Take a deep dive into Arzel Zoning systems with our detailed product overview. You'll learn about the components of our systems, our control panel options, and the types and sizes of dampers available. Includes information on HeatPumPro, MPS, AirBoss, EzySlide, EzyFit, InsertaDamper, RegiDamper, CoolMizer, AloneZone, FACT Board, and all of the components of these systems.
Today, we’re going to be going over the Arzel product line, dampers, panels, what we offer and what their uses are.
The first thing to keep in mind with our product is we’re a little bit different than most of your zoning manufacturers out there. We are a pneumatically driven system. So our dampers are not 24 volts. They’re driven on pneumatics. They’re actually vacuum open, pressure close. So when you are doing any of our panels, or any of our zoning jobs in general, there’s a few things that you’re going to need basically, for any kind of job. You’re going to need your panel, which we’re going to be covering here, a little bit later in the slides. And then whatever dampers you guys decide to do, whether it be our EzySlide dampers, which are made for external ductwork, so if you have access to the ductwork and the customer doesn’t plan on finishing off their basement or the mechanical room. Then you’re going to need our tubing, which is how our dampers actually connect to the panel. And we’ll kind of go over that a little bit later as well.
And then typically if you guys aren’t doing trunk dampers, and you guys are doing branch-style ductwork, where you have an individual damper in each run of that home, you’re also going to need our tees, which is our fittings, there in the bottom right hand corner. You don’t need any other tools as far as the tubing is concerned. Just a pair of PVC cutters will work to cut the tubing. The fittings themselves are barbed fitting so you don’t need hose clamps or anything. You just slip the barbed fitting into the tubing, and that’s how the dampers will actually connect to the system.
So with any of our panels, it’s also going to ship with a transformer. If it’s four zones or less, it’s going to come with the plug-in style transformer pictured on the slide right there. It’s a 120-volt transformer. You’re going to plug that right into any standard wall outlet. And then that’s going to provide your 24 volts to your panel.
The transformer itself has an auto-resetting fuse built into it. So if there’s ever a short in between the panel and the transformer, it’s going to drop out your secondary voltage until that short is fixed. And then it’s going to regain that secondary voltage on the transformer.
If you guys get into 6 or 8 zones, so the six or eight-zone AirBoss, that actually ships with the hard-wired transformer, it’s 100 VA. It’s 120 or 220 depending on your application. You would hardwire that and then that would provide the 24 volts to your system to power the panel and all your thermostats.
With the hardwired transformer, it doesn’t have an auto-resetting fuse on it, but it does have a fuse. So if there’s ever a short, it trips that fuse and then you just have to reset it with the switch on the transformer.
As far as thermostats go, for any of our panels, we’re compatible with any 24-volt thermostat on the market, whether it be a smart thermostat, Wi-Fi thermostat, single stage, multi-stage, it depends on the panel whether you’re going to use multi-stage thermostats or not. We’ll kind of cover that when we get to the panel end of things. But as far as, thermostats on the market, we’re compatible with any 24-volt stat.
If you guys are going to do like Google Nest or Ecobees or anything like that, just make sure you guys are staying away from wire-saving kits and make sure you guys are using your designated common wire to the thermostats. Just zoning panels in general don’t work very well with, wire saving kits because of the way that they function, stealing their voltage from whatever you guys aren’t using, so whatever function you’re not using. So if we’re running cooling, it’s actually stealing power from the heating circuit. And that can create what we call phantom calls, where it energizes that W call with a cooling call because it’s stealing that voltage. And the panel’s not going to serve that call because it’s going to treat it as an illegal call, or a call that the panel will not recognize. So if you guys are going to use those power stealing stats, just make sure you guys are going to run a common wire and you’ll be good to go with that.
So we’re going to get into the panels that we offer. We basically have six different panels. And we’re going to cover each of those and kind of what they do, and kind of what applications they’re used for.
The first panel that we offer is going to be our MPS series. This is going to come in a 2 or 3-zone configuration. The biggest thing to kind of keep in mind: this is more of our budget-friendly panel. It doesn’t have any bells and whistles built into it. So we don’t have leaving air temperature sensors or anything like that that’s going to be included with the panel. It basically gives you zoning on a budget.
It works for 2 or 3 zones. It’s only good for single stage equipment. So if you guys are doing multi-stage equipment, or if you have a customer with an older piece of equipment that they’re probably going to end up replacing in the next couple of years with two stage, you’re probably going to want to steer away from this panel and go with something like our HeatPumPro or an AirBoss, but it does work for a heat pump, single-stage or conventional equipment. Not really great for dual fuel. We can make it work, but we have better panels out there that’ll handle dual fuel capabilities a lot better than this panel. So just kind of keep that in mind if you guys are going to use it, just use it with single-stage conventional, air conditioning, furnace. Or if you guys are doing a heat pump, it works better with the heat pump with electric back up. Not so much on your dual fuel applications.
The next panel that we have is going to be our AirBoss panel. This is our longest-running panel and it’s more geared towards your large homes or the commercial atmosphere. And it has a few things built into it that kind of set it more for the commercial world. One of the things that it does incorporate is a master zone switch. And basically you can either flip the switch for the master zone, or you can put a timer or a thermostat with dry contacts that close the terminals at a certain time. So a lot of different ways you can do it. But if that master zone switch is activated, what it would do is it reverts all functionality to the zone one thermostat.
