The benefit of ducted air conditioning is that you can heat and cool a whole house. However, sometimes you may want to condition the air in selected rooms only. In that case, you can install a zoned system. Here are some pointers regarding these units.

Setting up the Zones

Before the installation, you will need to figure out how to define the zones. Different factors come into play when doing this. You can set them up based on usage. For example, bedrooms are primarily used at night, while living areas are used during the day. You can separate these two general regions to allow targeting of one over the other.

The architecture is also relevant. In a two-story home, the upper floor is often the hottest because heat rises, and the top level is exposed to the elements. Thus, you can put the upstairs in a distinct zone to receive extra cooling. A room with floor-to-ceiling windows that gets particularly hot could also be isolated.

Zones allow you to run the air conditioning efficiently. If you had to cool or heat the entire house equally, you would waste a lot of electricity to create comfort.

Enables a Lower-capacity Air Conditioner

The zoning feature will allow you to install a lower-capacity air conditioner. If you can target regions of the home, you don't need a system with capacity for the entire house. Usually, you can install a model that can manage the living areas, which may cover up to about two-thirds of the house's floor area. Your installer can suggest an appropriate capacity model that is not too small.

On the other hand, if you couldn't zone the air conditioning and only had the option to treat the entire house equally, then you would need a larger-capacity unit to bring rooms to the desired temperature.

How Does It Work?

You may wonder how the zoned system works. The indoor unit, which is often installed in the ceiling or under the floor, blows air into the ducts and room vents. A zoned system is set up with dampers in the duct network that can swivel to adjust the amount of air that flows through. So if a zone is set to not receive any heating or cooling, then the damper will close and the air will be blocked from flowing into the ducts.

Some air conditioners provide an on or off option for the zones, and others give more sophisticated control that lets you specify distinct temperatures for each zone.

For more information, contact a local company, like Bell-Air Air Conditioning Pty Ltd.

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