Tech Tips

Last year, I bought my first combustion analyzer. I had just started my own company and felt the additional weight of responsibility to sit down and determine the best way to verify that the furnaces I was servicing were working safely. In the past, the most extensive testing I had done was a visual inspection […]

This article will cover how to collect field data for walls on an existing home for an ACCA Manual J calculation. In full disclosure, I had never collected any field data for a Manual J before I wrote this article. Many of the methods discussed were suggested by HVAC technicians and contractors in an online […]

Starting to work on a Manual J load calculation can feel extremely overwhelming. How do we know what to focus on? What does normal look like? What if I’m way off on something and install way too big or small of a unit? On a practical level, what is the payback or value of spending […]

Understanding Heat Pump Defrost Cycles: What Homeowners Need to Know Older Heat pumps may have a bad reputation but newer heat pump technology has been a game-changer for many homeowners, providing efficient heating and cooling throughout the year. But as with any piece of equipment, they have their quirks. One particular aspect that often raises […]

Whether you love it or hate it, leak detection is one of those staples of HVAC, and the stakes are pretty high. Leaks that go undetected can also cost the customer quite a bit in refrigerant over time, especially with the rising prices of R-22 and R-410A. Worst of all, we could end up replacing […]

This tip will be like an episode of Columbo; we will start with the what and who and then get to the why. Don't pump down a scroll into a vacuum. Don't run a scroll in a vacuum. Don't run a high voltage megohmmeter or Hi-pot test on a scroll (As a general rule, don't […]

This tech tip was written by Don Gillis with Chemours. Thanks, Don! The shift to R-410A from R-22 brought some pretty big changes to the industry, including the shift to polyolester (POE) oil. We had been using mineral oil for CFC refrigerants like R-12 and HCFCs like R-22, so we had to update some of […]

Source: Refrigerant Slider in the Ref Tools App We've been pretty spoiled in residential and light commercial HVAC in the USA because we haven't needed to deal with glide much. In HVAC/R, glide is the window of difference between the boiling points in blended refrigerants; when you have a refrigerant blend made up of different […]

A few weeks ago, I spent several days redoing a duct system and replacing a furnace for a friend. I had static pressure readings from before the system was replaced, and with the new furnace that I had picked out, I had created a static pressure budget and felt confident I could significantly lower the […]