So if you guys had a commercial job and you got eight different zones on there, and they’re running eight different thermostat programs, when the last person leaves for the evening, they could either have a night setback or they can physically flip that switch. And instead of running all those programs in that whole building and wasting all that energy to keep them at a satisfactory temperature, we can revert it to that zone one to save that customer on their fuel efficiency and set the lower temperatures for when nobody’s in that building for the evening.
The AirBoss is also going to ship with your LAT protection. So it has an LAT sensor, which will go up into your – leaving air temperature – into your plenum. That’s going to give you guys all your lockouts as far as overcooling or overheating. So if that equipment starts to get too cold or too hot, it’s going to start staging your equipment back or shutting it off and running the fan until normal temperatures come back on the panel. And that ships with every AirBoss. So it’s not an added thing.
This panel will work for anything from single stage conventional all the way through dual fuel applications. If you guys are going to do dual fuel, the only additional component you would need would be an outdoor thermostat that would close on a temperature fall. And that’s going to be your balance point setting from the heat pump to whatever your backup heat source is going to be.
It’s also going to ship with our ModuPASS port, which, if you guys aren’t familiar, is our modulating bypass, which we’ll cover a little bit later as well. So it’s just a much better bypass than your standard barometrics would be, and we’ll cover that.
And this panel is going to come in either 2-zone, 3-zone, 4-zone, 6, or 8. So if you have those larger jobs, it’s definitely going to accommodate for that. If you guys are doing two-stage equipment, you kind of have two different options with the AirBoss. You can either use two-stage thermostats to do your capability for that second stage or if you don’t want to run the wires for the thermostats, that kind of stuff, there are delay timers built onto the board. You can set those anywhere from two minutes up to 30 minutes. And then after that amount of time elapses, it’s going to engage that second stage operation.
The next panel that we have here is going to be our HeatPumPro panel. And this is pretty much our most versatile panel. It’s usually the panel that I recommend any contractor to go with. It’ll work for any 24-volt system on the market, as it ships. You don’t need any external components, even if it’s a dual-fuel system. You can handle all that staging with just single-stage conventional thermostats, and it’s going to be able to provide you up to four heat, two cool on your outputs.
And the way that this panel does this is that it actually does all your staging based on leaving air temperature and runtime. So it’s actually getting a real time reading in your ductwork, as well as an outdoor sensor, which both ship with your panel. And that’s how it’s going to stage your equipment. It’s also going to handle any kind of changeovers you guys would have. So if you guys are doing a dual fuel system, you’ll also program that in. And once that temperature is reached, it’s going to flip over to your auxiliary heat source and run that as well.
It also has all of your controls built in. If you had, like, electric backup it’s going to have your electric heat resistance lockouts. So if you guys wanted to do a hard lockout on the electric backup heat, and you didn’t want it to engage until a certain temperature outside, all of that is included and built into the panel. So, really, for any kind of operation you would have or any system you have, you can use just single-stage heat/cool thermostats, and it’s going to handle all that staging internally. So it’s a really nice, well-rounded panel. It was really made so that you guys can use really inexpensive thermostats but still get that sophistication of your high-end thermostats because it’s all built into the panel.
So like I mentioned before, it’s going to ship with that outdoor air sensor and a leaving air temperature sensor. And this panel goes up to four zones. So it’s going to be a two-zone, three-zone, or a four-zone. So it pretty much covers you guys for just about any application in the residential market. Typically you’re not going to do more than four zones residentially because, typically, you’re going to have too small of zones when you start getting bigger than that.
And one of the things that the HeatPumPro also incorporates is a setting called Zone Weighting and Air Handler Stage Threshold. What that actually does is we’re able to lock out second stage blower operation on individual zones. So you guys are able to pick a percentage of ductwork per zone. And then you guys are able to pick what percentage of ductwork you want actually open in that system before we can achieve second stage on your output.
And the way that we actually handle that is we separate your y1, y2 air handler and your y1 y2 outdoor unit, so your condenser heat pump, whatever you guys are using. Those are separated. So when you guys are doing these, wiring, it’s a little bit different than most of the panels out there. And you can see on the diagram there you just want to make sure you separate that out. That’s going to handle the freeze protection and that on the heat pump side of things or the air conditioner, but it also locks out that second-stage blower. So you don’t have to worry about a high-stage blower on a really small zone that just can’t handle that airflow. So it gives you guys a lot of adaptability so you can program that panel so that you can be within range of your equipment but still give that customer satisfaction of their comfort in these areas as well.
This is our Evergreen panel. It’s identical to our HeatPumPro. The only difference with this panel is it’s shipped with an ECM drop-in replacement motor. So if you guys had a piece of equipment with a regular standard PSC motor, you could purchase this panel. It comes with an ECM motor to pair into their equipment and pairs with the panel very nicely, to give them that variable speed motor on an older piece of equipment, and still be able to zone it.
So I’m not going to cover it too much because it’s identical to the HeatPumPro as far as the panel’s concerned. It just depends on which model you go with as far as zones, and what size horsepower that motor is, as well, is how you would go about picking this panel. But it has all the exact same features as our HeatPumPro does in it. So it’s identical panel-wise.
