Zone Control Systems

Multiple Thermostat Control

Feder's home zoning system is specially designed to allow your entire family to be comfortable, regardless of where they are in your home. Now you can have multiple thermostats that divide your home into specific zones that can be controlled independently, whether heating or cooling. Imagine the bedrooms on one zone, the family room on another, the kitchen on a third and your home office with it's own control. Even better yet, you can finally control that hard to heat and cool addition or garage conversion!

The Problem

A home not zoned will leave someone uncomfortable somewhere in your home. It's too much to expect one thermostat to provide perfect conditions for every room in your home. What is comfortable for the sleeping area may be uncomfortable for the living area and vice versa. A home not zoned is uncomfortable and costs you more in heating/cooling costs.
Whether you live in a 1,000 sq. ft. house, a 5,000 sq. ft. house, a townhouse, or an apartment – everybody has a zoning system in their home. Case in point, when you go to turn on the light switch on at the front door, does every light in the house come on? Of course not; we zone our lights. Why do we zone our lights? The number one answer: To save money.

Let’s also take a look at when we go to the kitchen and turn on that water faucet. Does every faucet in the house come on? Of course not; we zone the water in our homes, too. Why? To save on our water bill.

Two out of three mechanical systems in our homes are zoned. But the most expensive one to operate is the heating and cooling system. Yet most homes have only one thermostat in the middle of the house, usually in a hallway with no supply registers and one return. It will not sense east sun or west sun, it will not sense north wind or south wind. But we expect that system to keep all the rooms on the perimeter of the house the same temperature. This is virtually impossible!

The Solution

Why should you sacrifice comfort, spend more money and waste more energy? You no longer have to! Zoning is your answer.

Zoning divides your home into areas with common heating and cooling requirements. Each zone is controlled by its own thermostat, allowing you to be comfortable no matter where you are in your home. Zoning also allows you to leave unoccupied areas without heating or cooling, saving you more money on energy costs. In addition, your zone system can be used with a variety of night setback thermostats.

How Zoning Works

Motorized dampers are "opened" or "closed" by thermostats based on the temperature set by the homeowner. The damper system will control the airflow through the ductwork and deliver ONLY the desired air to the desired location. Each thermostat has the ability to turn on and shut off the heating and cooling. This is called "zoning".

We are zoning areas so that we can allow tighter control of heating and cooling. This is very similar to the the lighting and plumbing systems in a house.

Excess heated or cooled air that is not needed (when only some zones are open) is bypassed back into the air intake side of your heating or cooling system making it many times more effective at cooling or heating the "open" zones. This usually results in much faster heating and cooling of the rooms in your home. (It's sort of like "Turbo Charging" for your home cooling system.)

All this work is monitored by a Zone control processor (system brain) and a series of temperature sensors that integrates with your existing or new Heating or Cooling equipment.

Why choose Feder's for your Zone system?

Who installs your Zone System is as important as the system you install. The Fact is this; it takes experience and expertise to design a proper Zone System. Done correctly, it will be the best thing you have ever done for your home comfort and reduced energy costs. Done wrong and you have a problem on your hands.

Here are some common sense rules we use when designing a Zone System. When you design a zoned system you should follow these guidelines as much as possible when grouping rooms together to form a zone:

1) Never combine different floors on the same zone. The fact that hot air rises, and cold air falls will sink you before you even begin. As everyone knows, there’s nothing worse than a customer with a hot head or cold feet!

2) Never zone rooms of different construction types in the same zone. For an example, a new addition should always have it’s own thermostat since it t typically has better insulation than the rest of the home, and it will react differently than older sections of the home.

3) Never zone rooms that have perimeter wall areas with rooms that are entirely internal to the structure since they are not affected by the outside temperature changes. All internal rooms should be grouped together whenever possible.

4) All thermostats should be located in the room used the most in any area. Just like with non-zoned systems thermostats should never be installed in hallways, unless the customer plans on doing most of his living there.

5) Never put rooms with conflicting solar or mechanically generated heat loads on the same zone. For example don’t put a east facing room that receives a heavy morning sun load onto the same zone as a western facing room.

We may not be able to follow every rule, but if you at least take them into consideration when designing a system you’ll avoid a lot of trouble.

Total Comfort

Zoning permits personalized comfort of each area or room - providing temperature control where you want it... when you want it...

Added Convenience

No more running ‘up’ and ‘down’ stairs to control the temperature. We will provide thermostats in each zone.

Energy Savings

Ultra-Zone systems can reduce energy costs by 25-30% or more! You only pay for the heating and cooling when and where you want it.

Common Sense

The heating and cooling equipment makes up the largest part of the monthly utility bill. Why not control these items the same way you do with your lighting and plumbing?

Money Back In Your Pocket

Zoning System can pay for itself and even provide you with return income. How? Because after the payback period, the money saved on your bills each and every month, actually gives you a return on your investment!

Let’s look at a two-story house with one system and one thermostat located downstairs. The temperature difference between upstairs and downstairs can be anywhere from 4 to 10 degrees. Why? Because heat rises.

If the sleeping area is located upstairs, what will the customer do to the downstairs thermostat to maintain a 72 to 75 degree temperature upstairs? Crank it down anywhere from 65 to 68 degrees. That means that the downstairs living area, which isn’t even being used, is extremely cold just to maintain a comfortable level of temperature upstairs while we are sleeping. That’s not a very efficient way of cutting back on the energy costs.

The only real way to solve this problem (if the duct work is accessible) is to zone this two-story home. With a thermostat upstairs and a thermostat downstairs, the concept is simple. As the thermostat downstairs satisfied, we have the capability of diverting the capacity of the equipment upstairs and controlling the airflow upstairs.

In this scenario, is the customer concerned about the temperature downstairs in an area of the home that isn’t being used all night? Or would he be more concerned about the comfort in the bedrooms which are being occupied each and every night? Think about he potential savings. Before zoning, in order to be comfortable upstairs, we had to set our thermostat downstairs anywhere from four to ten degrees lower (in the cooling mode). Now that we have a thermostat upstairs, we’re allowed to simply set our thermostat to our own comfort level upstairs and set our downstairs back significantly.

Ranch style house with a centrally located thermostat. We have one system, with the garage on one end of the house where the air handler is mounted. And what’s on the other end of the house? The master bedroom. This scenario could potentially create an airflow problem, as well as a temperature problem. With the thermostat located in the center of the house, it usually satisfies before the farthest run from the equipment has reached the desired comfort level. Zoning solves this problem.

Sounds Great, But I can't afford it...

Not True. Zoning is not as costly as you might think and if a customer utilizes a zoning system properly, like they utilize multiple light switches in the house by cutting lights off that aren’t being used, a zoning system can literally pay itself off in two to five years, and after the payback period, the money saved on your utility bills each and every month, actually gives you a return on your investment!

Feders Financing is available allowing a degree of comfort you have never known to be available to you at a VERY AFFORDABLE price. Quite often your monthly energy dollar savings is greater then your monthly payment investment!