So Joe Shearer Reagan, Murphy thanks for joining me today, how you boys doing doing good thanks yeah, it's good great. I think it's fun anything fun going on in your life today. Any big news, no no, no see here. I need to make sure that my let's get my screen shared so that way everybody can see that we're going to be talking about residential zoning today and I feel like these two fellas are two of the best out there.

I was originally just having Reagan on, but then Joe, but it in he's got a he's, got a lot of a a lot of nerve. So that's one thing and then also a lot of opinions about residential zoning. Apparently so before we get started, I want to get your thoughts on zoning good bad ugly. So do you like it? Do you hate it? Are you ambivalent to it, starting with you Joe? I liked it first.

I liked it if done correctly. Okay, that was uh. That was a resounding opinion on that Regan. Do you I love it.

You know it's kind of one of those things like mini splits, where you go to a customer's house and the other five contractors that they talk to just tell them how zoning never works, and so for me it's it's opened up a lot of opportunities, especially in New construction and remodels, where we're able to kind of limit the number of systems that we've got and give them more more control of their zones all right, so I'm gon na I'm gon na be the one who says I hate it, but I think it's with Good reason - and that is that I used to work for a really large new construction contractor, and there was just so many heartaches associated with residential zoning and I just got burned out with it, and so I guess the first question is: why do you need zoning? If, if you have a properly balanced system, I want to get your opinions on this first like what is the application for zoning and then we'll start to dive into how to build a good zoning system start with you, Regan, okay. Well, there's I mean there's several applications. There's multiple floors with one system I mean you can do all the balancing you want and you're still going to have different temperatures in the wintertime. There's the summertime.

There's areas that you just hardly ever use like. You know a guest bedroom for somebody that kids already went off to college. Maybe you want to keep that just a little bit warmer than the rest of the house. There's Peninsula zones, where you've got more exterior wall than maybe the whole rest of the house and that that zones going to tend to heat up and cool down quicker than the rest of the house.

There's not really anything you can do about that with with proper balancing it's gon na. How quick that that zone heats up or cools down is going to depend on the difference in the inordinate or temperature. Those are a few of them anything to add there. Joe.

Definitely multiple floors. I would also say that, with newer homes, using a lot, less capacity systems tends to make it a little bit more. I guess easier to design if you kind of do it with with zoning and also just if a customer like the last one. I did they really want to have their master bedroom at you know 65 degrees at night.

So it's definitely a good application for someone who really wants a really cold bedroom or even happens hold on a second hold on a second all right. I I'm looking forward to this being an argumentative discussion. They've it all possible, so I'm gon na just start right in modeling the behavior that I looking for here, 65 degrees. A customer asks you for a target temperature 65 degrees in any room in Florida.

That's going to be below the outdoor dew point, so if you give them the ability to make a space that cold, aren't you causing things like duck sweating sweating in the walls, all kinds of fun in the in the unconditioned zone? All sorts of issues I mean! Does that concern you at all? Well, if obviously, you do mention that to them hey residents, our homes are really not designed for that, but at the end of the day, if you don't give it to them, they'll get someone else too, and I understand you may not want to assume the liability From that, but you know I guess, I'm not super worried about it. Okay, that's how they want. You know they were running the old system, cooling, the entire house, that cold with the zone system, at least the rest of the house - is only 70. You know.

So the unit's still getting 70 degree return temperature for the most part and it makes the room satisfy really quick yeah. I mean that's true, but I mean that also impacts dehumidification for the space. If you cool the room really quickly without long run time, you're gon na have higher relative humidities. Well, I mean you're trying to get the room that cold.

I don't think humidity is gon na, be your primary concern anyway. Right I mean I probably isn't for that. Particular person, well what say you Reagan well you're gon na find very few people that actually want it at 65. If you've got the humidity under control.

I think that's one thing you're you pretty much. You know we're not all in Florida and so there's there's that part of it. I mean I mean I'm in South Texas and it's just so much drier than where you are Brian. Are you being sarcastic again? Is this a is this a callback to the time that I accidentally called San Antonio, arid respect that, but now you're I mean you're right, but but at the same time, when you're you're, looking at your return air temperature, your return air that you're pulling.

I don't personally damper the returns, and so, if you're pulling from multiple parts of the house at all times, you're you're, not necessarily gon na, have as many problems when you're pulling in a little bit warmer air from the other zones. As you are, if you're you're, starting to you, know you're pulling in 65 degree air from all of the zones, of course, that doesn't have anything to do with what you're addressing as far as humidity. But I mean as far as dewpoint. But if they wanted to keep one zone a little bit colder, we usually don't see a lot of problems, but all right, fair enough.

So, let's get started, we're basically gon na go through and Regan has some notes working off of, and I think he can share his screen pretty easily. If there's anything you want to throw up on the on the screen, I mean not literally throw up on the screen, but anything you want to put for people to see. That would be great, but let's start with the basics of layout and design. So I think reggae actually I'll ask us as a question.

