Energy Efficiency - How Your Air Conditioners Zones Can Help

Air Conditioning Zones: Attaining comfort and cost efficiency at home

Imagine this. You set the air conditioning to a comfortable temperature in your home office, situated in the upper level of your home, and settle down to concentrate on an important client pitch you are about to make the next day. Your wife is downstairs watching her favorite sit-com while the kids are romping playfully in their bedroom. Soon, you find your home office getting uncomfortably warm until you realize that someone in the house decided it is getting too cool for comfort and turned the switch to change the temperature. If this happens on a regular basis, it can be a cause for irritation not just for one person, but to the whole family. Soon, it's a situation akin to fighting over which TV channel to watch.

Basic physics tells us that warm air will rise and cool air stays down. So, while you regulate the air conditioning in the upper floor to keep the warm air cool, the rest of the family is feeling the cold air uncomfortable. How can this be resolved?

Zoned Comfort is the way to go

Having a single air conditioning system for the whole house is no longer a desired option and can eliminate situations like the one described above. While buying or building a home, it makes sense to ask about air conditioning zones or incorporate it into your building plan.

While planning the air conditioning zoning for your home, it makes sense to consider the following aspects to determine how many zones your home should have:

· The way in which the different rooms in the house are designed for use

· The number of levels the house has

· The amount of exposure of each room to the elements and local humidity in your area

· The life-style of the family

With zoning, you can have up to 3 or more zones, depending on the size of your home and its usage. What this essentially does is to divide your home into separately conditioned areas that need cooling or heating by the use of thermostats that work independently of each other.

Other points to consider:

· If your home has an atrium, solarium, fitted cellar or a room with huge expanses of windows it might require a separate zone.

· Guest bedrooms might need to be zoned differently

· If the lower level is most commonly used, then it makes sense to have a separate zone for the upper level to be powered on only during use, rather than have the whole house share a single air conditioning system.

The use of air conditioning zones is catching on really fast across America as more people realize the energy and cost efficiencies that it brings. Air conditioning rooms that don't need it for the most part is not an energy saving or cost-efficient way of managing conditioning of a home. Using air conditioning zoning is known to reduce energy bills by 20-25% over all.

Also check out what local utility and Fed rebates might be available for installation of air conditioning in your home.

Apart from keeping your bills down, it is a practical way of allowing your family to be in their comfort zones and keep the peace at home.