Next one that we offer is going to be our GTPro panel. This specific panel is only good for geothermal equipment. So, if you guys are doing any other kind of application, you’re going to want to steer clear of this panel. But if you guys are geothermal guys and you guys are installing geothermal and you’re going to end up zoning it, it’s a really nice panel. It has everything the HeatPumPro has built into it, along with a lot more options for staging the geothermal equipment.
Besides just that outdoor air temperature sensor and the leaving air sensor, it’s also going to ship with a loop temperature sensor, which will go on your return loop of your geo, and it’s going to help with the staging as well. So you’re able to pick not only just time and temperature, but also that loop temperature. It’s called the loop reset. So as your temperature starts either declining or increasing on your loop, the panel will start staging your equipment more aggressively to make up for that loss in temperature from the water.
So it’s a really nice panel when you guys are doing geothermal equipment. And just keep in mind, that’s the only thing it actually works for. So if you guys are doing anything else, you kind of want to stay away. But all of our other panels, they’ll work for geothermal or any other application. This one is just geared more specifically for that.
The last panel that we offer, that’s not zoning-related, this is going to be our CoolMizer panel. What this panel actually does is it gives you an economizer function on a residential piece of equipment. So you would run an outdoor duct going outside to draw in that cool air on the shoulder season, so your early spring, early fall. Instead of the customer having to open windows and have all those allergies come into their house, they’re able to actually bring that cool air from outside, still filter it through their HVAC equipment, and then deliver that air to the space to cool it, rather than running the mechanical cooling.
It’s also really nice because you don’t need any enthalpy controls or any external devices. It’s going to ship with just an outdoor temperature sensor that’s going to read outdoor temperature and humidity, and then it’s going to provide lockouts for either economizer function, but it also incorporates fresh air function as well. So there’s a secondary port on the top where you’re able to introduce fresh air to that system based on outdoor temperature and humidity. So it’ll either do a combination of the economizer with fresh air, or you can use one or the other. So it’s really up to you guys how you want to utilize this panel.
It’s also going to have an external override switch that’s built on to the panel, which can be used for a number of different uses. One of the most popular is just using it for carbon monoxide detection. If it was, say to, you could set it up to a carbon monoxide detector with dry contacts. If your carbon monoxide alarm gets too high in that building, it would close those contacts and force the dampers open to bring in that fresh air and, mix that air so you’re not, you know, hitting those limits as far as carbon monoxide and that kind of stuff.
Also, if you’re running economizer function and you’re not able to keep up equipment-wise with the temperature in the home, it would engage your cooling along with the economizer if need be. So if your thermostat actually outputted for second-stage cooling because we’re not able to make ground in that building with just the outdoor air, we would actually stage in your equipment on low stage and help move that temperature along as well.
We also have a couple of different boards that we offer that can either be standalone components, or that can be built into any of the panels that we offer as well.
The first one out the top there, the PCB-FACT, that’s our FACT Board. It has two basic uses, one of them being an AloneZone, or kind of like a slave zone, if you guys are familiar. It’ll give you guys a damper operation on a zone that’s controlled still from a thermostat, but it would restrict that zone from being able to actually physically kick on your AC equipment.
So if you had a smaller zone in the home, it can’t really be its own zone, you could incorporate it with the FACT Board. And what that would allow is for that zone to still have dampers and a thermostat, but it would prevent that zone from ever calling on its own. So it would never be your smallest zone anymore, so you guys wouldn’t have to worry about, you know, a really big bypass, or maybe possibly avoiding a bypass in general, if you could. So it gives you guys that capability as well.
Also, the FACT Board can act as a fresh air board, and you can add external controls to that. Or, from us, if you have it pre-installed, it would just open any time there’s a call on the panel for fresh air, it would open that damper as well. So that’s a use for it.
And then at the bottom there we have our AloneZone. That basically does the exact same thing as the FACT as far as your slave zone or your AloneZone. But it incorporates a sensor, where your FACT Board is actually reading your outputs on the panel. So it reads voltage, not temperature-based. The AloneZone’s a little bit more sophisticated, a little bit more easy to use. It just has a sensor that goes in your ductwork. If that temperature in your ductwork matches the call from the zone that’s using the AloneZone, it’s going to allow those dampers to open in that system.
Also, with either of these, you can have them built in their own individual panel. So maybe you got a customer that doesn’t really need zoning. They maybe only have one area in the home that, you know, constantly over conditions. You can actually just zone that one individual area with the AloneZone or the FACT board. And that would give you that thermostat and damper operation to be able to close that area off when it starts getting too hot or too cold based on the temperature. It would close those dampers and prevent air from going into that area.
So it’s a really nice feature. It can be built in its own or in a panel box. So if you guys ever have an application for that, you could either give us a call at Tech Support, or just email us at techsupport@arzelzoning.com.
And we also offer custom applications. So if you guys haven’t already done this with us before, we do a lot of custom applications as well. This one here is basically going to be in-floor radiant heat, along with a heat pump, and gas furnace for the backup. It’s all built into one panel, all controlled through one thermostat. So it just simplifies the control side of things on jobs.
So if you guys ever have a need for any kind of custom application, if we haven’t already made a panel that can match your application, we’ll design a wiring diagram. As long as it’s in our wheelhouse and we feel comfortable, you know, doing it. We can build the diagram for you, build you guys a custom panel, and be able to ship that out to you guys.