First Joe, do you do a lot of like new construction types of designs we've? I have done a couple like lately? No, but we did a lot in 2014. 2015. 16. These an amount of custom, new construction right Regan.

Yes, we do, we do do a lot of large houses and that's kind of how I got into joining more is. We would have situations where architects or whoever would what would kind of preliminary layout the zones that they want and they would have you know, seven systems in the house and we, if not you know, we've never been cheap. As far as you know, competitive pricing and that's you know why most people stay away from Newton's try. So we kind of got into it more when we could take a house that was going to have seven systems and we can put in four systems and give them twelve zones, and that's just really taken off with with the custom builders that we work with.

All right, so, if you're gon na design a zoning system, what are some of the first steps that you take now somebody had asked if we're gon na cover a command you'll see and we're not going to. I mean this isn't like this, isn't primarily a design webinar, it's more the you know for technicians to think about these things, but what are some things that you take into account initially or how do you think about it? Well, you you want to look at some of the things that I mentioned about different floors. You know peninsulas things like that. If you have your zones that are broken up really evenly as far as east and west, then you can.

You can kind of design for that to come on. I throw this one up here: yeah, let's try it yeah. Can you see that is that showing up, or did I just get rid of? No, you have to you, have to click the little new share button and then share the okay. Let's go back to that, then this is the first time we've ever tried to do this particular thing, so you sure says: I'm sharing this screen as I'm sharing.

I can't see it that is a good question. Uh-Uh, I'm not seeing I mean I see I see yeah, I see my. I see my slideshow. Let's see here, did it I'm sharing? Maybe maybe you have to use something.

Let's see I'm gon na I'm gon na. Try you know in the in the interim, while I'm working on that, though Joe can tell us his favorite dad joke okay, what do you call a car or what is it come put me on the spot? What it is it mm-hmm? What is a car when it's no longer a car? I don't know when is a car no longer a car? That's better! I don't know. When is a car no longer a car? I don't know Joe. When is a car no longer a car when it turns into a driveway Wow? No, nothing, no! No! That is no! No, I'm sorry! It's not working for me! So Regan! I I made you.

It said that I made you a co-host. So go into your see. If you can find it where you can accept that okay, I do not see that it says I'm sharing right now, Brian, it would be on not the one, not not pixel three, but my name yeah. Let's see here yeah, it says we're both sharing right now.

Yeah, that was that was the general idea, but I can assure you that that is not happening, because I'm gon na YouTube right now and nobody can see that and we're losing everybody, and they said that if we don't fix this right now that they're gon na Ask for a refund, and I think I just don't want that to happen right right, so instead we'll just we'll just stick with what we're doing we'll go with my stuff and you can just kind of describe what you're, what you're thinking! Okay! Well, what I was trying to show you was a picture from rights off. It shows the peak loads and what happens there, between an east and west zone, and it's just a little little chart that shows the BTUs and the hour of day, and it just kind of gives you an idea that you're gon na have a lot more of A load in the morning on one side of the house, so you are normally designing a house without zoning you're you're, taking into account the averages and you're not taking into account peak loads. So what you can do, sometimes in zoning in - and this is what really kind of got me interested in it in the first place - was the ability to lower the system size based on that diversity factor in the fact that the Sun doesn't shine on the same Side of the house at the same time and in reality it doesn't actually reduce the system size that much but it does. It does help you kind of get to the peak loads that you want for each zone, got it yeah, so, okay, so, and to kind of sum that up one of the advantages of zoning is that you can.

Potentially, I guess - and I don't know if this ever really works out this way, but you can potentially size your equipment, taking into account that you have an increase in load in some areas and a decrease in load and others, and that your Peaks aren't. At the same time, and is that something and again because this is coming from because I do almost no zoning and definitely none in hey now - I can see your screen. How did that just happen? Different button on the share thing? Okay, good good! So now, yeah now all we're seeing is your screen there. You go great, alright, so yeah you can see right here on your West Zone or it's peaking around 1700 hours and on your decent people, they're out.

That's what I was trying to get it there got it got it. What button did you hit in order to do that? What did you do? Okay, so when I went to when I went to share, we find share screening and it popped up on the top, and it has all of my screen and it says, screen one screen to screen three and then below that it shows all of the windows that I have open and the first time I just clicked on the screen that I was a sign in go in the second I clicked down and it showed the actual browser got it. Okay, got it all right, so I should be able to take back over now and it looks like I did good all right so a we know how to do this now. Isn't everybody excited that we know how to use oome now.

This is excellent. All right here we go so, let's, let's go into some zoning system: basics cuz, that one of the really big areas of conflict or issue is bypassed dampers and it's one of the things you know when I was first starting working in the in the trade and Dealing with zoning systems, we always had these bypass tampers with the long arms and the weights, and in fact, I think I have a picture yeah this guy right here over here to the right and you would have to adjust the weight and and the things just Always had trouble and they would get stuck open and guys would wait, I'm wrong and all that and so do either of you if you're designing or installing a system do you install a bypass in this way where you're running from supply to return eyes? No, I haven't installed the bypass damper in probably 12 years. Okay, and so the reason for bypass dampers at least the theory is, is that you can relieve supply side, static pressure when you have some zones that are closed or partially closed depending on the type of zoning system. It is, and you can bypass some of that pressure into the return which then drives down your system load significantly, which just causes this this cacophony of problems, obvious ones like well now your system is gon na run a much lower, coil temperature.

