HVAC Services
Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning
Operating HVAC equipment accounts for roughly 1⁄2 of the energy usage in most buildings. Any serious effort to reduce energy usage and increase efficiency will need to focus a large effort on the HVAC systems.
ZEA's origins are firmly rooted in HVAC contracting services. We understand HVAC at every level with over 15 years of experience repairing, upgrading and installing traditional gas-fired furnaces, packaged units, boilers, ductwork and air conditioners.
Additionally, ZEA has extensive experience with cutting edge technologies such as air-source heat pumps and mini-splits. These technologies are often used in Zero Energy Buildings, but also offer great benefits in traditional buildings. Using high-efficiency electric heat-pumps to heat both your building space and your hot water carries the added potential of being powered from a solar PV array and eliminating your gas usage, resulting in a net-zero energy building.
HVAC upgrades
If your existing HVAC system is tired or in need of an upgrade, we have some excellent options for you. Over the years we have gathered considerable experience upgrading traditional HVAC systems to higher and higher-efficiency units as well as making the leap to non-polluting, all-electric high-efficiency heat pump systems. Often times a substantial performance and efficiency enhancement can be made by simply adding damper controls to an existing commercial packaged unit.
Duct Repair and Sealing
In many HVAC installations, up to 1⁄3 of the conditioned air is lost outside the building envelope due to duct leakage. ZEA can perform a Duct Blaster test to evaluate and repair your ducts so that the energy you put into your conditioned air actually reaches your conditioned space, increasing your comfort levels and saving you energy and money as well.
Other Efficient HVAC technologies
Higher SEER furnaces, boilers and air conditioners are steps in the right direction, and may be the most economical upgrade for your particular HVAC situation. However, there are some lesser known, but still mature technologies that have been popular in other regions (most notably Europe) for many years that are gaining popularity here in the US as we become more aware of the social and cost benefits of energy efficiency. ZEA has installed both heat pumps and mini-split systems into several Zero Energy buildings.
Heat Pump systems – Heat pumps are high efficiency systems that use electricity to pump heat from one location to another. A traditional air-conditioner is a good example of a heat pump. It takes heat from inside the house and uses a refrigeration cycle to pump the heat and expel it outside the house, leaving the inside cooler. This same process also works well in reverse, and is then called a heat pump. Now we take heat from the outside air, and pump it inside the house, leaving the inside of the house warmer.
Mini-Split systems – Traditional HVAC systems in both residential and commercial buildings use a central furnace to heat or cool air and then distribute the air through large insulated ductwork to the conditioned spaces of the building. Energy losses due to air leakage and conductive cooling in the ducts drastically lowers the efficiency of these centralized units. A mini-split uses distributed heat pump technology to deliver the warm or cool air directly at the point that it is needed with no duct work. An additional advantage for retrofit applications is that no large penetrations need to be created in the building envelope to accommodate the ductwork.