We’ve done cigar rooms, or smoke rooms, that kind of stuff to bring in fresh air when they’re in there smoking their cigars. We’ve done a lot of different things as far as wood burners go with backup conventional systems as well. So if you guys ever have an application for that, again, either email us or give us a call at Tech Support.
This is just kind of another diagram. As you guys can see in this one, it uses the same exact board. So this instance here, it’s using it to control the boiler. This instance, it’s actually using it to interface with a communicating piece of equipment. If you guys don’t know, Arzel’s panels are not compatible with your communicating piece of equipment. So if you guys are going to do it, we can piggyback off of some of the manufacturers’ communicating equipment, but it has to be a two-wire system. We’re not compatible with three-wire zoning panels, so we would not be able to adapt to that. But if they give you guys the capability of doing a two-wire system, you can incorporate a communicating piece of equipment. You would use their zoning panel to control the equipment, and then you would actually use our interface panel to piggyback off of that, to be able to use our dampers and get that lifespan on the damper side of things.
If you guys ever have, you know, it’s an instance where you’re not sure if will work or not with that piece of equipment, just give us a call. If we don’t know already, we can look into the equipment and see if we’re compatible with it.
Then the last panel that we offer is going to be our Zonocity panel. If you guys are SpacePak guys, you may have seen this before. We also work with Unico as well. So this is going to be small-duct high-velocity zoning. It’s either going to use our MPS panel or it’s going to be our HeatPumPro panel, depending on if it’s single-stage or two-stage small-duct high-velocity. But we are compatible with it. We can zone those pieces of equipment as well.
The biggest thing to keep in mind if you guys are going to do a job with a SpacePak or Unico, small-duct high-velocity in general, is making sure that that equipment has enough runs when it was pre-installed. So before the zoning is installed, you just need to make sure you have enough outlets per ton, as designed by the manufacturer. As long as you have that, you can definitely zone it. There are some limitations on how many zones you can do. If you guys ever need anything like that, we can email you the guidelines as well, so you guys get an idea of what you’re going to end up doing.
So Arzel not only offers our trunk dampers, which I’m sure you guys are all familiar with, traditional zoning. When you guys would zone new construction homes, you would create one trunk run per individual zone in the home, just like the picture here. So in the picture you got four zones. Each one of them is going to have just one damper. And that’s going to open up those areas to actually zone them.
But one of the things that Arzel really strives at is our retrofit dampers. And being able to zone an existing home without having to do drastic ductwork modification. So you guys are actually able to take our dampers and zone off each individual heat run in that home. So we would actually do branch style dampers. And as any of these panels ship, you’d be able to do up to 35 dampers on that panel.
If you guys ever have a case where you’re going to need more dampers than that 35, we can build you guys a custom panel. And that would be able to do up to 70 dampers on that job. That’s really what we strive at, is just making these jobs as easy as possible for you guys. So you don’t have to redo ductwork and make that ductwork work for you.
You can take that existing ductwork and still be able to zone it and still get those benefits. And really, branch dampers have a little bit more leeway too. Instead of closing off those big sections of your trunk, the branch allows you to have more airflow in your main trunk line, because we’re closing off the branch side of things rather than the main trunk line. So typically with branch dampers, they have a little bit of a benefit of having a smaller bypass or possibly not needing a bypass at all just because of that extra room that you have to alleviate some of that extra static pressure in your system as well. So it has some plus sides besides not having to redo the ductwork.
Like I mentioned earlier, we are a pneumatically driven system. So, pre-installed in every single one of our panels, is going to be our pump. It looks just like the picture here. It was originally designed to be a kidney dialysis pump. So it’s a really long life expectancy on it. Doesn’t fail very often. And it actually creates a pressure and a vacuum simultaneously.
So when you guys are looking at the top of the pump, there’s four ports up there. The two back ones are the only ones that are actually used. The two front ones are always going to be vent ports. So we’re either pulling in air or dispelling the air from those ports. Then when you look at your pump your back left side is your positive pressure and then the back right side is your vacuum pressure. And that’s how we actually operate the dampers themselves.
So when you guys take a look inside our panel box on this picture here, this is how our tubing is actually installed. So as you guys can see we have a positive pressure tube and a vacuum pressure tube that comes off the pump. And then it’s going to split off and it’s going to go up to little solenoids per zone. So every zone has its own solenoid. And that solenoid is what’s actually going to switch the function of your damper. So if it’s under a call and it’s calling for conditioning, it’s going to send vacuum to those dampers and then all the zones that are not calling at that time, their solenoids are going to switch over to the positive pressure side of the pump. And that’s how we end up closing the dampers on the system.
If you guys ever have to troubleshoot the solenoids, they are DC-volt solenoids. So they’re 24 volts DC to close, zero volts DC to open. And really the failure rate is very minimal on the solenoids themselves. The biggest thing to keep in mind is avoiding debris. So if you guys are installing a panel and it’s new construction, they’re doing a bunch of drywall work, make sure you leave the caps on the top of the panel on the solenoids until you’re ready to actually attach your tubing.