So it's gon na be much more prone to freeze down to the fact that now you're reducing your load significantly, so your system capacity actually decreases because you're exposing it to less heat. Now your mass flow rate is lower and all that stuff, your impression ratio goes up. Everything is, is impacted by that. So, if we're not gon na use the typical bypass damper, what what do you do? Instead I'll start with you Joe? What's your favorite way? Let's start by saying a by Pat, because I have heard it a lot is that a bypass damper somehow helps of a zone system, not freeze up when that one zone is calling or you know, they'll see a super high static pressure and say you need a Bypass and yes, that does lower the static pressure but you're actually moving less air through the sit through the ductwork.

At that point, and it's done purely for a noise. That's the only reason we would have them is for the noise velocity tornado-like sounds you'll have out of that one small zone calling so what I usually tell customers when we discuss it. When I'm trying to explain what a bypass is, I just let them know that you're, basically paying money to cool or heat this air, but instead of letting it come into the house, even if it's in a space where you ordinarily wouldn't want it as cold. Perhaps why don't we let it come in there instead of sending it on an endless loop through the equipment a hundred times and keeping it somewhat trapped, so to speak up in the attic? Usually, people do zone systems.

Their goal is to keep one area a little warmer, that's not being used as much to try to save money. So that's kind of what I'll do is is let the dampers basically relieve that excess pressure into a non calling zone. There are some issues that you wouldn't necessarily want to have a ton of bypassed air. Let's say you wouldn't want to allow it to go upstairs in a two-story house during the winter.

That would would kind of be counterproductive, but you know you choose the right area to allow that that bypass excess air to go into the house rather than on an endless loop through the equipment. Alright, so I agree sure absolutely. I agree that bypassed dampers are terrible and even when we show up on equipment that we're just doing a change out, I try to talk our people into just tearing that out and coming up with a different strategy. Just because it's just it's just not a good strategy and so you've kind of named one strategy, which is you can set the stops on certain dampers, so they don't shut all the way, but then that's not ideal, because then you're always bleeding some air into them.

Even if even when you don't actually need to bleed any air so, but that's a really simple way of doing it, probably the most simple way: if you're not gon na use a bypass. But what are some other methods and now let's go Greg and Regan. What is your favorite method of dealing with this issue of of high high supply static air noise? Alright, did I just steal your screen? I don't know, there's that yeah you did okay, so the these are pretty much. The strategies that you can do for excess air bypass is the worst dumped zones.

The second worst dumped zone is just basically you're finding somewhere to dump the excess air relief. So you know I'm calling dampers. You mentioned that that's probably the best way to to fix someone else's disaster that you've come across, but the strategy that I use when I'm designing stuff is not to have excess there yeah, you tell us more, you have to design for that. So yeah here's bypassed dampers banned in California.

That was a little bit okay. I can go on for a while on that. Basically, this what I do is I come up with a minimum system CFM and when you look at the performance - and I don't see a single stage - equipment for zooming at all - and I have it in a long time. But what I do is I I look at when this thing stages down whether it's the variable capacity unit or two-stage or whatever, when it stages down what it's going to be the lowest CFM cooling in the lowest, see if I'm eating that that system is capable And then I take the larger of those two numbers and that's what I use is my minimum CFM for the system and that basically means that I'm I'm not gon na have any zone.

It doesn't at least have that much going back, and so what I do there is I'll take whatever CFM I came up with you can see in this example right here that the CFM that I came up with for this zone was 79, but I've determined that The minimum CFM for the system is gon na be 1100, so this is kind of the way we used to do our CFM's. In the day when we were filling in by hand, we would come up with the BTUs and then we would use a multiplier and we would come up with the CFM's that way based on the nominal CFM of that system. And so that's what I do when I come up with the minimum system, see it then that zone may already be larger than what my proportional target is to get that system CFM. But if it's not, I have sized it to get there.

Okay got it! So alright - and that makes perfect sense so when you're just and you can maybe make some of these decisions, even when you're deciding what what is going to make up as own, if that one's own ends up being a little on the small side. Maybe you know loop in another closet or something in order to help get up that minimum airflow to match the minimum airflow that your system is gon na produce. If I'm hearing that correct, so it sounds so if I'm hearing correct step, one figure out. What is the minimum CFM that the system can stage down to and heat or cool and whatever is the higher of those two that becomes your minimum? And then you try to design that smallest zone so that, even when it's only call, even when only it is calling as long as the system is staged down and there's going to be a match between those two right.

