Honeywell Home HZ311/U TrueZONE® HZ311 Panel

The HZ311 is a TrueZONE forced-air zone panel from Honeywell Home — 3 Zone, 1 Heat/1 Cool.

Zoning is what you do when one thermostat cannot describe the whole house. The panel takes a call from each zone thermostat, opens that zone’s dampers, closes the others and runs the equipment at the stage the call needs — so the finished attic and the north bedroom stop fighting each other through a single stat in the hallway.

Two numbers decide which panel. Zones is how many separately controlled areas it handles — this one is rated for 3 Zone. Stages is how much of the equipment it can drive: 1 Heat/1 Cool. A panel with enough zones but not enough stages will run a two-stage furnace as though it were single-stage, and the equipment loses the efficiency that was paid for.

Individual zone fan control lets one zone run its fan without calling the others — useful where a room needs circulation rather than heat.

It works with a discharge air temperature sensor, which is the part that protects the equipment when a single small zone calls: the panel watches supply temperature and backs the equipment down before the heat exchanger overheats or the coil freezes.

This is the panel on its own. A working installation also needs a 24 V transformer sized for the panel and the dampers, and a discharge air sensor — the kit version of this part number includes both.

Count the dampers before sizing the transformer. Every actuator adds to the load, and the intermittent faults in a zoning system are usually a transformer running at its limit rather than the panel.

• Brand: Honeywell Home
• Manufacturer Part #: HZ311/U
• Type: TrueZONE forced-air zone panel
• Zones: 3 Zone
• Stages: 1 Heat/1 Cool
• Voltage: 24 V
• Heat pump compatible: No
• Auto changeover: Yes
• Individual zone fan control: Yes
• Resettable fuse: Yes
• UPC: 085267297950
• Category: Forced Air Zone Panels