The ignitor of a furnace (or a gas pool heater or other gas-fired appliance) is the heat source, and it can come in one of four varieties: standing pilot, direct spark (DS), intermittent spark (ISI), and hot surface (HSI). We have a tech tip explaining each of these ignitor types in detail, but we’re going […]

When most of us think about tools of the trade, a few main ones come to mind: manifold, multimeter, vacuum pumps, recovery machines… the list goes on. One that may NOT come up nearly as often as it probably should is the thermal imaging camera.  A few symposiums ago, Bill Spohn and Eric “Elk” Kaiser […]

Evaporator coil leaks are a fact of life in the industry. (We could have a long and lively discussion about how evap coils aren’t made like they used to be, but that’s for another day.) When you have an evaporator leak on a system, you’ll have two choices to fix the problem: replace the coil […]

Eric Mele, Eric Kaiser, and John Oaks come on the podcast to talk about commercial PM best practices and what matters most. Drain cleaning is a critical part of the standard commercial PM. You must assess the drainage situation (pitch, length, location, etc.) to plan your cleaning strategy and arrive at the best result: the […]

In today's podcast, I talk to John Oaks about his experience as a VRF tech in the field, including branch boxes and two-pipe vs. three-pipe technology. John primarily works on the troubleshooting and service side rather than the installation and programming side of the field. Variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems, also called VRV systems when […]