That's correct got it well very, very smart and yeah, and obviously, when you're designing for these things from scratch, that becomes a little bit easier, a lot of technicians. They end up in these situations where they're they maybe can't redesign the entire duct system. They don't have that control Joe. You were telling me a little bit about a system that you worked on recently.

You shared a video where, from Jackson systems where I explained it and I didn't even catch exactly how it works so go ahead and explain it again. So it's basically using the bleed excess air through damper setup that Reagan had on the screen, but it does it pretty nicely you. It has a static pressure, switch it's basically just like a pressure switch on on a furnace. You dial in the pressure you want to maintain, it does have to use three wire dampers and you can select which zones you want to allow to believe.

So whenever The Ecstatic pressure is above your set point, it will modulate the dampers basically to maintain whatever static pressure you you select, so you don't have to, as you said before, you don't have to always bleed the air. So it's literally. So it's not doing it like a stepper motor or it's locking it into place. It's literally driving that thing open and yeah yeah boy.

Wonder, though, does that impact motor life on the dam, promotores yeah? Let you know in about 10 years, I don't know yeah. I don't I don't either I'm trying to think of that. I mean, I guess, Oh probably not hoping that it doesn't obviously, but I think, there's worse problems to have I guess than that, but yeah it does. I personally wish and maybe they'll come out with something.

That's more like a transducer so that it can kind of be happy in one position. A hundred percent agree with that, but what's also good about the Jackson system is you also select? I do a lot of them with with two-stage equipment and you can select how many zones are calling before it will initiate second stage, and you can do some pretty neat things like select. You can make, let's say a large main zone. You can make it count as two zones on the board and kind of use that into some of the the logic there as far as okay, which zones have recalling.

If that makes you so what I'm trying to say is you could have two zones calling out of a three zone system and still not initiate second stage, because obviously there has to be a grid that control I mean there has to be something there. That's deciding that staging algorithm. Well, it's a zone board, and it's just saying when you know when only two zones are calling we're not going to allow it to upstage the equipment, so you make the main zone count as two zones, you kind of just jumper the wires together. You don't actually have need to have a damper hooked up if that makes sense.

So the logic is, is that if the main zone and one zone is calling, then that counts as three? But if the two small zones are calling that still only counts as two, whereas the Honeywell is tougher to do something like that, because they just use a 50 % rule so two zones, even if they were really small zones with still count. As you know, more than 50 % got it. What are your thoughts on that type of setup, Ana retrofit application Reagan? Well, if you're talking about something like a Honeywell zoning system, I'm gon na show you here kind of what strategies that I would use. So percentage of zones calling is what what you just mentioned and, and that is by far probably what we use the most for a strategy.

I'm gon na skip to staging by thermostat and I'll talk timer1 in just a second, but the situation that he just mentioned is where Ivy is staging by thermostat and it's not a real. It's not one that we use real often. But if you have a zone, that's big enough to handle the full CFM of the system. And then you have a much smaller zone and that's where I've implemented staging by thermostat, though you're you're not you're.

Taking the decision on staging away from the zone panel and you're, giving it to the individual zone. So if you have that small zone, you either wire that zone up as single stage or you only hook up the first stage to it and then on the larger zone. You you allow that to be wired up first stage and second stage, so basically the the smaller zone will never be allowed to run or the system will never be allowed to run. In second stage, only that smaller zone is calling, but if the larger zone is calling - and it can't keep up, it'll allow it to go to second stage and if the smaller zone is also calling at the same time, then it'll the system will be.

In second stage, but it won't allow that smaller zone to be to ever go to second stage by itself. So that's that's kind of where I handle that if you get one really big zone and one smaller zone staging by timer is probably one of the most efficient ways to do it. But it really takes a lot of communication with the homeowner to understand how it works. We've we've got some of them out there, where it won't allow it to go into second stage unless it's been running for an hour, and the customer has to understand that.

That's it's more efficient that way, but if they just walk into a room and just crank it down, it's not going to it's not going to cool as quickly, but especially when you're going in existing houses. You know sometimes, if they're not using a lot of zones. It's paging by time there ends up being the most efficient way to do it, and how do you set? I mean: how do you set that up the staging by timer? Is that a so these are all you know. Honeywell is the most common board that you see out there, but all of them have some sort of variation of these three staging strategies and that's all done at the board, so you're just telling it when you set up the zone board.

How are you gon na control, staging you're gon na, do it by percentage by timer or by thunder stat, and those are actually the three settings that Honeywell board will give you so Honeywell will allow you an hour stage? Does that go across the board to all the zones at that point yeah? So you, if you select on a Honeywell board, you select staging by timer. You can set anywhere from five minutes to an hour as far as the before we allow the second stage to kick in yeah, but that's across the board, even on the large zone that could handle the airflow right. You probably wouldn't, if you had one much larger zone and one smaller zone, you know you're not usually going to use stage, I'm just trying to understand how it would help with the airflow problem. If you have, you have well, if you have a lot of equally sized zones, then staging by Tanner is gon na, be the most efficient way.

