cooling zones

You can apply zoning to your home for cooling purposes, that is, you can define several cooling zones in your house, in order to cool each of them according to your needs, schedules or patterns of occupancy…

Zoning consists in dividing your house in different areas for heating and cooling purposes; each cooling zone (or each heating zone) will be subject to different charges of cooling (or heating) in order to get energy savings and eventually more comfort. Usually, the definition and the implementation of heating and cooling zones follow the same rules, and the pieces of the system - panel control, dampers, a set of thermostats - are the same).

See: Heating and cooling zones for your home

Cooling with a central system

You may use a central air conditioning system, or a central heat pump (in cool mode) to get different cooling zones in your home.

The issue of defining cooling zones in cold and moderate climates is basically similar and coincident with the definition and implementation of heating zones…

See: Zone heating with furnaces, AC and central systems

Ductless air conditioning and zoning

Obviously you may use ductless air conditioners (mini-splits and window units) or ductless heat pumps to create cooling zones in your home, instead of using a central system.

The use of such units and their role is straightforward; the important is to get sufficiently insulated zones, in order to prevent cooled air from flowing to other zones…

Other cooling strategies

Home cooling can be based on natural strategies like natural and cross ventilation, or on solutions like fans and evaporative coolers (in hot dry climates). But these techniques are difficult to apply with zoning.

With some good planning (when building a new home) it may be possible to define cooling zones to implement cooling strategies - something that may involve features like a convenient orientation of some rooms to cooling breezes, a careful planning of the size and location of the windows, etc.

Anyway, that’s not easy…

Zoning and Cooled zones in hot climates

Difficult can also be the issue of cooling zones in hot climates (precisely where cooling is hugely important).

In many cases, defining cooling zones in hot climates doesn’t make sense for obvious reasons: residences do not have sufficiently high levels of insulation, air conditioning is too expensive to be used extensively, and people rely on natural and cross ventilation, or shading or landscape techniques to get fresh air (instead of using air conditioners).

In hot climates, zoning only makes sense in cases where air conditioning is going to be used, and - in that case - the more typical solution is to isolate a part of the house (where the air conditioning is going to be implemented) and to apply high levels of insulation to it, to prevent cooled air migration.