We all know how difficult it can be properly heating your home during those colder months without incurring jaw-dropping heating bills. Should you decide to look to a zoned heating system, you could have more control over where you need heat to be directed within your home. This will save you energy within your house, thus reducing your carbon footprint and lessening the money you will have to pay for your utility bills.
What is a zoned heating system?
The typical home’s heating system will regulate the temperature of an entire house as whole, meaning heat can be wasted in rooms that are not being occupied. A zoned heating system, however, will allow you to control the temperature of specific zones or rooms within your home. The settings for these systems can be customised in whatever way you see fit, including: personal heat preferences, environmental conditions and room usage. Therefore, these systems help the heating far more efficiently by providing heat only when and where it is needed.
The benefits
Some benefits of a zoned heating system are that individually zoning rooms means that more popular spaces in your home and areas that are more vulnerable to the cold (rooms with draughts for instance) can be heated more to combat this susceptibility. Programmable thermostats can also be useful for cutting the heating of your home when nobody is likely to be in, but heating it just in time for when they return so you do not lose comfort.
The principles of a zoned heating system will treat the ground floor of your home as one zone and the upstairs as another. This will cause heat to be directed to the base of your home during the daylight hours and will heat the upstairs at night, due to this being the times when these spaces will be most in use. This does not, however, mean you will have to heat every room in each zone. You can programme the system to ignore rooms within zones that simply aren’t used as much – like guest bedrooms for example.
Installing a zoned heating system: Stuart Turner pumps
A zoned heating system requires zone valves, these are responsible for controlling the flow of water in your hydronic heating system. The technology within these valves allow the flow of water within them to be controlled by the thermostat within your home. To make use of this heating system you will need to have an up-to-date pump system. At Pump Sales Direct, we would recommend fitting Stuart Turner pumps for an energy efficient water supply.
Setting up zoned heating systems in your home will probably take a professional touch as it is not your typical DIY project. It is quite a complex process that involves a number of jobs, such as: wiring in the thermostat, hooking them to the pumping systems and cutting into hydronic lines/ductwork to install the zone valves needed. All of these processes are not recommended for a layman and therefore we would advise seeking professional consultation before starting this project.
If you’re interested in a zoned heating system project, get in touch using our contact form and find out how we can help you.
