Arzel Zoning
This training will explain how to install and set up the Pro Panel. The Pro Panel universal zoning control is feature-rich and easy to install. We listened to our customers and added features that give contractors more ability to customize the panel for every application. The Pro Panel pairs with the Arzel Pro mobile app, and you use the app to set up a new zoning system or to monitor current operation for a system that's already installed.
My name is Nick. I’m an engineer here with Arzel Zoning, and I’m going to be talking about our latest zoning control, its features, and go over a little bit about setup and installation.
The Pro Panel is our latest universal zoning system. And it pairs with a new mobile app. The Arzel Pro mobile app, which we’ve developed for both Android and iOS, connects to the panel with Bluetooth. And you can use that for setup and diagnostic.
The panel comes in four-zone, three-zone, and two-zone models, and you can use it to control up to 16 zones by daisy-chaining multiple panels together.
The Pro Panel works with our standard line of air driven dampers, so it’s those same dampers that you know and love, and that you’ve used with all of our other systems.
And the Pro Panels also designed for future software updates and hardware expansions. So you’re actually able to use the mobile app to update the software in the field. And we’ve got some hardware developments in the pipeline that we’re planning to use that you can actually just plug right into the Pro Panel.
The Pro Panel is a universal zoning system. That means it can control everything from 1-heat / 1-cool conventional all the way up to 4-heat / 2-cool dual fuel. Just about anything that can be controlled by a standard 24-volt thermostat can also be controlled by the Pro Panel. You can see a list here of all the different types of equipment that the Pro Panel is able to handle.
The Pro Panel is our most advanced system yet. You’ve got a ton of customizable settings that can let you configure the Pro Panel to work exactly the way that you want it for the equipment that it’s connected to.
We’ve also brought back Zone Weighting from the HeatPumPro, so it’s able to stage the equipment based on how much ductwork is open and which zones are open or closed.
The Pro Panel works with anything that can be controlled by a 24-volt conventional signal, and it works with any 24-volt RWYGC-style thermostat. So whether that’s very basic thermostats or smart thermostats, if they’ve got a 24-volt connection, they work with the Pro Panel.
Here’s a short list of some of the settings that you’re able to configure with the Pro Panel. We’ve got a built in balance point for changeover between heat pump and backup heat, a backup heat lockout to stop the backup heat from turning on if it’s too warm outside, a low ambient lockout for cooling, and then we’ve also got supply air temperature control. There’s a supply air sensor, and it’ll monitor the temperature in the ductwork to determine whether the equipment needs to stage up. That pairs with an outdoor reset, making the equipment stage up more aggressively when it’s colder outside.
To get those controls, you need the supply air sensor and the outdoor air sensor. The supply air sensor, primarily, it protects the equipment with a high limit for heating and a low limit for cooling. But it also can be used to stage the heat pump and electric backup heat and cooling.
The outdoor sensor mostly applies for heat pump applications. It can also provide a low ambient lockout for cooling, but for the most part, it’s for the changeover between two different pieces of heating equipment: a heat pump and your backup heat.
The Pro Panel has built in humidification features. There’s a terminal at the Zone 1 connection labeled H. If you get a 24-volt signal there from your humidistat, the Pro Panel can send a signal out to a humidifier. Usually when this happens, it’s going to open all the dampers and run the fan. But you can configure some of these settings. You can make it so that it only outputs for the humidifier when there’s a heating call, in case you’ve got one of the older style evaporative humidifiers. If you’ve got an on-demand humidifier, it can just turn that on, open up the whole system, and humidify that space. So that’s what we mean when we say it can be configured either to run independently or only with heating.
You’ve also got the option for a bypass damper. If you’ve got a bypass humidifier, you can actually automatically control that using an Arzel damper, and with the Pro Panel.
Similarly, we have controls for Dehumidification. There’s also a D terminal at the Zone 1 connection. If that gets energized, then the Pro Panel can send out a signal to turn on a dehumidifier, again, opening all the dampers and running the fan. If you’d like to, you can also optionally cycle low-stage condenser on and off. This is a very basic way of getting some moisture to accumulate on the coil just to provide some dehumidification, if your customer would like.
