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I lived in a similar structure for a while, a 3 story townhouse with single zone hvac, thermostat on the second floor. What was in that system that made it work

I lived in a similar structure for a while, a 3 story townhouse with single zone hvac, thermostat on the second floor. What was in that system that made it work was three dampers, one for each the floors. If you can locate the main duct going to each floor, you should be able to add a manually operated damper to reduce flow to the upper floor when heating and reduce flow to the lower floor when cooling. When I switched my system from heat to cool or cool to heat, I would usually make a point of adjusting the dampers, as well as using that as the time to replace the filters. If you don't have dampers at the source, closing the dampers at the registers on the respective floor to 90% should have a similar effect.

ubermonkey 6y ago
We have a sort of dumb zoning already, which is a thermostat on the first floor, but it only allows the first to opt out of whatever heating or cooling is happening in the rest of the house. This is never something we want to do. Before COVID were were shopping to upgrade, so we're not going to put any more upgrade money into this house, but if we were going to stay I'd absolutely make changes in this.
- mattmcknight 6y ago
  The manual dampers for the ducts can be as cheap as $20. Why wouldn't you turn off cooling on the ground floor in summer? Heat should rise.
  - ubermonkey 6y ago
    Re: dampers, we generally close 2 of the 3 vents in the 3rd floor for the winter. Re: the downstairs, unfortunately it warms up quickly on a hot day, and the structure of the house is such that the downstairs room's heat doesn't really have an easy path up. The other factor is that, in a NORMAL, non-plague year, I'm alone in the house during the work day. If had perfect control of the house climate system, I'd let the upstairs drift to 80 or 82 while keeping my office at 76 or 78, and not start trying to cool the rest of the house until after hours when my wife gets home. Same with heating: just heat down here during the day, and warm the rest of the house in the evening.

ubermonkey 6y ago

We have a sort of dumb zoning already, which is a thermostat on the first floor, but it only allows the first to opt out of whatever heating or cooling is happening in the rest of the house. This is never something we want to do. Before COVID were were shopping to upgrade, so we're not going to put any more upgrade money into this house, but if we were going to stay I'd absolutely make changes in this.

mattmcknight 6y ago
The manual dampers for the ducts can be as cheap as $20. Why wouldn't you turn off cooling on the ground floor in summer? Heat should rise.
- ubermonkey 6y ago
  Re: dampers, we generally close 2 of the 3 vents in the 3rd floor for the winter. Re: the downstairs, unfortunately it warms up quickly on a hot day, and the structure of the house is such that the downstairs room's heat doesn't really have an easy path up. The other factor is that, in a NORMAL, non-plague year, I'm alone in the house during the work day. If had perfect control of the house climate system, I'd let the upstairs drift to 80 or 82 while keeping my office at 76 or 78, and not start trying to cool the rest of the house until after hours when my wife gets home. Same with heating: just heat down here during the day, and warm the rest of the house in the evening.