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 […]

 In this podcast, Bryan and Clifton discuss the upcoming transition to A2L refrigerants, like R-32 and R-454B, and what A2L mitigation is going to look like. These mildly flammable refrigerants will be used in place of R-410A for residential air conditioning systems due to an HFC phase-down driven by legislation and international agreements. They […]

In this short podcast episode, Clifton Beck joins us to talk about Bluon’s free tech support and resources available to technicians and installers. Clifton has been very in touch with the HVAC technician community since he got his start in the trades, and he has taken that into tech support. He has noticed that the […]