So you might be looking at the Pro Panel and thinking, this is very similar to our HeatPumPro. And the Pro Panel was definitely designed with all of the great features of the HeatPumPro in mind. So if you like the HeatPumPro, you can see that we’ve brought all these features back.
First of all, it works with any 4 or 5 wire thermostat, regardless of the equipment type. You can always control the Pro Panel using 1 heat / 1 cool, 5-wire thermostats. And that’s even if you’ve got a heat pump, dual-fuel, or all-electric system.
The Pro Panel is also able to stage the blower and the condenser independently. You’ve got two separate sets of Y1 Y2 contacts: one set that wires to your indoor unit, and another set that wires to your outdoor unit.
And then we’ve also brought back Zone Weighting. So the Pro Panel is going to stage the equipment based on the amount of zones that are open, and based on the amount of ductwork that’s open and available for the air to flow.
When you’re picking thermostats to pair to the Pro Panel, you can use any conventional RWYGC-style connection thermostat, whether that’s a smart thermostat or a very, very basic thermostat. And again, you can use conventional thermostats on all four zones, even to control a heat pump. You can also optionally use a heat pump thermostat at Zone 1 if you’d like, and you get a couple of extra controls from that. But you never need a heat pump thermostat. You can always just use 1 heat / 1 cool, conventional, five-wire thermostats.
Here’s a little bit of a brief introduction to Zone Weighting. If you don’t know about Zone Weighting already, we have a method for telling the panel exactly how much ductwork is assigned to each zone. In this example here, you’ve got 20 six-inch runs. If 5 of them are assigned to Zone 1, then Zone 1’s weight is 25%. A quarter of the dampers are on Zone 1.
You can make this is exact as you want, but at the end of the day, you can just do this as an estimation. You’re just trying to tell the panel how many, and what combination of zones need to be open for second stage to turn on. And zone weight lets you do that.
So the Pro Panel is able to stage W2 and Y2 based on the size of the zones and the combination of the zones that are calling. The idea here is, you can ensure that the system runs in first stage when the ductwork is too restricted, when only small zones are open, or when only one zone is open. This helps to reduce airflow noise, making sure that the fan doesn’t run in higher speed when the ductwork is restricted, and it also helps mitigate static pressure, and mitigate the need for a bypass, or at least help reduce the size of a bypass if you do need it.
Building on that idea, the Pro Panel also lets you set any zone as a slave zone. If you’ve got a four zone system, you can say, “Zone 4, it’s too small, so I’m going to assign it as a slave zone.” If you don’t know already, slave zones can’t turn the HVAC equipment on when they’re the only zone that’s calling. So it prevents the equipment from turning on when only that very small zone is open. Again, like Zone Weighting, this helps eliminate the need for a bypass, make sure that airflow noise isn’t too loud, and just kind of ensure that everything is managed by the panel and the equipment isn’t turning on if the pressure would be too high, or if just the ductwork is way too restricted.
Earlier, I spoke briefly about how the Pro Panel has separate Y1 Y2 contacts to wire to your indoor unit, like your furnace or your air handler; and your outdoor unit, your heat pump or your air conditioner. Here’s a little diagram showing that off. So the Pro Panel is able to stage the condenser and the blower independently. That means that if the panel decides it needs high stage airflow, like you’ve got enough ductwork open to run in high stage, but the condenser doesn’t need to turn on Y2, then it’ll actually run Y2 to the indoor unit and only Y1 to the outdoor unit, running the blower in high stage and the condenser in low stage.
This is mostly for saving energy, preventing the condenser from running at that higher capacity if it doesn’t need to. And you’re going to see a little bit more about how the panel knows whether it needs to turn Y2 condenser on or not.
Of course, in some applications you’re not going to have separate Y1 Y2 contacts. So we’ve actually got a setting built into the Pro Panel to say if you’ve got something like a package unit. You can tell the system you’ve only got a single set of Y1 Y2 contacts. All of that control that applies to a separate indoor and outdoor unit don’t apply to you. And it’ll combine all the settings to just a single set of Y1 Y2 contacts, and you just wire up to a single set of Y1 Y2 contacts.
Things like zone weights and the timers and the temperature thresholds that help deal with staging, those are all going to get combined into controlling Y1 Y2, as opposed to the split Y1 Y2 indoor and outdoor.
