal with having hot temperatures in your home or not being able to control those temperatures. Right.
Having a zone system, typically we need to have all your duct work exposed in the home. So downstairs, if it’s completely finished, that poses a bit of an issue. We can’t get to the duct work to install the dampers that we need to put in and the controls. We would have to actually open up the ceiling.
So that’s something to consider. Yeah. Having to open up ceilings and open up drywall in order to get at ducts and install the, the dampers, that would be kind of a hassle. And also running the additional thermostats through the house too. So if you have an extra one or two thermostats, gotta run wiring. That’s right. So, but the good thing is today we do have wireless systems that can handle that as well. So Nice.
We can outfit your home with, usually you have got like one main smart control thermostat and multiple sensors throughout the home for the different levels or different zoned areas. Very nice. Yeah, I like that. So more, more technology, better heating and cooling. Now how do you know if you have a properly designed zone system? So a properly designed zone system requires a certain amount of air for it to function properly.
So it is important to have each area sized properly. Okay. So it ideally if you could have three similarly sized zones or four the system would function properly. A smaller zone compared to a larger zone, we may have to bypass some of the air, which would reduce some of the efficiency. So if it’s half the size, it’s gonna require half the amount of air right. To heat or cool the space.
So we’d actually have to take half of that air and bring it back to the return on the furnace to avoid the air conditioner from freezing up or like the evaporator coil from freezing and these types of issues, right? Because they do require a certain amount of air to function properly.
So there’s some science that’s involved in actually getting a zone system properly installed and put together in your home. It’s not just a matter of throwing some dampers in and, you know, rejigging the, the duct work a little bit. No, there’s kind of more, more science involved in that. That’s right. The amount of air is really important. Right.
So with that being said, we can design a system for your home and make it work, right? So it may not be perfect in one room, but it could be a lot better in other rooms. At the end of the day, you are going to have the ability to control temperatures in different zones. That’s, that’s the main objective. Yeah, that’s really helpful. Anybody watching this video is probably from Canada or they’re in a place where there’s, you know, four seasons and, you know, depending on the season, it can be really cold in the morning and cooking in the afternoon.
You know, in the house it can be nice and cool on the main level. Then upstairs it’s, you know, an extra five, 10 degrees hotter in the evening when you’re trying to go to sleep. So you know, putting together a well well designed system I think would be important for anybody. So give these guys a call, they’ll be able to help you out.
Next question is does the use of smart thermostats improve the zone system?
So definitely they improve the, the zone system in the way that you can control everything from your computer. You can control it from your tablet smartphone. Basically from the touch your phone, you can shut down the basement zone or just maintain that temperature at like 15 degrees in the, in the winter time or raise it in the summertime. So you’re not actually conditioning an area that you’re not spending time in basically preventing it from freezing or overheating. Right.
And they’re actually quite handy in the fact that you have that one main control and off of that main control you can just have sensors which are more affordable than the actual smart thermostats. So instead of putting, you know, four full fledged thermostats, programmable thermostats throughout the home, you can have one main thermostat and multiple sensors. Hmm. That’s really good.
Side question is can you also connect the humidification to those smart thermostats?
Absolutely. Okay. So you can control humidification, you can control the zone, you can control your air quality. All depends on the equipment you have in the home. Hmm. Yeah. Because humidification also determines how comfortable you feel with the air. So I mean, you might need a humidification put onto the system as well to help with that home comfort level. Absolutely. Okay. Something to consider with these new, the new technology that’s out.
The next one is it, is it important to have a two stage furnace and AC to his own system? So it’s not 100% mandatory to have a two stage or variable system. So whatever air handling system you have we can, like I I talked about earlier, we can install bypass dampers. Okay.
Which allow you to move a lot of air back to the furnace, but this reduces, reduces your efficiency levels. So by having a, like a two stage furnace, which actually has a low and a high speed for the gas valve accompanied with a variable speed blower, you can actually basically run that furnace on low speed most of the time because these separate zones only require, they require less heating and cooling abilities. But if you want to achieve the cooling on lower speeds, you actually have to have either two stage air conditioner as well, or variable speed.
So while this equipment is, is more expensive, it optimizes comfort levels and efficiency. Yeah. And that’s, that’s what I think we’re talking about here is just making your house more comfortable more livables. ’cause People spend more and more of their time at home and like you said, with the, a lot of people working from home might as well make that thing as comfortable as possible. Absolutely. As opposed to, you know, suffering through, you don’t have to be a hero.
You can call these guys and they can, they can be the super superheroes in your world.
Question, can an existing HVAC system be zoned? An existing system can be zoned?
We’d have to come by, have a look, do an assessment of the situation, we do need full access to the, to the duct work downstairs.
Okay. So, or wherever it’s located. Right. so that, keep that in mind. We’re doing a system for a client this week and, you know, he’s just, I’m not getting, I’m not cooling off my upstairs the way I want to. I go downstairs, I’m freezing cold, what can you do for me? You know? Yeah. And his system actually is upstairs, is much smaller than his main floor and his basement.
So what we have to do is we have to put a bypass on that as well. So when it’s cooling the upstairs, we divert some of the air back to the furnace and that’ll allow him to cool. Just the upstairs without being hard on the equipment. Right. Right. But we can do it for him can do it. So it is possible to make that happen. But yeah, just talk to the experts and they’ll be able to show you how it’s done.
Last question we have for you is, when is the best time to zone your HVAC system?
Well, the best time to zone your system is when you’re building your home, to be honest. Yeah. We can actually optimize the design of the system, we can set it up so that you’ve got equal zone sizes. We can choose the equipment that would be right for the job. It’s very important to to incorporate those variable speed or two stage equipment.
You know, it’s, it’s a good idea to put up that money up front and get it done properly. Yeah. We’re right off the start, you know, if cost is an issue we can definitely figure out that solution for you as well. But definitely when you’re building your home, consider doing its own system or splitting it up, especially with the two story homes.
A lot of the homes nowadays are two story lots are getting a little bit smaller. They have to go up rather than take up that extra space. Yeah. But we can make sure you’re comfortable no matter what shape your house is. Thanks Adrian, for sharing the information on the benefits of a zoned system for your home. And if you guys are interested in hooking up with Adrian here in Hinse Brothers Mechanical out of Shor Park, they’d be happy to come and give you a, a no hassle, no cons consultation, free consultation on that. That’s right. And get you guys started. So thanks a lot, Adrian. Thanks Trevor. See you guys on the next video.