Zone heating and set-back thermostats

[2biguns]

We just put a bullet in the head of our 27 year old GE heat pump and upgraded to a Carrier and had the house split up into 4 separate zones. The thermostat is programmable and lets us control air flow/temperature to each zone as well as having the house heat up/cool down at various times during the day.

Having been raised in the 60's when the house mantra was "Don't touch that damned thermostat, you'll run up the bill," I must admit that I'm at a loss as to how much variation is too much?

I can live with 65 in the winter and 75 in the summer but that's a mite chilly for the baby. The system has an "out" feature where you can cut it off for periods of time during the day (when we're not home) and it will only run if below 60 or over 85. Is this too much variation? Are we defeating our purpose if we let the house hit 85 in the summer then force the a/c to run extra to cool it down before we get home?

Being an avid tinkerer, I must admit that the thought of a control panel in the hall with a bunch of buttons and LED display definitely tickles my fancy. Of course, Amy just groans as she has just discovered how to use my programmable remote control to turn on the TV and satellite and stero. :yes:

[boxy]

Steve we run our thermostat on a 1 day program, ( it can run as a 7 day program, but Louise is home with the girls all day)
At 6:00 AM it warms the house to to 70, holds it there till 10:00 PM, then cools it down to 67 overnight, there is an override button if you wish to raise or lower the heat manually. Given the severe difference between inside and outside temperature in the winter (in/out can sometimes be close to 100 degrees) we try to not let the house get to cool. In the summer it takes less time to cool the house down, because the difference in/out isn't as great so we let it get warmer if we are not home.
You may want to set it up, and run it for a few weeks to see how it works for you, our new thermostat came preprogrammed, and we used it that way for a few weeks before we started customizing it.
I hope that helps.

[Gary S.]

If your heat pump is properly sized for your home a tempeture change of 10 degrees is a lot and could take at least an hour to make up with heat and considerably more time to cool down. My suggestion is when the wife and kids are gone and you have time,,,shut it down and open the house up and let it heat up or cool down to your limit set points then close the house up and see how long it takes to get where you want the temp to be.

[Badscrambler]

I work for the GA Carrier distributer... as long as your happy, if not I didn't mention that.

You shouldn't have less than a 4* difference between the auto changeover from cool to heat. I usually set mine to cool back down about an hour before I get home from work, programmed to let it warm up 10* when I'm gone. It's good by the time I get home. If you got the variable speed, it should cool or heat back to where you want it pretty quickly w/o high energy costs. If you're only going to be gone for a few hours, don't fool with the "out" feature, it costs less for the unit to run at it's lower speed, than to turn off and then blow wide open to cool back down. The only time I let it run up to 85 is if I'm going to be gone for a few days, then I set it that high. The variable speed really doesn't burn much energy when it's running in its lowest setting.

Be careful, once you've had zoning it's hard to go back to an unbalanced system

You mentioned a baby. If you haven't looked into a UV light for the system, I'd recommend it. Helps a ton with health stuff, especially if you or yours has allergies. Carrier doesn't make them, but your dealer can get one. A company, Totaline, makes the best ones on the market.

[2biguns]

Thanks for the tips. We absolutely LOVE our new Carrier system. It's the first time that our home has ever been warm.

I have been using the out feature during the day since it drops the heat to 60 at night which is only about 6 degrees cooler than we normally keep it. Stella (baby) is hot natured, like her parents, so 66 to 67 is fine for us. We did get the variable speed air handler and are very impressed with it. When summer hits I'll reprogram and limit the fluctuations to 10 degrees when we're out.

We got the media filter and I'll look into the UV system.

Our weather is probably very comparable to Gainesville, which is where I bought my first Donzi, by the way. I'm looking forward to the summer and compare our cooling costs.