You can also use this for systems where you just don’t have a set of Y1 Y2 contacts on your outdoor unit. That would be something like: you’ve got communicating equipment; or the indoor unit and the outdoor unit are communicating together, and you’re just wiring the Pro Panel to the indoor unit only. You’d use this setting for that application as well.
Here’s a wiring diagram showing that example. You can see that Y1 Y2 are wired into the package unit. And they’re going to the condenser terminal on the HVAC output. The Y1 Y2 under blower are left empty because you’ve only got a single set of Y1 Y2 contacts on your equipment.
The Pro Panel also has built in control for emergency heat mode. So, for dual-fuel or all-electric systems, you’re optionally allowed to wire a heat pump thermostat to Zone 1. And then if that heat pump thermostat is put into emergency heat mode, it’ll put the whole panel into emergency heat mode, making it so only the backup heat runs and it never heats with the heat pump.
Here, it says if the Zone 1 heat pump thermostat energizes W without Y, that puts the panel into emergency heat mode. So, if the thermostat says, “I want the backup heat to run and not the heat pump,” the panel will know to only run the backup heat no matter which zones are calling.
Keep in mind, a heat pump thermostat is never required. Even if you’ve got a heat pump that you’re controlling, or dual-fuel, or all-electric, you can always do that with single-stage conventional thermostats. This is just an optional control that you can give to your customer to control emergency heat from the Zone 1 thermostat.
The Pro Panel is a new system. We’ve got new features, and here’s some of the examples. One, you can control up to 16 zones with that daisy-chaining that I mentioned before. If you’ve got multiple panels you can tie them together.
With the app, you’ve got easier set up, easier diagnostic. And what we’re calling one-tap equipment settings. You’re going to see that the app has a bunch of default settings built in. And you can just tap and pick one of those and it’ll actually populate the panel with default settings based on an equipment type that you choose. And you don’t have to go in and mess with it anymore.
We’ve also got advanced features for inverters. We found from feedback about the HeatPumPro that
it struggled to let inverters warm up and satisfy, and it pretty frequently would kick on the backup heat
without giving the inverter heat pump much of a chance.
With the Pro Panel, you’ve got way more settings for controlling how the heat pump runs, so inverters are going to be able to run to their full capacity. And you’re going to be able to guarantee how long the inverter runs in each stage. That’s what we mean when we say fully configurable staging timers. You’ve got a timer that you can set for each stage of heat in a 4 heat / 2 cool setting.
We’ve also got downloadable system logs. So if you’re on a call with tech support and you’re trying to figure out what the system did in the past, you can send a file over to us and we’ll actually be able to look at it and tell you what the system was doing, maybe help you diagnose a problem or an issue, and just kind of have a history of what the system did.
So if you do want to do more than four zones, that is an option. You can pair multiple panels together and wire them together in a daisy chain. The limit on that again is 16 zones. When you have a system set up that way, you actually just connect to one panel to do all of the setup. One panel acts as the main system. That’s the one that you’ll actually pair to with the mobile app. And when you do, you’ll actually see information about all of the panels: what zones are calling and which dampers are open.
When you do the daisy-chaining, not only do you have to wire them together, you also have to place a jumper to tell each panel which number it is in the chain. It’s pretty easy, but there is a diagram there that you have to follow.
And then again, you know, if you’re going up to, let’s say 8, 9, 10 zones, you may have zones that are too small to actually be the only zone that’s open when the equipment is running. So that’s what that slave zone feature is for. You can make it so that if that’s the only zone that’s calling the equipment doesn’t run and it waits for another zone to need service.
Here’s the example of that wiring diagram. You can see how the panels are wired together and the placement of the jumpers if you’ve got two systems in the daisy chain.
The Pro Panel also has a designated connection at Zone 1 for an A2L mitigation board, like an RDS board. The idea here is if your RDS board has a set of dry contacts on it, you can wire those to R and EXT at Zone 1. When those contacts close, the EXT terminal gets energized and the Pro Panel knows that there was an A2L refrigerant leak. So it’s going to respond and open all the dampers and run the fan in the highest stage.
The nice thing there is, if you use this wiring scheme, you can actually wire HVAC output directly to the equipment because when a leak is detected, the Pro Panel is actually going to shut everything down, open all the dampers, and run the fan so you don’t have to worry about making sure the mitigation board does that.
