Zoning & add-on cooling in Ballarat.

Ballarat’s winters are long. From May to September the heater runs for hours every day, and if your ducted system has no zoning it is warming every room whether anyone is in it or not. Zoning fixes that. We fit motorised dampers into the ductwork and a multi-zone controller, so you can heat the kitchen and living areas during the day while the bedrooms sit off, then flip it overnight. In a cold-climate town like ours, where the system simply runs more hours than it would in Melbourne, the saving adds up fast, commonly 15 to 30 percent less runtime for a family who lives mostly in the main living zone.

Retrofitting zones to an existing system.

If your home already has a ducted gas heating system, we can usually add zoning without replacing the unit. We inspect the duct layout from the roof or subfloor, confirm the branches can be split into sensible zones, and fit the dampers and controller. Adding two or three zones typically runs $900 to $3,000 depending on access. It is one of the highest-return upgrades you can make on an existing Ballarat system.

Add-on refrigerated cooling.

Already have heating ducts and want cooling for summer? In the right home the existing ductwork can carry refrigerated cooling as an add-on, which is cheaper than a whole new system because the expensive ducting is already there. It is not always possible, cooling and heating have slightly different airflow needs, so we assess the existing run honestly and tell you whether an add-on cooling coil and outdoor condenser will perform, or whether a fresh refrigerated design is the better spend. An add-on typically runs $4,000 to $10,000.

2026 worked example, Sebastopol.

A Sebastopol family had a 7-year-old ducted gas heater with a single thermostat, heating the whole house all winter. We added three zones (living, master, bedrooms) with motorised dampers and a new touchscreen controller for $2,400. The first winter, the owners reported their gas bill noticeably down because the children’s bedrooms no longer ran all day while everyone was at school and work.