This photo is of a blower door test we performed at my own house using a Retrotec blower door. You will notice the 15-passenger van outside the window, which is a dead giveaway. A blower door is used to measure the tightness of a building and is often discussed in terms of an ACH50 number. […]

Testo 557 vacuum gauge and Appion core removal tools shown I've had a change of heart. Back in the early 2000s, during the big construction boom, I did many system startups on residential units for a large company I worked for. When installers ran the line sets prior to startup, they weren't always very careful […]

We already know that oxy-acetylene torches have a lot of safety considerations attached: don’t oil regulator threads, bubble-test your hoses, you get the picture. But there’s one more we haven’t really covered: the 1/7 rule (or 1/10 rule, based on the latest industry guidance).  This commonly cited rule reduces the likelihood of flammable acetone coming […]

 Blake Standen and Omar Tabba of BrainBox AI join the HVAC School podcast to talk about commercial HVAC predictive control. This conversation focuses on applying artificial intelligence to existing building systems, including the HVAC, to predict performance under certain weather and occupancy conditions. If you have controls that can predict performance and adapt, then […]