Keen Zoning and Ecovent Whole Home Zoning have been installed in thousands of homes since late 2015, so naturally we’ve heard a fair number of glowing reports about energy savings and improved comfort thanks to intelligent airflow management that smart zoning provides. The use cases and benefits of installing smart zoning are numerous, but to help convey just how beneficial they have been for our customers, we wanted to share some of their stories.
Vinay
Illinois
As a homeowner in a large Midwestern city, Vinay was used to spending hundreds of dollars per month to heat and cool his home. He tried to cut down on costs by manually closing off vents in rooms that weren’t being used. But despite his best efforts, Vinay’s monthly utility bills were still sky high.
A self-proclaimed early adopter of smart home technology, Vinay was quick to seek out Ecovent’s Whole Home Zoning solution.
“After installing Ecovent’s system, we were able to automate our entire home’s heating and cooling and reduce the overall run-time of the system while keeping temperature and humidity at comfortable levels. Ultimately, we saw a drop in our monthly utility bill of $400!”
John
South Carolina
Before adding Smart Vents to his home, John and his family lived with an all too common problem with standalone HVAC systems: sacrificing comfort in one room for livability in another.
“To sleep comfortably in our bedroom at night, we had to freeze in the family room before going to bed.”
John and his family suffered through hot and cold pockets throughout their home for years, unable to be truly comfortable in more than a few rooms at a time, no matter what they did. When he found Smart Vents, John immediately saw their potential to alleviate this pernicious problem. By installing Smart Vents in each room of his home, he and his wife could intelligently redirect airflow to the room they needed most, while leaving those that regularly went unoccupied alone.
“Smart Vents solved the temperature imbalances in our home almost immediately. But the best part was the savings on our energy bill: we were able to cut it by almost 15%!”
Chris
California
Chris would regularly run his air conditioning for up to 30 extra minutes during the summer months just to keep the upstairs rooms as cool as those downstairs. This wasn’t a very energy efficient approach to balancing temperatures across two zones of his home, and certainly not cost effective. To make matters worse, in the winter he would have to take out his ladder to climb up and adjust all the vents in his home for the season. This process took hours away from time he could have spent with his wife and kids.
Smart zoning helped Chris be more efficient about heating and cooling his upstairs and downstairs, but also made it so he never again had to burn valuable personal time just to adjust his vents for the season.
“I no longer have to run the heating and cooling for longer periods to try to heat or cool my second floor. The temperature in my two-story home is now consistent, no matter which floor I am on.”
Stephen
North Carolina
Stephen runs his business out of a home office. As a programmer and network engineer, his office is full of computer equipment and other electronics, which together produce a lot of heat. Stephen found that the electronics caused his office to warm significantly, making it difficult to work there for long stretches of time. That meant he regularly took breaks to cool off, which in turn impacted his productivity.
Installing Smart Vents in his home gave Stephen the ability to adjust the temperature of a given room on the fly, and he loved that he could tailor the comfort level of any room based on their usage and how frequently they were occupied.
“With Smart Vents, I can adjust the temperature down when I am working and then let the System takeover for those times when I’m not, like nights & weekends. It’s exactly what I needed!”
James
Florida
James suffers from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a lung disease that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breath. To treat his condition, he has an oxygen concentrator. While essential for his health, this device produces a tremendous amount of heat, and because it is installed near his thermostat, it regularly tricks his HVAC system into shutting off heating or kicking on cooling because it reads the house as too warm when the machine is on. To address that, James and his spouse regularly manually adjust their thermostat to keep their home comfortable.
When James found Keen Zoning, he thought he’d found a solution to this problem, and he certainly did: Keen Home Smart Vents helped him balance the flow of air throughout his home, allowing him to automatically compensate for the excess heat generated by the oxygen concentrator.
“I no longer need to manually adjust my thermostat when I go from one room to another. Keen Home Smart Vents do it for me and help me balance air conditioning throughout the house.”
This improved control over the temperatures of specific rooms didn’t stop with comfort either: paired with his Nest Thermostat, Keen Zoning has helped James save on average $23 per month on his electrical bill.
Whatever reason you might have for needing Smart Vents in your home, there is no question that they bring greater comfort and great energy savings to anyone who installs them. Whether you’re in the Midwest, the South, or all the way out in California, if your home is consistently uncomfortable and your energy bill is high, Smart Vents can help. Take it from those who have found that out firsthand.