Typically, if we have to warranty a solenoid, when we get them back, it’s because they’re packed with drywall dust, is nine times out of ten, what the failure is. Also, when you guys are rolling around with our tubing on the back of your trucks, kind of treat it like copper. Tape the ends off of it, try to keep the debris out of the tubing. It’s the same deal. If you get that debris in your tubing, when that pump goes into a vacuum and it starts pulling the vacuum on the dampers, it’ll also pull that debris into your solenoid. So that’s really the biggest thing to keep in mind, is just avoid debris out of your solenoids. And you can expect a long life expectancy out of them as long as you guys do that.
With our dampers, we’re low-pressure pneumatic, so normally normal position on our damper with nothing going to them, so no call on the panel, they are actually open. The reason is so when you get a call for conditioning, as your blower motor starts ramping up, your dampers will start to close. And that’s so we’re not starting the blower motor against closed dampers. So you don’t get ductwork popping, and you don’t get those drawbacks to doing that. So it gives you a nice soft start on your equipment.
Then when we go to close the damper, we’re going to send pressure and it pushes against the diaphragm in the bottom of the damper, there. Just like the picture. That’s going to push on that rod and it’s going to close that damper off. When we go to open, same kind of concept. It’s going to pull a vacuum, though, on that diaphragm. And that’s going to actually open up that damper. If you guys have seen the inside of a pressure switch, the rubber diaphragm, it’s very similar to what’s on the inside of our dampers themselves. Just a lot thicker of a rubber material, just for, better longevity.
As far as dampers go, we have a bunch of different dampers that we’re going to cover today. Our most popular is going to be our EzySlide dampers. These are going to come in a round, four-inch, up to 16-inch. We do go larger than that. They’re going to get into commercial dampers at that point, which are pre-installed in spiral duct sleeve.
And then we also offer our rectangle sizes as well. So these are going to be your trunk style dampers. And those go from four-inch to 48. We also offer custom sizes as well. So if you guys have an oddball sized duct we can build that for you guys as well. And typically those ship in 1 or 2 business days. So if you guys ever have a need for that, you can either look it up on our website on what sizes we offer in the customs, or if you guys aren’t sure and you don’t see it on the list, you can always call us or email us at Tech Support. We can kind of go over that with you as well.
All of these dampers are going to have a three-quarter-inch gasketed seal on them as well. So these are 100% closure on the dampers. They don’t allow for any kind of bleed-by. But if you guys ever had a need, maybe you got a smaller zone, you don’t want it always to close off completely, you want to bleed off a little bit of your static pressure into an opposing area of the home, you can do 1 of 2 things. You can either trim the gasket material, which works really well, or you can just order the next size down. So if you guys have like a six-inch duct, you could do a five-inch damper, so you can alleviate some of that extra static into another area of the home, maybe an entryway or a mudroom, something like that, that can handle a little bit more over conditioning to allow that static pressure relief. Besides, you know, your obvious, of using a bypass or something like that.
Also, things to keep in mind with the EzySlide damper is these do stick out of the bottom of your duct. So they’re more used if you’re not going to finish off a basement. If you’ve got a homeowner that’s planning on finishing the basement and burying all their dampers, we do not recommend you bury our dampers or any dampers in general, under drywall. If it’s a drop ceiling, you’re more than welcome to do that. But if they’re going to drywall, we have different dampers that we’ll cover here in a couple slides that are more geared for that kind of, situation.
As far as installing the EzySlide damper, they’re super easy. They’re all going to come with the template. Basically you guys are going to install your template. It’s going to have an airflow direction on the template itself. And then it’s going to have a nozzle direction which is just where the tubing connects on the damper. Just put that in line on your ductwork. If you guys put it on backwards, the damper itself doesn’t matter which way you put it in, it’s going to work both ways. The biggest thing and the reason why we have those arrows is if you do it according to the sticker, it points your tubing back towards your equipment so you don’t have to loop your tubing back. It just makes it a cleaner, more static look. But if you guys don’t have room, or if you have to actually put the damper in backwards, it’ll still work fine and you don’t have to worry about operation that way.
Once you get your sticker on though, it has two sizes on all the stickers, so just make sure you cut out the right size. Once you get that cut out, you’re just going to hold your blade closer with your finger, insert it right into your duct, and then twist it 90 degrees. Once you get the damper in the ductwork, it’s going to open up because that’s its neutral position that’ll actually hold it in the duct. So you don’t have to sit there and hold it while you’re trying to get your screws in.
Once you got it in place, just zip your four screws in and that’s going to hold it. And then attach your tubing to your panel.
So really quick, really fast installation time. When you’ve done a couple of these, you can do pretty much one a minute as you go. And really you can pull someone right out of school and have them install these dampers. No problem. As long as they can work a pair of sheet metal snips. It’s really a super quick, fast installation on the damper side of things.
Our tubing itself, we have two different tubing, so we have our PVC tubing, which is going to be used for any of the EzySlide dampers, whether it be round or the rectangle. That’s used for running the tubing outside of the ductwork.
And then if you guys get into any of our internal mount dampers, you’re going to want to use our plenum-rated tubing. It’s smoke and fire UL-listed, so it’s made to actually run in that warm air vent. So just make sure you guys are using the proper tubing for your application.
