Smart Vents Guide

Uneven temperatures throughout your home can be uncomfortable plus a waste of energy. Smart vents are a relatively new solution, effectively providing a way to have zoned heating and cooling without the expense or work of installing mini-split, or ductless, HVAC units.

While smart vents may improve energy efficiency and reduce monthly bills, there may be additional factors to consider before switching. Here's how smart vents could benefit your home.

What Are Smart Vents?

Smart vents, equipped with sensors and smart controls, can automatically adjust airflow for precise heating and cooling. Unlike standard HVAC vents, smart vents sense temperature, humidity, and airflow throughout a home or within individual rooms, optimizing comfort and energy efficiency.

If you experience warm or cool spots in your home, even when the HVAC system is running, smart vents could provide a solution. Smart vents or smart registers can open and close, either via their own sensors and AI control, or your control. 

With zoned heating and cooling, you can set different temperature targets in different rooms. . Using heating and cooling energy in a pinpointed, efficient way can save you money. By keeping rooms warmer in the summer or cooler in the winter when they’re not occupied, you reduce your heating and cooling costs.

Smart vents connect to a smart home hub or Wi-Fi network. You can have them run on their machine learning and AI, or automate or control them yourself, usually via an app.

Smart Vent Pros and Cons

The benefits of smart vents boil down to energy efficiency and cost savings. Here’s a look at the pros and cons to consider. 

Pros

• Energy and cost savings: Smart vents effectively give you the benefits of a zoned HVAC system without the cost and construction. As of 2020, the US Energy Information Administration reported 52% of an average US home’s annual energy consumption is for heating and cooling.
• Stop hot and cold areas: If a room or floor is often too warm or too cool compared to the rest of the house, smart vents can help.
• Convenient, flexible controls: You can program smart vents to, for example, meet your preferred temperature at specific times of the day, or meet a preferred temperature when a room becomes occupied. You can control them from virtually anywhere.

Cons

• Upfront cost: Smart vents are more expensive than traditional vents.
• Battery maintenance: Smart vents and some components of a smart vent system have batteries that need to be recharged and/or replaced. 
• Connectivity and compatibility: A smart vent must be connected to your wireless network, and compatible with your smart devices such as smart thermostats or voice assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, to get the full functionality from it.

Smart Vent Shopping Guidance

If you're considering switching from standard vents to smart vents, what factors should you consider? 

Factors to consider

• Compatibility: If you have a smart home ecosystem, match new smart vents with that system. Likewise, if you already have an HVAC system and smart thermostats which are compatible, you want new smart vents to work with what you’ve already got. 
• Price: Is the upfront cost worth it? Will the projected energy savings in the long run be worth the change? If benefits such as air quality and comfort are important enough, then maybe the extra expense is just fine. 
• Ease of use: Is the vent easy to use. If not, you’re adding aggravation instead of an upgrade and comfort. 

Manufacturers

• Flair: Flair offers a smart vent system including the vents, smart thermostats (which are also sensors), and a Flair app. Flair’s products can also integrate with other smart ecosystems such as Honeywell, Carrier, Bryant, Nest, and ecobee. 
• Keen Home: Keen Home smart vents work on Keen’s Smart Bridge system, as well as with Lowe’s Iris, ecobee, Nest, and Samsung Smart Things. Keen Home has its own app and cloud service. Keen Home acquired Ecovent in 2019 and sells Ecovent products. 

Can Smart Vents Improve Home Energy Efficiency?

The functions and capabilities of smart vents can help you improve the energy efficiency of your home by having your heating and cooling, from a heat pump or other ducted system, be more efficient year-around. 

Smart vents can be programmed, or left to program themselves, to sense temperature, humidity, and occupancy in a room and adjust the airflow. This control means using less energy needlessly heating or cooling areas of your home or periods when no one is home.

Saving energy means saving money and potentially using cleaner, renewable energy for more or all of your home’s power. For more about how home solar panels could work for your home energy, check out our solar savings calculator. To see how home electrification and energy savings could work for you, go to our energy savings advisor page. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Are smart vents a good idea?

Smart vents are likely an energy-saver and money-saver for many homes. You can have optimal efficiency and control with your home heating and cooling, down to a room-by-room level similar to a zoned system with buying and installing a ductless system.

Are smart vents bad for HVAC?

Smart registers can harm an HVAC system if the HVAC system isn’t designed for restricted airflow. There could be static pressure if too many vents are closed and pressure builds too high, which can harm system components. Modern smart vents largely solve this issue with monitoring, algorithmic control, and integration so all smart vents in a house are coordinated and automatically adjust to pressure levels. It is a good idea to get a professional assessment before deciding on smart vents and have them professionally installed.