Equalize Home Temperatures: Zone Your Vacaville Home

Many of the houses here in the Valley are old–and as unique as old houses are, they come with their own set of unique challenges. One of those challenges is varying temperatures throughout the house, especially on different levels. Many homeowners chalk these problems up to owning an older home, and while they’re right about age being a factor, they’re incorrect in believing it can’t be fixed. We’re not miracle workers, but we do have a process for dealing with temperature variation in the home.

How Do Temperature Differences Happen?

That’s a good question, and there’s no easy answer. Or, more specifically, there’s a lot of easy answers, any number of which could be affecting your house. It’s possible that the home is drafty, allowing in air from the outside that never passes through the regulating HVAC system.[1. https://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=home_solutions.hm_improvement_draftyrooms] It’s also likely that the thermostat isn’t in the optimum location–maybe tucked away in a back room or on a surface that isn’t the same temperature as the rest of the house. Or maybe the HVAC system itself is old or broken, and not capable of delivering the necessary volume of air at the right temperature to even out the house. It could be that the ducts are blocked or don’t run to the right locations. Perhaps the filters need changing.[2. https://www.angieslist.com/articles/how-extend-your-hvac-systems-life.htm]

You get the idea. There are a lot of things that we’ve seen happen in homes, and the older the home the more likely there are to be issues. We hate to see homeowners give up on fixing those issues. We love older homes just as much as newer ones; we understand why people buy them, from a price standpoint and from an architectural standpoint. And we want people to be happy in their house–in fact, not just happy but comfortable!

Why Fix It?

There are a host of great benefits to optimizing your HVAC system to your home. The biggest one is of course comfort and peace of mind–it makes it easier to live in your house, and you don’t need to put on a sweater or don a pair of shorts just to go from room to room! But the other reasons are just as compelling–for example, in our experience, these homeowners tend to be spending more (sometimes a lot more) on their utilities bills than they should be, because their HVAC system is working harder and longer to try to keep things regulated (This goes double if the homeowner shuts off the vents in certain rooms, a sure way to make the system work too hard). And with the system working that much, it’s burning out much faster than it normally would. That means more repairs, more replacement parts, and sometimes even a new system altogether. We know at Bell Brothers that it’s always cheaper and better to fix the system than ignore the problem and have to replace the system down the line.

What Is HVAC Zoning?

The process of getting your home evenly temped out is called HVAC zoning–at least, we call it zoning. We draw up a plan that breaks down your home by level and sometimes by room until we have a series of different “zones” on paper. Each part of the house is a “zone”, and we want each zone to be the same.

This doesn’t mean we treat them all the same; it means we consult and decide what each individual zone needs to be at the right temperature. In fact, in many cases each zone has its own unique problem that we’ll address separate from the others; that said, the end result is always a whole, cohesive house that’s the same temperature end to end and top to bottom. This is one of the trickiest things to achieve in HVAC work; it requires working with the homeowner closely and listening attentively to their concerns before drafting up a plan together to address the home’s unique issues.

At Bell Brothers, we like our customers, plain and simple. And we know that the best way to keep our reputation as the No Surprise Guys is to keep the homeowner in the loop and part of the process. So give Bell Brothers a call today, and see what we can do to make your house more comfortable.