Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We are under contact on a 5/3 5000+ sqft home large ceiling and 3 levels (1 is a basement).
4 beds and two baths are on the 3rd floor and one bed one bath is in the basement. There is a single furnace and single ac compressor to heat and cool the entire house.
In a perfect world I would be able to set the temp by room and heat/cool as demanded. I like to be cool while sleeping (70F or cooler) while other family members like to live and sleep at 75. Grandparents that visit like it 80+. So are there any solutions that provide both efficiency and customization that wouldn't explode a budget (say $10k or under)?
What is an approrpriate budget then? I said the house already has central air and one condenser. How much would it be to add 1-2 smaller condensers, some electronic dampers, and temp sensors in all rooms? $10k $20k+. I really don't know the limitations of science that you reference compared to the cost of the solution I'm asking about.
On the space heater or wall heaters I guess that is fine for the winter months but that likely is only a Dec - March problem/solution here. In Oct and April-May it will be comfortable and I can just open windows at night. June - Sep it will be scorching so would hope to avoid cooling the entire house to say 70F and then heating a few rooms for people that need it cooler.
Outside of the Middle East, I've never seen a home with a separate thermostat for each room. That being said the supply vents would need to be enlarged in order to have fans in each one of them. The fans would pull more air from the main trunk. But keep in mind whatever one cools more, some other room is going to be warmer as air is no longer making it through the entire system.
If you have an extremely large house with only one heating/cooling zone (which is what it sounds like), uneven temperatures will be a fact of life. Modern practice would be to divide the house up into several zones.
Typically each zone has its own HVAC system. To do this, some of your existing system could potentially be re-used (ductwork, one hopes, because modifying ductwork in a very large multistory house is going to be a bear), but the existing heating and cooling units are going to be way oversized for zones.
There is an alternate method involving using one large heat/cool unit, but having dampers that are controlled by the zone thermostats to direct air flow to different areas. Such a system might be more applicable to a retrofit as you are describing. I would expect that the ability of such a setup to control accurately would be less, and the energy efficiency would be less, than each zone having its own units.
Beyond this kind of general information, there is absolutely no way random people on the Internet, even HVAC experts, will be able to advise the best method for your retrofit or its cost. You will have to have a competent HVAC company come out and look at the technical details of your house and the existing system, explain what can be done within the limitations of what is there, and explain what compromises have to be made.
$10,000 for a major re-engineering of the AC system on a 5000 ft^2 house is an absolutely unrealistic expectation. I spent almost that to install central heat and air in a 1300 ft^2 house (1 zone), using relatively inexpensive components, in a very middle-class part of the country. And there was no existing equipment to tear out or try to work around.
As far as a practical thing to do, you probably need to live in the house for a while, using space heaters and window units to meet requirements of specific rooms, until you learn which rooms are always hot, which ones are always cold, etc., etc., etc.
Honestly, the fact of such an enormous house being on only one HVAC zone should have been something brought up as a negative in the original inspection/consideration of the purchase.
Your best bet would be try to deal with it for a while and start budgeting for extra money when it's time to replace the unit. (Unless it's really old now and the savings might help ease the long term cost).
You could maybe damper it, depending on if the ductwork happens to be already running in an advantageous way for maybe $3k-4K per zone or so in the absolute best case scenario. Maybe even do it half and half. However, that's not going to buy you a whole lot more comfort and the unit is going to be woefully oversized for doing half the house and it could lead to short cycling issues and mold (not a certainty, it's all going to depend on your situation). Cutting that large unit down farther makes it worse and worse as it's sized for the whole house.
You definitely need to have a knowledgeable HVAC company (probably not the cheap ones) come look at it and see what they'd suggest, short and long term.
What is an approrpriate budget then? I said the house already has central air and one condenser. How much would it be to add 1-2 smaller condensers, some electronic dampers, and temp sensors in all rooms? $10k $20k+. I really don't know the limitations of science that you reference compared to the cost of the solution I'm asking about.
On the space heater or wall heaters I guess that is fine for the winter months but that likely is only a Dec - March problem/solution here. In Oct and April-May it will be comfortable and I can just open windows at night. June - Sep it will be scorching so would hope to avoid cooling the entire house to say 70F and then heating a few rooms for people that need it cooler.
Your best bet for now would be to look into those wall mounted units that have an exterior condenser. My understanding is that you can get multiple units for the inside, each with their own remotes/controls that go with one condenser. The main benefit to this is that you would not need to change the indoor ducts at all and would just need to vent the wall units to the outside. I think the price for this option tends to be about $1000 per unit, so if you want 3 zones on one condenser it would probably be $3000+installation costs and any electrical upgrades you might need.
Unlike window ACs, they both heat and cool. If you want to keep the whole house at 80 at night, then you could use these units to get your room down to 70 and the others could get their room down to 75. They are A LOT quieter than window ACs as well since you don't have the compressor right in there. I have used them before when I lived abroad and while they are not great on their own for cooling in super hot areas (they really do only cool down about 15 degrees from the outside temperature), as an added supplement, they should be fine.
Assuming by your user name that you're in southern Florida, keeping the whole house at 80 is going to present lots of problems with moisture and humidity. You need to run the A/C to dry the air, if nothing else. If you like 70, then your best and cheapest option is to add heat to the areas where other will be cold. This is not going to be good for your electric bill! Sweaters, blankets and gloves might be something to consider.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