And it does come in eight different colors. Like I mentioned before, with the AirBoss it goes up to eight zones, that’s the largest panel that we offer. So we essentially offer color per zone. And it just makes it easier to identify if someone goes back to troubleshoot the system. They can look at the tubing color and figure out exactly what dampers are on what individual zone on that panel.
So it just makes it easier to troubleshoot. It’ll work either way. So if you guys are only doing a two zone system and you don’t want to buy two boxes of tubing because it’s 200 feet in a roll, you’re more than welcome to run them in the same colors. I would just recommend maybe marking the dampers on what zone they are. You know, just take a marker and mark the damper itself.
As far as fittings go, we have a number of different fittings. So we have our tees in the bottom there. That’s going to be your most common fitting. Any time you guys are doing branch-style ductwork, you’re going to end up using the tees. And basically every damper that’s on one individual zone just gets teed off of the main line leaving the panel. Like I said before, you don’t need hose clamps or anything. They’re barb fittings. They just slip right into your tubing.
And the next one up is our couplings. You guys won’t really need them a whole lot unless you cut your tubing too short, or if you want to add dampers later on down the line. We have those available as well.
The next one up is going to be our plugs. The plugs themselves, if you guys are service technicians, I would definitely have these on the truck. If you ever come across a leaking damper or something in our system, it just speeds up that troubleshooting time. And we do offer specific trainings on troubleshooting the pneumatic side of the dampers as well.
And then the last fitting there at the top, that’s going to be our 90s or elbows. You guys are more than welcome to use these if you guys really want like a hard 90-degree bend in your tubing. But our tubing is pliable and you can bend it. It’s just kind of like copper: you don’t want to kink it. If you kink it, it’ll pop back, you just don’t want to leave it kinked, because it won’t…the airflow won’t be able to get through that kink. So if you guys are doing it, either do a soft bend in your tubing, or you guys are more than welcome to use the 90s if you have to.
This is just a diagram of how the tubing is actually ran. As you guys can see on the yellow tube, that’s just going straight to a trunk damper and it’s going to dead-end right at that damper itself. The rest of these are all going to be branch-style dampers, so the pink tubing and the green tubing. And basically the easiest way is just take your tubing, leave your panel box, go all the way to that last damper in line on that zone. From there, you’re going to plug that into your damper, start stapling your tubing and working your way back to the next damper. You’re going to cut your tubing, install your tee, and just run that right to the damper. And from there, you just work your way back, stapling, cutting the tubing and adding your tees. It’s really quick, really painless to do the tubing. You don’t have to worry about the low-voltage wiring and extra additional transformers for the dampers, so you don’t need anything else on that system to control those dampers.
And lastly, we’re going to get into our concealed ducting dampers that we offer. We basically have three different ones. On the left, there’s our RegiDamper, in the middle is going to be our EzyFit, and then the last one on the right there’s our InsertaDamper. These are all going to have their uses in the field. So it really depends on your application.
But as far as the InsertaDamper, which is the first one we’ll cover here, works really well if you guys got a slab home. So if they have a slab that isn’t metallic ductwork, you can use this specific damper. It has a metal band on the damper itself. You can see in the picture in the clear tubing, you would squeeze that band and stick that into your ductwork. Once you let it go, it opens back up from the spring. That’s going to hold that damper in place.
One of the best uses that I would use this damper for when I was in the field is just like the picture above. If you had a top loaded boot that goes right over the top of your return, and it’s a really short run where it doesn’t go past your return duct, typically you’re going to have to either remove that return duct, install your damper, reinstall the return duct, and if there’s ever a failure, you’re going to have to pull all that back apart again to get to that damper.
The nice thing with the InsertaDamper is you can actually fit that right through your take-off. So it’ll go right through your take-off elbow. You’ll squeeze that metal band, essentially just cut a hole right underneath that take-off. You’re going to reach through that, stick that damper into your round pipe. Once you let go of the band, it’s going to hold itself in place. And then you would run that tubing out through the ductwork back to the panel.
So it makes it a lot easier. You don’t have to drop the return duct. You don’t have to worry about failures and not being able to get to the damper. And then that hole that you made in your main trunk line, you just cut yourself a blank and patch that up. That’s really all you have to do.
This one’s going to come in a six, seven and eight as your stock sizes. We also make it in a five, nine and ten, too. So if you guys ever need that, those are custom sizes, but like I mentioned before, typically 1 to 2 business days, we’ll get those out for you guys.
The next damper is going to be our RegiDamper. This one also has its uses out there. Typically if you have nonmetallic, if you guys got flex duct or something like that, you got a couple of rooms in the home that you just don’t have great access to.
This specific, damper itself is a galvanized aluminum. So it basically sits underneath your register grill. You can see it in the bottom picture there. Once it’s installed, you can still put on your register cover so you don’t see the metal fins when it’s installed. There are a couple of drawbacks to the RegiDamper because it is not a gasketed seal. You can get some potential bleed-by on this specific damper. But it allows you guys to zone things that there’s no other options for. So it’s got its uses out there.
Just keep in mind it does have those galvanized blades. So you do get a little bit of bleed-by on it. And if your static pressure gets too high in that system, you can also get a whistle as the air blows by those blades. So just keep in mind, you know, when you guys are designing that job, how small of ductwork you guys are going to do, or how small of zones you’re going to have on the panel. And typically, if you stay within range, you’re not going to have any issues with these dampers, but they do have a little bit of a drawback just because they don’t have that gasket seal.