Obviously, the longer that you can run in a lower stage, the higher your ears and and everything are, and so that's one that we don't implement very often, but if I've got a very self educated customer that understands the benefits of that. That's how I would do it if I had zoning at my own house, that's probably how I would do it, but but in the in the larger than smaller zone thing, that's that's where we found staging by thermostat comes in handy. So are you doing the staging by talent? Ward's is for humidity control and longer runtime, standpoint yeah and if they're, not somebody that expects the zone to to react really quickly, you know if they, if they adjusted a few degrees or they generally keep everything the same. Then then that's that's.

A good strategy. Steve demands, Steve dumansky asks what Honeywell board are you talking about? So is this just like the standard Hz, whatever they are Honeywell boards, yeah AC, 4, 3, 2, 2 K or the AC 4 HD. 3. 2.

2. Once you get down to, I think the 2 to 1. You don't have those control options, but the 3 to 2 and the 4 3 2. You have you have the little little keypad a little LCD display where you can make those changes till the 3 to 2 will not do it.

Two-Stage heat pump, though correct. Oh, let's see 3 to 2 that correct, that's correct! So then the 3, the 3, is the number of zones. So on a 3 to 2, the 3 is the number of zones, the 2 means to heat, and then the other 2 means to cool right. So you need 3 stages of heat to cool.

In order to do a 2 zone, heat pump right and another thing that just while we're on that subject to take into consideration when you're selecting your thermostats for a non communicating type setup like this, if you don't use heat pump thermostats, you will not be able To or the the homeowner will not be able to engage emergency heat from the thermostat, so that's one of those things you'll learn. You know the hard way when it gets really really cold outside. There's there's no way to engage emergency heat from the thermostat unless you're using heat pump to enter set and you find in your market. That's something people care about in our market.

I don't think anybody really uses emergency heat. The way it's designed to because we don't have significant enough auxiliary heat sources, I mean we're running 5, maybe 10 kilowatt electric heat and it's not enough to make a difference anyway. So well, I'm not talking about auxiliary heat, and I know so. If we're talking about staging by percentage of zones or or or by understand or any of those things, you're not going to pull you're not going to bring along the auxilary heat, so this may be something that you know it doesn't cause a problem for three years, But if it's all of a sudden, you know 35 degrees outside and the compressor is not working for whatever reason: that's when it that's.

When it becomes a problem, they don't have any way to to turn on any sort of heat without doing to the thermostat. Without going to still call for auxilary as the temperatures drop and though it probably won't reach that point, but it'll get it within a couple degrees, yeah yeah it provided you don't have some sort of lockout on it, which we always try to hold out. Okay, which is tricky too, is how to wire a lockout. You know Tillery relay, but give you emergency heat on a day where typically it'd be above that it's a little tricky see.

That's where you just give people a button that just wires destroyers W straight to are just have them hit them to mash the button when they're see. I think we just start a start, a petition to rename emergency heat to something that sounds less like fire truck ambulance, policeman. People typically don't know what that setting is right is for icon yeah. They want an emergency cooling switch to and just like a truckload of co2 of dry ice.

Just drops inside your house right. That's the problem with dry ice, yeah, there's an unfortunate side effect, all right, free stats and leaving air temperature sensors. If you want to give me my screen back so when you use some of these strategies that becomes these free stats and leaving air temperature sensors become less of a important part of of the strategy. Right I mean they, they almost become largely meaningless if you're not sure yep you're, not bypassing air you're, not you're, not running into too many problems.

With those I mean. Obviously, you still use the the design, leaning air temperature sensors for the honey wheel board, for example, but you're not needing to - and I threw a couple free stats up here, because back in the day we would use those you know for really simple zoning systems. All the time to prevent the equipment from from running which, honestly, I still kind of like a good old-fashioned free stat when you've got that customer who just just doesn't want to abide by common sense and drives the system down to really low temperature, especially when they've Got a system that it's maybe old and isn't moving air as well as it used to anyway. This is a complete side note, but have you ever found yourself doing that, putting an old-fashioned preset on something just to keep somebody from freezing their coil up? I see em three-step, that's probably not new, but they have one.

That's pretty nice. I didn't mean to interrupt the only time I've ever used. Them really was for certain William being situations yeah, and I guess that I guess that makes sense if you're, if you have a situation where, like maybe in a I, don't know, computer room or a media room or something where you have consistent heat load. Even in the winter, when it's cold outside then then maybe that would make make more sense.

I could tell you what I do through a solve a freeze up issue, but that kind of gets us back to the pinching off discharge line. Do you think that alike? You think it'll, like literally get me sued like it's it's on that level of okay. Well, if that's the case, then I think we'll go ahead and skip it and just move on to the next slide. If it's all the same to you all right so so, let's talk about the basics of wiring, we kind of went.

We went really deep and now we're gon na go really basic. I want to do a quick review because I think some people could use this. I know that some of my techs could use this and the first thing that I see Tech's get most confusion. I'm not gon na just state it.

