We were so excited to not be traveling up north for Christmas this year. I had always sort of resented leaving a perfectly mild winter for a region that requires a gas furnace for heating. Shoot, at home, we barely even need any heating at all from the heat pump during our winter. Like, we can generally get by with having the space heater on for an hour on a cold morning. So I hated having to pack up and head a thousand miles north to freeze for a week. Last year about this time, my wife and I decided that since the kids were older now, it made more sense to stay home during the holidays. I was thrilled to stay in the land of the heat pump all winter. But that also came with the fact that my wife’s parents would be coming to stay with us for like two weeks. That’s a lot of time with the in-laws. On top of that, I wasn’t all that thrilled about the fact that they have very different heating needs. Even though it’s in the single digits during Christmas up there, I would sweat inside their home because the gas furnace cranked always. I decided to get ahead of that before my wife’s folks visited. This visit gave me the excuse to tweak the existing HVAC equipment to provide zone controlled HVAC throughout the house. So when they arrived, my in-laws had their own thermostat for their room. They could do the sort of heating they needed as long as it was in the guest area. We actually had the best Christmas that I can remember and I think the in-laws loved the zone controlled HVAC.