Summer can get hot in our neck of the woods, and if you’re a homeowner, you need to ensure that your air conditioner works as intended every time you turn it on. To do otherwise can impact your family’s health as much as their comfort levels: sensitive members of the household can suffer serious maladies from excess heat.
But assuming your air conditioner is running as it should and you’re not concerned about any unexpected breakdowns, the next step is to ensure that the cost of running your air conditioner is as low as possible. If you’re interested in an upgrade or addition to your system to help cut down on costs, we recommend installing a zone control system in your ducts. Not only can it help you get a handle on high monthly energy bills, but it can provide additional benefits as well. Here’s a quick breakdown on how it all works.
Precise Control
Zone controls are essentially a series of shutters, installed at key points in your duct system that divide your home into sections. Each shutter can be adjusted independently of the others, allowing you to raise or lower the temperature in each section individually. (They can be used in the winter with your furnace just as readily as they’re used with your air conditioner in the summer.) Depending on the system, you can usually control each shutter from both the localized location and a centralized spot covering every shutter in the system.
The Benefits
That provides two specific advantages, both of which are just extensions of the same concept.
The luxurious benefit means setting different temperatures in different parts of the home to suit the differing tastes of their occupants: thus preventing arguments over the settings on the air conditioner. For instance, if you’re reading in the bedroom and want the temperature set to 72 degrees, that could cause trouble for another family member cooking over a hot stove in the kitchen, who wants the temperature set to 68 degrees to compensate for the heat. Without zone control. Either you would freeze or the other family member would bake. With zone control, both of you get the temperature you want without having to compromise.
But if you extend that tendency to its natural conclusion, you can see the real value of zone control. You can simply turn off the air in parts of the home you aren’t using while still running it in parts of the home you are. Upstairs rooms, for example, rarely see activity during the day, and yet they can use a lot of energy to keep cool since warm air rises. Zone controls let you cut the air off to them while still running it in the living room or study where you’re working. As a result, the air conditioner uses less energy and endures less wear and tear: cutting down on monthly bills and even extending its life the more often you use it.
Here in Broomall, PA, zone control systems can be installed by the friendly pros at Murphy’s Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning.
