I recently received a call from a client who had a complaint of an area in their home was unbearably hot. The first thing I checked was the thermostats. This client had 3. Further checking revealed that they had a zoning system. A zoning system (shown above) allows a customer to control the comfort in multiple areas of a home from a single system.
After checking the thermostats and zoning board which checked out ok, I moved on to the actual zoning dampers located at the supply ducts. (shown in photos above) What I found there was the damper controlling heating and cooling to the area of the home that was too hot, was stuck in the open position. This meant that whenever any of the 3 thermostats called for heat, this area was being heated as well!
In this case, we replaced the damper and actuator and the problem was resolved. This example was of an “air actuator” system. This means that air is pumped through tubing from the control to each damper when a call for heat or cool is engaged by a thermostat. Another form of zoning would be an electronic actuator system. In these systems, the zoning actuator is an electronic motor that engages from a 24-volt signal from the zoning control. If you have one of these systems, you can manually open or close the damper to temporarily fix the issue until you can replace the bad actuator. If you have a similar issue, feel free to comment or use our messenger option to ask us any questions. For professional assistance, you can also schedule an appointment to talk to a certified technician via our virtual diagnostic feature.