I'm gon na, be a good host and ask the question Joe. What do you think is one of the first things that a new technician gets overwhelmed by or confused when they see a zoning system. Just all the wires was that too basic that was a little bezel basic yeah. I was a little buzzed, a little basic but true, absolutely true anything else.

What do you say? Reagan, cool right. That's pretty much. What I was going to say. The conventional zoning system is pretty simple.

If you just follow it you you know, the thinner side is supposed to be. You don't want to overthink the thermostat, it's supposed to be telling it to heat or cool, and then so you confirm that the thermostat is is telling the board to do that and then then you determine if the board is doing what it's supposed to do, but It seems like a lot of guys do get overwhelmed just by all the wires and lights, and things like that. So the number one thing I see that new technicians get confused by is the fact that you have two different generally two different power supplies, and I guess I have to ask this question. First, you guys are using separate transformers right whatever you do, zoning right, the dampers have their own transformer and that's that's what you hooked up to the zone board right, so so a lot of technicians that I see they look at this and they see thermostats thermostats Zone dampers and then there's the equipment and they have a hard time getting their head around that this equipment.

Part here is a different power supply and these are dry contacts versus the other parts. Your your thermostats and your zone, dampers, which are powered by this new transformer and and and what I see a lot of technicians doing when they're doing Diagnostics is they take their meter leads and they start mixing between those two sides of the circuit, the equipment side. Being driven by the regular equipment, transformer R and then this secondary transformer - that's that's something I see happen all the time with the new technician yeah. If I may piggyback on your live stream today, your flow switch could be open and all your thermostats are still powered.

Your zone, borstal powered and the equipment's not coming on because of that right and that's another. That's another really yeah common one. You see. Is they don't because they see the thermostats lit they don't you know they're, not thinking in terms of just being the equipment.

That's killed rather than the other, rather than the zoning side of the equipment. As far as the this zone, damn this zone damper super simple. I mean this is the the modern kind of three wire setup me if it's common and then power open power closed really, since it's actually not a power. Oakland power closed damper, though, which is odd.

I'm just trying to understand why it's an like that. It's it's actually, a power closed spring, open the reason that they they allow you to hook up. All three wires is the indicator right on it. So the the open, the open wire, doesn't actually open the damper, but the Hank.

You know it's a it's a power. It's a power closed spring open so that that the reason that you wires an open wire up is so when the technician goes out there and he looks at it. He sees that the damper is open right now, just taught me something because I was always confused on why they would have those three terminals when it's the same as the old they're honeywell's. So if you look at, if you look at the this board or any other Honeywell board, you can either hook up a power open power, closed a power, closed spring, open or bringing open power closed, which you, you typically don't want to ever use a power open Damper because you don't want the system to fail with all of the dampers closed, but but yeah that was actually something when they came out with the these new true zone dampers.

They they added that that term. I don't think the old Honeywell has had three terminals. No and that's why I didn't, when I saw three terminals, I just I just you know true fact: I'm I've never actually messed with this particular motor before so. That's a I just yeah.

If you disconnect that open it'll still work exactly the same, you just don't have an indicator light on it, but why would you care just oh, oh okay. I see because okay see so when you go up there, you can see in a dark, attic, open or close because of the way. Okay, I get it, I get it. I get it all right, strictly.

The dark Attic of a dark attic effect got it all right cool, so I wanted to show this because I'm particularly proud of this, this doesn't show the entire thing, of course, but back in 2003 I made a bunch of diagrams and including showing dip Swift's position For different Honeywell mm3 use, I don't know if either if you've ever worked on an EMM through you, I'm just just uh, you know thrown it out there and I love the EMM you you do. It was a good one. It was a good one, yeah, absolutely, and I'm just doing this old-timer thing we're like I'm, trying to justify my existence, because I just totally didn't know how the newer damper worked, and I made this in Microsoft Paint. So I mostly just want people to look at my Microsoft Paint artwork from 2003 or 2002 and and think that that's pretty good, so there's yeah what twenty-something Brian drew anyway.

So this is better more modern stuff. So, let's go: let's walk through quickly, just the basics of how this is wired, and you know I think I'm hopefully qualified to do this. You do have like we've already talked about. You have power open power, closed amperes.

You have spring open power closed. You have opposed blade, dampers and then single blade round, dampers opposed blade being the rectangular square form factor you power up with a separate 24 volt transformer. This is saying for TVA, but you could just as easily use a 60 or 75 VA and a lot of cases. I would use a larger VA transformers because they had the built-in resettable fuse.

Otherwise, you have to actually wire in a separate fuse, and I don't know, do do modern kits, come with a inline fuse that you can wire in or do you still have to do something goofy with a spade. I think this I think the Honeywell has a feminine fusion imop staking a thermal fuse, we're well within the within the oral board automatic reset circuit breaker. You know the ewc that you I could be removing that. I know that eww she does, but I thought the Honeywell might have it well anyway, I look like it.