Really the better alternative for the RegiDamper, if you have a round metal pipe, is going to be our EzyFit damper. This is always my favorite, even if they were going to finish the basement and they haven’t already done that, I would usually quote this as the number one job, and then I would give them the option for the EzyFits as well, or the EzySlides.
The nice thing with the EzyFit, if you guys can see in the picture, the blade itself is kind of split in half there. This whole damper folds in half just like a taco, and then it has a pliable magnet that actually holds it in place. So it’ll actually fold up in a 2.5-inch package. You’re able to actually reach right through your register grill and insert this right into your round metal pipe. That magnet’s going to hold it in place. And then when you let go of the blade, everything springs back open.
And that dampers got a nice gasketed seal as well, so you don’t get the bleed-by, you don’t get the drawbacks of the Regi-style damper, but you’re still able to access these right at your register. So if they do finish that basement and they ever have a failure, you guys don’t have to worry about mapping the basement, busting drywall, trying to find the dampers. You can literally go to the register itself, pull your damper right out of the register and replace it that way.
One of the things I would recommend if you guys do any of these insertable dampers, make sure you guys leave yourself an access loop. So take a foot of tubing, roll it up and stick it behind your damper, so that you’re actually able to remove the dampers out of the ductwork without having to reach in and try to disconnect your tubing while it’s in there. That’s really the best thing I can say with these.
And then one of the questions we get the most in tech support is how to run the tubing if we’re going to do internal mount dampers and the basement’s already finished. One of the best ways that I found, and most of the guys in tech support all did pretty much the same thing, or versions of it: Just take your fiberglass fish tape, just like you guys would use for running your electrical wiring, and then take a ping pong ball, slit that, and stick it on the end of your fish tape. That will prevent that fish from getting caught in the seams of the ductwork. Then you would have an access hole cut into your main plenum somewhere in the mechanical room, large enough so you can actually see through the ductwork.
And then you’re going to have a guy go to the second floor or wherever that register is, and start pushing that fish tape down his register, down into the duct. Once that gets into your main plenum, you can go ahead and grab a hold of that. And typically what I did in the field is, we did dryer vent cleaning as well, so I had dryer vent poles on my truck. If you guys aren’t familiar, they come in fiberglass. They’re about two feet long and they screw together. I would take those with a hook on the end of it and start screwing sections of it together until I got my length. Slide that through my ductwork, grab a hold of my fish tape with my hook, and then pull that back to that opening that I created; tie my tubing to that, and then pull that back out of the register. That’s really the best way. We have guys that use their vac trucks to do it as well. So if you guys do ductwork cleaning, they’ll actually hook that up to the system, and then they’ll actually suck bags with a string tied to it through their registers, down to their equipment, and then tie their tubing that way.
So there’s a lot of different ways you can run the tubing. What I can say is not every job is goes as smooth as the last one. And sometimes you’ve just got to think outside the box on how you’re actually going to run that tubing.
And the last damper that we offer, which I had no idea that our Arzel offered until I actually started here, is our BalancePro damper. I’m sure you guys are all familiar with balancing dampers and how hard they are to install after the fact, when the ductwork is done. You’ve got to pull the ductwork apart, you’ve got to drill your holes, you’ve got to insert the blade itself. The nice thing with the BalancePro, for one, it’s got a gasketed seal. So it’s going to seal off 100% of that airflow if you need it to.
But also it’s got the same template as all our other dampers. So you don’t have to pull the ductwork apart. You can cut that hole, insert the damper, and you’re good to go. And say you got a customer that you did balancing for. You installed a bunch of these, you balanced that home. And then 2 or 3 years down the road, they decide, hey, I want to do traditional zoning in my home. You can remove these dampers, and our current dampers will fit directly in the slots that you already cut, so you don’t have to worry about making the holes any bigger. It fits in that exact same footprint, so it’s really nice. And cost-wise, it’s not much more than a balancing damper actually is, from any manufacturer. So the amount that you save on labor, it’s kind of a no-brainer with these. I wish I would have known that they were here before I started here.
And then the last thing we’re going to cover as far as dampers go today is going to be our bypass dampers. So if you guys are going to end up using bypass dampers, we basically have two different versions. We have our barometric bypass. I’m sure you guys are all familiar with it. It’s got the weighted arm, you adjust your weight and that’s going to open based on the static pressure in the system. Works really good for basically three zones or less, as long as your zones are kind of evenly sized.
But if you guys are getting into anything really more than three zones, or dramatically different sized zones on a job, or if you guys are doing variable speed or ECM equipment, which is going to be most of the newer equipment nowadays, you’re going to want to steer away from the barometrics. And the reason being, is you can get what they call hunting, where the motor starts chasing your bypass open and closed. And you’ll get that, you’ll have a customer say, hey, since I’ve had this installed, my motor’s ramping up, ramping down, ramping up, ramping down on a call for conditioning. And that’s typically what’s happening is, as that bypass opens, that motor starts speeding up to make up that difference. And then your bypass starts in a loop of just chasing each other.
