[jpilkrn]

We live in a house that's approx. 2000 sq. ft. We have a heat pump
with a zone system. The main thermostat is in the upstairs master
bedroom, there is another thermostat in my son's room upstairs, and
there is 1 thermostat downstairs. Here is my problem: we can't
control the temp. in the house! The main thermostat is set at 74
degrees. We know that we can control the airflow by turning our son's
thermostat up and down. But, it gets REALLY cold! It's either 61
degrees in our room, or in the kid's rooms. The airflow gets it that
cold. The downstairs temp. seems to be okay. It's just the upstairs
that we're having issues with. How do these systems work??? We are
freezing!

[Robert Gammon]

jpilkrn wrote:
We live in a house that's approx. 2000 sq. ft. We have a heat pump
with a zone system. The main thermostat is in the upstairs master
bedroom, there is another thermostat in my son's room upstairs, and
there is 1 thermostat downstairs. Here is my problem: we can't
control the temp. in the house! The main thermostat is set at 74
degrees. We know that we can control the airflow by turning our son's
thermostat up and down. But, it gets REALLY cold! It's either 61
degrees in our room, or in the kid's rooms. The airflow gets it that
cold. The downstairs temp. seems to be okay. It's just the upstairs
that we're having issues with. How do these systems work??? We are
freezing!


You really need to get a qualified HVAC analyst out to evaluate your
system and make recommendations. Remote diagnosis is darn near impossible.

In many cases, people wind up with TWO heat pumps, one for upstairs, one
for downstairs. The bigger of the two is generally the upper one, at
least for cooling mode.


One POSSIBLE solution is to have electrically operated damper installed
to shut off flow to areas that don't need conditioned air. The
thermostat in that area then controls whether it needs the conditioned
air. If your HVAC analyst recommends this solution, it is not terribly
expensive to install. However, getting the heat pump to come on in this
complex control situation is the job of the HVAC contractor, not me, not
you.

[jpilkrn]

Thanks for the recommendation! Our heat pump is brand new. We had it
installed a couple of months ago. Before that we were freezing in the
winter and frying in the summer. Turned out that our old heat pump
wasn't big enough for our house. Darned contractor! What a rip off!

Robert Gammon wrote:
jpilkrn wrote:
We live in a house that's approx. 2000 sq. ft. We have a heat pump
with a zone system. The main thermostat is in the upstairs master
bedroom, there is another thermostat in my son's room upstairs, and
there is 1 thermostat downstairs. Here is my problem: we can't
control the temp. in the house! The main thermostat is set at 74
degrees. We know that we can control the airflow by turning our son's
thermostat up and down. But, it gets REALLY cold! It's either 61
degrees in our room, or in the kid's rooms. The airflow gets it that
cold. The downstairs temp. seems to be okay. It's just the upstairs
that we're having issues with. How do these systems work??? We are
freezing!


You really need to get a qualified HVAC analyst out to evaluate your
system and make recommendations. Remote diagnosis is darn near impossible.

In many cases, people wind up with TWO heat pumps, one for upstairs, one
for downstairs. The bigger of the two is generally the upper one, at
least for cooling mode.


One POSSIBLE solution is to have electrically operated damper installed
to shut off flow to areas that don't need conditioned air. The
thermostat in that area then controls whether it needs the conditioned
air. If your HVAC analyst recommends this solution, it is not terribly
expensive to install. However, getting the heat pump to come on in this
complex control situation is the job of the HVAC contractor, not me, not
you.