I'm not gon na rely on their dad-burned thermal fuse. So that's why I liked using larger, VA transformers and with the resettable fuse built into the transformer, but anyway that's just me. I was told that the 140 VA can handle up to three zone dampers, so you have to add a second one. So do you want to compare them? You want to look at your install instructions on the zone panel, whatever zone panel you're using and it'll.

Tell you that you can use X, amount or it'll need X, amount of VA per damper and, if you end up with more dampers and that, even if you, even if it says that you can do for for dampers, you have a certain situation just where the Ducts come off the plenum or something like that where you choose to put two dampers on one zone, so you do want to be aware of that. It's not something that happened real often, but sometimes you do have to upsize the transformer based on the number of dampers. Well, there you have it. So I'm just saying that I would want to have a fuse in line with this new transformer that you're putting in you're wearing that up to R & C.

This is a pretty old board here as well and and then the basic philosophy of almost all of these is the same where you've got your thermostat next to your zone, damper or they're marked as the same so in some cases, you'll have one with a where The dampers are all in one part, and the thermostats are all in one part, but regardless that will be marked as zones and and it's still all powered from this new secondary transformer. The only part that's comes from the equipment is the part, that's marked equipment, and then you have the discharge. Air temperature sensor, leaving air temperature sensor that wires in it's kind of a common common features. Anything I miss there and wiring these things that I should make sure to mention.

I was gon na say one really nice tool to have when you're working with a lot of wires, and this is something that I've realized. A lot of technicians don't have or don't know how to use, is a as a wire tracer in tone generator they're super inexpensive. You can get them at Home Depot or Lowe's, but when you've got a lot of wires, it's much easier to use that than it is to to go through, and I mean I guess you can. I guess you can just go through and you know bug them together and test them on the other end, but I always used to a tone generator and then also a new construction.

Sometimes they'll bury things in the wall and then it helps you find that anyway, you got you guys ever have much use for a tone, generator mm-hmm. No, I think maybe I wasn't until new construction thing. Maybe I don't I'm not sure if I know what a tone generator is. We have used the things that you used to troubleshoot like a cat5, cable or network wiring.

We have used those for for situations where we haven't hooked up a whole bunch of wires to one side and other side and try to figure out where they're yeah. Well, there's I mean there's that, but here I'm gon na pull I'm gon na pull up a picture and I'm gon na share it with you all just so that you can just you can see what one looks like we'll pick: a really common we're going to Be the fluke: let me share this with you real quick. This is kind of a goofy thing to do here, but you know I'm kind of a goofy guy, so it works. I think you should be able to see that now.

That's the I don't know if you can see it or not anyway, it's a it's. You've got one end that generates a tone and uses like a leading tone, and you hook it up to two wires within a bundle or within a within a cable. So you strip back two conductors hook it to it, and then you take the the handheld probe and you can trace that wire as long as the wire is intact, you'll find it wherever it goes, and it's really handy if you've got a wire, that's buried in A wall and that's that's kind of its main utility, but whenever you're trying to identify a particular cable and a giant bundle, that's really handy for that purpose. To again, what's that, what's that? No! No! It doesn't! It doesn't make it! It doesn't find it! That's what I'm saying it makes the same noise it just it just keeps going the whole way.

Well, then, how do you know you just find it? You just know because it's what it doesn't it doesn't make, because when you get close to it it makes the doodle doodle and when you move it away, when you get close, yeah, okay, I'm think yeah. I think we've lost everyone and all respect so we're gon na move on. No people love tools. Could they use that to find a circuit breaker like in a big commercial building or something yeah? You know you don't hook it to a live circuit? No! No! No! Let's say that I think that you should be able to hook it to a live wire and then they'd be useful.

You can hook it to your package, you income, because now you don't know where the breaker is. How can you shut it off? Yet you see what I'm saying: okay, you're saying the opposite direction: yeah yeah yeah down the! I think there is a separate tool for that, but it's got to be rated to handle that high voltage. That's the problem. I mean you can send it's a different frequency.

So you mean, theoretically, you could send it, but it would have to be. It would have to be rated for that. I'm sure you could figure out a date. You could do it down the ground that wouldn't help find the breaker yeah would cuz.

You could find it you could locate where they come out together. You open the panel and you know find out well anyway, so a tone generator wire tracer. You can find them at your local, whatever big-box store, and they are really handy. Yeah we've used them.

I've used them my entire career and I'm just realizing that a lot of people don't know what they are cuz. I think it's more commonly used in electrical and like the data world, that kind of thing, but it's not one of those ones that diagnoses breaks between multiple conductors or whatever, like you would use for cat5. Something like that. All right, Keith Powell is falling asleep, he's getting super bored by hour by hour, witty banter, and I think it's hilarious personally, but alright so - and this is just this zone first, I like this wearing diagram because it's it basically shows you the same thing.

This one has some additional stuff, like you can actually put in an outdoor air sensor. If you've got dual fuel, you can dial that in it's got the stage timer, it's actually a really simple panel. You get your dampers, your thermostats and then the equipment, but they all basically work the same way all these residential, the types of boards. The only time it starts to get different is when you have communicating systems where a lot of that logic is now carried by the controller and but even then they actually get more simple.