So to get rid of that, Arzel came out with the modulating bypass, which has, in the picture on the top there, it’s got a little transmitter right next to the damper itself. That’s going to read your static pressure in your ductwork, and then it has a little control knob on the top. Once you dial in whatever static you want to maintain on that system, it’s going to modulate that damper to maintain that specific static across that whole system. So it’s a lot more precise control as far as bypasses go. And it also gets rid of that hunting that we get with the barometric as well. Cost-wise they’re not that much different. I would just spend the extra couple bucks and go with the modulating bypass and just know that I have a better controlled static pressure achieved.
If you guys ever need to size bypass as well, you can download our bypass sizing charts for it on our website. Just go to arzelzoning.com, click on Products, Dampers, and go about halfway down. It’ll have a bypass sizing chart. You can download that. It’ll actually size the bypass for you. All you guys need to know is the tonnage of the equipment, if you guys are doing branch or trunk dampers, and then your smallest zone CFM. And then they’ll tell you what size bypass to use. Otherwise if you guys don’t want to do that, you can always call us at Tech Support. We’ll tell you exactly what size bypass as long as you have that information for us.
We also offer an installation tool kit. So if you guys are installing Arzel or you’re about to and you don’t already have this, I would definitely recommend it. Basically has all the fittings, screws, elbows, all that kind of stuff for a traditional install for us. But it also is going to have our tubing stapler, which is awesome for the tubing and has a little spacer so it doesn’t pinch the tubing when you staple it. But it also works really well for low-voltage wire. I used to use it all the time when I was in the field.
The other thing it has is our ductwork finder tool, which is in the right there. It’s a little black box. Essentially what that is, it’s a little noisemaker with a magnet on it. So say you got a run in a home, you’re just not sure where it goes to. Typically, one guy would start yelling down and the other one’s walking around the house trying to figure out where that run is.
You can actually, put this inside your ductwork, turn it on, it’s going to start beeping. And then you can go to your registers in your home and figure out where that actual run is. So it just makes that two-man job a one-man job, kind of speeds up the install for you guys.
And then the last thing besides the staples and that, is EzyHub. It’s used with our internal mount dampers. It basically acts like a manifold for your tubing. So when you come out of your ductwork with all those insertable dampers with, you know, five, ten, 15 different tubes, it just gives you a nice clean spot to plug those tubes to, and bring those back to the panel. So it kind of acts like a manifold would on a boiler. It just gives you a distribution reservoir. That’s really all it is.
We also offer the spare parts kit. It basically has all the interchangeable components that you would need, with any kind of Arzel panel. So it’s going to have a replacement pump. It’s going to have both our solenoids. We have two different solenoids depending on the panels. It’s also going to have the transmitter for the ModuPASS. It’s going to have a replacement 40 VA transformer. And then it has a sensor for our AirBoss panel and a sensor for the HeatPumPro. The HeatPumPro sensor is actually the same thing that’s on the GTPro as well.
So pretty much covers all the replaceable components besides the circuit board for our systems. If you guys are doing a lot of Arzel, even if it’s warranty stuff, you guys, I would recommend having this on the truck. You could pull the product off of this box, replace the component when it fails, give us a call at tech support if it’s warranty, we’ll send you the replacement part for your kit. Then that way you don’t have to wait for us to send you guys out replacement parts if there’s any kind of failure.
Then Arzel does offer a lifetime warranty on all of our products. The only thing that is not covered by the lifetime warranty is going to be those commercial dampers, which I mentioned before, they’re over 18”, and they’re pre-installed in spiral duct sleeve. Everything else is going to qualify for the lifetime parts warranty as long as it’s registered. And that doesn’t matter if it’s installed in a commercial atmosphere, as long as you guys aren’t using the commercial spiral duct dampers, that panel, those dampers will still be covered for the lifetime that it’s installed in that building. So it’s not excluding commercial residents, it’s just the commercial-style dampers, which are the 18 plus.
Then we also offer a 100% comfort guarantee. If you guys haven’t seen this yet, we’ve offered it for, I think, 20 some years now. We’ve only had to do it one time, but essentially what it is, if you guys sell a zoning job or our zoning job to a customer, if for whatever reason that first year they’re not happy with that system, Arzel will buy it back at no cost to that customer. So you guys would still be out the labor side of things, but all the equipment and that we would buy back. So just gives you a closing tool, basically, gives your customer peace of mind. You know, if I install and invest in this product, I know I’m going to be happy, and they back it up with this guarantee as well. So that’s really what it is. If you guys ever do need it, it’s there. But like I said before, as long as zoning is installed properly and you don’t push the limits to the extreme, you’re typically not going to have a customer that’s dissatisfied with that zoning or the comfort in that home. But if you guys ever did, you know, some people you just can’t please them, it is there and it is there for you guys to offer as well.
If you guys ever need tech support, I mentioned earlier the (800) 611-8312. That’ll get you guys our after-hours or regular-hours tech support. You can also email us. Just techsupport@arzelzoning.com. And we’ll be able to get whatever you guys need back to you guys pretty quickly as well.
If you guys haven’t called our tech support, typically we have no wait time. So if you do call, you’re going to get us right away. We’ll walk you guys right through troubleshooting. And we were all in the HVAC field at one point or another, so we’re we’re really capable of helping you guys with our panels. But not only that, helping set up your equipment to work properly with our panels as well. If you guys ever need wiring diagrams or anything like that, we’re always available to help you guys as well.