In the case that you don’t have dry contacts that close, you may need an additional relay with the Pro Panel. But for the vast majority of RDS boards or leak mitigation boards, this is the wiring diagram that’s going to work for you. And it’s going to make everything much simpler.
If you’re interested in downloading the Arzel Pro mobile app now, here’s the QR code up on the screen. If you don’t have a Pro Panel to connect to, all that you can really do with the app is view our resources or call tech support, but it is good to have the app downloaded before you go out in the field, just in case you’re in a basement or some out of the way space where you don’t have good cell service, you don’t have access to Wi-Fi, as long as you bring your phone with the latest version of the mobile app with you, you’re good to go. You don’t have to have cell service or Wi-Fi while you’re servicing the system. You just need to have the app downloaded.
Once you open the app and you’re in front of the panel, connecting to the Pro Panel is really easy. As soon as you open it, you’ll either see a spinning wheel, meaning that it doesn’t see the Pro Panel to pair, or what’s more likely, is you’re actually going to see a connect button, and you’re immediately going to able to tap that and get right into the system.
The only thing to keep in mind is you do have to have Bluetooth enabled for the app. It’ll ask you that as soon as you download. So you just have to say yes as soon as you get the app and it’ll work from there. There’s a chance, if you said no, you’ll have to go into your settings and change it. Again, no Wi-Fi, no cell service needed to use the app.
The Pro Panel is ready to pair as soon as you power it on. For a typical installation, you go to that panel, you flip it on, you open the app, and you can immediately connect. Everything is ready as soon as you turn the panel on.
If you’re servicing a system, there’s a little Bluetooth button in the bottom left corner that you can press that will actually put the system into pairing mode if it’s been running, if it’s an active system. Whenever it’s pairing, there’s a little blue LED light that will flash on the panel to tell you it’s in pairing mode.
As soon as you pair, it’s going to start taking you through that step-by-step process. For new systems, it’s immediately going to take you into setup. For existing systems, if you’re servicing, it’s going to take you to a dashboard and show you exactly what that system is doing.
Here’s a screen just kind of showing the basic steps of setup. As soon as you get in you’re going to see those default settings. There’s a default for a bunch of different equipment types. You can pick the one that best matches your installation. And then you’ll have the option to review and edit the settings if you need to. And then as soon as you save and run, it’ll just start working.
You know, these defaults, we set them here internally to try to best match your equipment. For the vast majority of people those defaults are going to work. You always have the option to customize as much as you’d like. We gave you a lot of power to customize with this system, but we built those defaults so that you can really just tap one button and have it set up for your equipment.
So here you can see that list of default settings. And we’ve got everything from single-stage conventional, all the way up to multi-stage dual-fuel, and a lot in between. So there’s 14 different preset default options here that you can pick from. And for the vast majority of cases, these defaults are going to work for you. But of course, you can customize if you need to.
The way that staging works on the system is, there’s two pieces. There’s a timer, and what we’re calling the SAT target. This is basically heat stage threshold or cool stage threshold, if you’re familiar with the HeatPumPro.
So first you set the staging timer, and that means you’re picking the minimum amount of time that the equipment is going to run in that stage. For cooling, you can set a 10 minute timer. You know it’s going to run in stage one for 10 minutes. And then you’ve got the SAT Target, so in this case the Cooling SAT Target. And if after that ten minutes you don’t reach your target temperature, cooling is going to stage up. If you’re not able to get down all the way to say, 55 degrees, if that’s your target temperature, then it’s going to stage up after those 10 minutes. If you do reach 55 degrees, everything’s great. The system knows it’s cold enough in the supply. It does not need to stage up, so it’s not going to.
We’ve made a lot of improvements from the HeatPumPro with this system, especially when it comes to controlling inverters. Here’s a list of all the different things that you can dial in if you’ve got an inverter system that’s dual-fuel or all-electric.
First, you can always set your balance point – so that’s your changeover temperature, usually for dual fuel. You’ve got that target temperature. I showed the example for cooling, but there’s also a target temperature for heating. When you’re heating with a heat pump, you say it must reach, say, 88 degrees in the supply. If it doesn’t reach that after a set amount of time, then it stages up. And there’s a timer for how long the heat pump runs in each stage. There’s a timer for stage one, there’s a timer for stage two, and then there’s a timer for stage one of the backup heat.