Because then it's just like ABCD, you know you're just you're, just looking up just hooking up colors to colors and it's communicating. So what am I missing here in the wiring side? Anything else we didn't to cover. The only thing is just make sure like you said it is pretty simple: don't overthink it just gon na trace it out, but only other thing is just make sure your thermostats are yours. On board is set to the type of tennis that make sure if it's a heat, pump, thermostat you're using this on board, knows that it's looking for those inputs and and if it's a you can wire up a you know a heat pump system with conventional thermostats.

You just have to make sure the board knows it. Well, I mean for really simple early ones. You would always use straight cool thermostats, you didn't have an option to use otherwise, but it based on what you're saying it sounds like the only real good reason to use a heat pump. Thermostat would be for that.

I can't think of another good reason why it would matter. I I could think of another good. Okay go ahead. Well, if you don't use a heat pump, thermostats it it's going to be upstaging to auxilary, he just based on a timer all the time on.

All these zones, so I'd rather have the thermostat - be able to call for the Mersey heat rather than the zoom board, take over and not emergency, but I still err heat yeah, fair enough. I can respect that. I don't does that. I'm trying to think is that: why do we care, though, do we, because if you have a particular board owned, that's getting behind and the others aren't you want to bring on auxilary heat just for that it doesn't seem like a good what, if your head pressures Already you know high, because it's a sixty degree day.

You know I have not run into any issues with the only time I usually will just use a conventional and do it when he won cool, except for the strategy of using the Thunder stat for staging or the Rigsby. But I haven't really run into too many problems with that, but it you know it doesn't get that cold air yeah right now and that's, but that would that's my same thought on that I mean we've. We've used straight cool thermostats for ever and we never had heating issues that wasn't the that wasn't the issue. The issue was motors.

Failing was a big one and actually this one question I'm going to ask bypass damper issues, freezing motor failure. We used to have all of these. I don't know if you remember the Orange Bowl emo motors power, open power, clothes, three wire, Bellino motors, those things would fail all the time. Are you seeing significant issues of motor failure? Not not on those? Actually, those are probably you must have really screwed it up Ryan, because those are probably the most reliable actuators that I've ever seen.

We did have - and I won't name the brand, but we did have some. We did have a brand that that had a genius idea where they were going to put these weights on the dampers and the dampers would open too early there, and we sent probably two pallets worth of those dampers back. They all failed within a year, and it seemed to me that the common denominator was the motors, but the and the bulimic dampers. Those things are pretty bulletproof, at least maybe maybe it was a bad batch or I don't know we just had.

We had all kinds of them and I mean what can you do wrong to it to a damper motor and I don't know what could we have been doing wrong? They could have caused them to fail the motors to fail this there's not a lot. You can do wrong other than if it's not fitting right and it's catching on. You know work or hacks in this house, where we use duct, board and flex time only being led wrong. Is this habit where it catches on something? But but no I mean Brian didn't insulate very well why I worked for a very large company.

This was not I'm not talking about and I'm not saying anything bad about. Believe. Oh I like those motors I just they just failed a lot. That was all that's.

Probably - and I'm talking probably my experience in the past - maybe five years and when we started to, I really started to pay attention more on on that. But they've been pretty good for at least recently so yeah, okay, fair enough and yeah you're right I mean if the if the blade is hanging up because it's not mounted right or whatever, then that could that can cause it, and there was probably a lot of Cases like that, I didn't always pay attention to those details as well as I should have back when I was 21 years old. Let me come on. That's why they tell you don't mount it with the motor at the bottom.

That's the only place you should mount a damper, even though it's really convenient. Sometimes when the ducts are overhead. Oh, why do they tell you that you shouldn't do that? Because if any condensation drips it's gon na go right to the motor? If it's at the bottom of the duct okay, you made a segue there, you made a quantum leap and I just didn't: follow you down the rabbit hole there, the condensation, but okay, I got it alright. So what we're looking at here? It's! Actually, we got a couple different things and stuff on the left.

There's not too much to comment on, but this this mess on the right. The first thing that I notice is that they've got the secondary transformer out there and they just wire nut at high voltage wires to it just loose in the open, open connections so that that hurts my soul. Obviously it's kind of sloppy looking, but I see this a lot in photos of people taking transformers like this and just mounting it near the zone board and that's not where you're supposed. To do that, I mean it has to either be in an electrical box, and then you're gon na have potentially could overheat because of ventilation issues, but I always put them in the equipment inside the inside the air handler itself and then just wire it out on The low voltage side yeah how come they let them do doorbells like that different trade thinking about doorbells here, trying to think of how doorbells are.

I don't know that I've ever actually screwed on a stud like that is what I say, and it's just like an open connection that knee walls hurting my full rank. The knee wall is hurting your soul, the knee wall with no insulation on it. Oh, oh yeah.