After having some of my house remodeled, it’s become an increasing annoyance in the summer time that the Master Bedroom remains too hot and seems to be unable to be cooled adequately with how little airflow it seems to be getting. An additional supply and return were added to the room in the remodel, but it still remains a bit stagnant. The issue is that the room is at the very far end of the system, as well as being upstairs in the second floor. By the time the air gets to this area, the pressure difference seems to be inadequate for the proper amount of flow to cool the room. Adding a booster fan is a cheap trick to increase the efficacy of the HVAC for the room, but having a completely balanced system would be a bigger benefit: Less electricity used and less noise in the Master Bedroom.

My current plan is to build some remote XBee sensors that can be plugged into an outlet in each room, and become associated with XBees with servos to control the dampers in the basement. This should allow me to build a system that will automatically balance the airflow for each room to be able to maintain a better average temperature, as well as programmatically close off rooms that aren’t being used, such as the guest room, which only needs to be controlled when we are expecting someone to use the room. It should also give me more time-of-day control and allow the bedroom to gain a little temperature during the day in the summertime when it’s not being used, and to lower it more than the rest of the house before bedtime so it is more comfortable to sleep in.

I’ve currently got a Nest thermostat on the First floor in the living room, and it does an excellent job at controlling the temperature and humidity for that room, but the problem is it’s a closed source hardware solution, so it doesn’t offer the flexibility that I am looking for. This is hopefully where the XBee system will come in handy. I just have to figure out if it’s feasible to get the systems to work with eachother, or if I’ll have to resort to a completely custom system for the future.