You’ve also got a hard lockout on the backup heat built in. This is disabled by default, but if you do have that customer that really wants to get the most out of the heat pump, and they’re trying not to run the backup heat, especially if they’re an all-electric system and they don’t want to have high energy bills, you can use this as a lockout to stop the backup heat from turning on if the temperature is too high outside. You could use this if the customer has dual-fuel as well, but it is mostly for all-electric applications.
And then, like I mentioned before, you can say how long the backup heat runs in each stage as well.
All of this set up and everything that you’ve been seeing on this screen comes from the Arzel Pro mobile app. The app lets you do a lot. It shows you everything that the system is doing, and lets you see all the settings and change them if you need to.
So here you can see an example of the dashboard. An example of all the settings, it’s a screen that you can scroll through with all the settings on it. And then we’ve also got our resources available just in case you need to call tech support or you need to register the warranty. There’s links right there in the app for you to do that.
Whenever you’re in the app, you’re going to see the five menu buttons down at the bottom of the screen. The left-most button, that’s a house. It takes you to the dashboard to show you exactly what the panel’s doing. There’s a wrench icon to get into the Pro Panel settings, in case you need to change one of those timers, or the thresholds that we mentioned before. Then there’s the page with the folded corner. That’s for downloading the system logs, like if you’re on a tech support call and we want to know the history of the system, you can download that and send it to us. The question mark is for resources like the website, registering for warranty, or calling tech support. And then the gear is for the app settings. These are settings that you’re not going to use as often. But you can also go here if you want to do a Pro Panel update using the app. You can do it through the gear icon.
When you’re on the dashboard, here’s all of the information that you’re going to see. It’s going to tell you how long the system has been running, whether it’s running, heating, cooling or just the fan, the outdoor air temperature, the supply air temperature, condenser lockouts if you’re in a time delay, and then what each zone is calling for, whether the damper is open or closed, and how long the zones have been served.
All of that is really right there on the one screen. So this is providing you with kind of that big picture overview of what the panel thinks it’s doing. And that can help you if you need to diagnose the system or if you’re just trying to do check out during install.
Here you can see how the dashboard changes color depending on what it’s doing. If the panel is outputting for heat, answering the heating equipment, when you’re on the dashboard, it’s going to be lit up red. And then blue for cooling, green for fan. If the panel is idle, or if it’s in a purge cycle, it’ll kind of be this black and white color like you can see on the right-hand side here.
We are hoping to make software updates to the system after we release it, because we want to respond to feedback from you guys, and we just want to keep making the system better. We think it’s great right now, but we think there’s room for improvement, especially when it comes to the app.
If we do update the app, it might come with an update for the panel as well. And it’s really easy to update the panel. As soon as you connect, you’re going to get a prompt right away if a new update is available. And then, you just tap the update button and it’ll do everything through the Bluetooth connection and just update the panel using your app. Again, doesn’t require any Wi-Fi or cell service. Everything’s baked into the app. As soon as you connect and tap that update button, it should just work.
If you don’t have the app downloaded, or you just want to get a picture of what’s happening by looking at the board, there are LED status lights for each of the zones and for the output, to tell you what zones are calling for, what the system is outputting for, and which zone solenoids are supposed to be allowing the dampers to open. There’s a light for each of the zones that are supposed to be open where it says solenoids.
Along with the software updates, we’re also planning to develop new hardware for the Pro Panel. On the board, it’s actually got two expansion slots. In the future, we’re planning on creating an add-a-zone module. That means it’ll be something that you can plug right into the board for adding an extra zone to your system. We’re looking into adding additional relay outputs for controlling something like zone valves, controls for fresh air. The board also has Wi-Fi built into it. We’re not using it at the moment. So the panel could connect to Wi-Fi, but it doesn’t do anything right now. In the future, we’d actually like to develop some wireless thermostats that could communicate with the panel over Wi-Fi. But that’s all for the future.
For right now, we’re just using that Bluetooth connection. If you’re interested in the Pro Panel or you have any questions, please let us know. You can always reach out to us at techsupport@arzelzoning.com, or call us at (800) 611-8312.