ZoneFirst President Dick Foster joined Gary Sullivan last weekend on At Home with Gary Sullivan to talk zoning, and it was a good one. I listened to the whole thing and wanted to walk you through it — whether you caught it live or you're hearing about it for the first time right now.
The Problem Gary Opened With
Gary set the stage with a scenario I'd bet you know firsthand: your upstairs bedroom sitting at 84 degrees while the family room downstairs is a comfortable 75. Dick's point was simple — you're asking one thermostat, probably parked in a hallway or dining room you barely spend time in, to speak for your whole house. That thermostat only knows what's happening in its own little corner. It has no idea your upstairs bedroom is baking, or that the west side of your house just caught the afternoon sun. It just runs your system based on the one spot it can actually feel, and everywhere else gets whatever that decision happens to produce. Zoning is really just giving every part of your house its own voice, instead of leaving one thermostat to guess on behalf of the whole place.
Comfort, Conservation, Convenience, Common Sense
Dick has a four-word shorthand he comes back to, and I think each one's worth unpacking a little further than he had time for on-air. Comfort is the obvious one — you stop having to choose between a hot bedroom and a cold living room, because they're no longer sharing one setting. Conservation is what happens next: once each zone can be treated on its own, you stop paying to heat or cool rooms you're not even in. Convenience is what makes it sustainable day to day — you're not walking around adjusting vents by hand, since the dampers respond automatically to whatever each zone's thermostat is calling for. And common sense is really just Dick's favorite way of making the whole idea click: you'd never wire your house so every light switch controlled every light in every room, but that's essentially what your single thermostat is doing to your heating and cooling right now. Said out loud, it sounds a little absurd — which is exactly his point.
He also brought up humidity, and this one's worth sitting with: if your air conditioning feels like it's not keeping up, it might be working fine on temperature and losing the battle on humidity instead. That's a separate variable good system design, including zoning, also helps you manage.
Why This Still Isn't Standard
One number from the conversation stuck with me: of the roughly ten million furnaces, air conditioners, and heat pumps sold every year, only a small fraction end up zoned. That's not because it's expensive or complicated — it's a timing problem. You probably only think about your HVAC system when it breaks, and in that moment the only question you're asking is how fast it can get fixed, not whether it's worth solving the upstairs-versus-downstairs problem while someone's already in your attic. Zoning just doesn't come up in that window, so you never really get the chance to say yes to it.
The Upside Nobody Mentions
Here's a detail from the interview I don't think gets enough credit: a system that isn't running constantly wears out slower. If your equipment only has to condition the room you're actually in, instead of your whole house, it cycles on and off less often — and fewer cycles over its lifetime generally means less strain on the parts doing the work. So this isn't only about your comfort or your energy bill. It's about how long your equipment lasts too, and it's the argument Dick brings up least often, which is a shame, because it's a genuinely good one.
Three Homeowners, Three Different Proof Points
The back half of the conversation moved into real installations, and each story Dick told was making a slightly different case for you. A homeowner near the Jersey Shore had one unbearably hot upstairs bedroom — once that bedroom, the living room, and the rest of the upstairs each got their own zone, his mom noticed the difference the very first night. That's the story that shows you the fix is immediate, not gradual.
A homeowner in Vermont sent Dick a photo of his thermometer reading near zero, grateful his system kept the house warm straight through it — proof this isn't just a summer story for you, it's a cold-weather one too.
And a neighbor of Dick's called a year in, convinced nothing had changed because his bill looked the same. When Dick pulled the actual gas usage instead of the dollar amount, consumption had genuinely dropped. That one's my favorite, honestly, because it's the story that explains why your own bill can hold steady even while you're using less — your utility rates move on their own timeline, and looking at the dollar figure alone can hide the savings sitting underneath it.
You can read more stories like these on our testimonials page.
What This Means For You
Your home is its own case — your ductwork, your number of floors, which side of your house gets the afternoon sun. So instead of borrowing someone else's numbers, run your own through our Energy Savings Calculator.
And if you've got a room that's never quite right — too hot, too cold, always fighting the rest of your house — that's usually not a sign anything's broken. It's just one thermostat trying to do a job that needs more than one voice.
Want the whole conversation? Listen to the episode, "Beat High Energy Costs with ZONEFIRST HVAC Zoning," or browse more of "At Home with Gary Sullivan" on iHeart.