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Thermal Balance Point vs. Economic Balance Point
A Field Guide to Conductors for HVAC Techs
3 Bad Techs Who Don’t Know It
Three Steps to Deliver a Trades Education Talk
HVAC Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future
Upgrading Time & Temperature Defrost with Demand Defrost for Heat Pumps
Coil Temp Sensors: Thermostats vs. Thermistors
Cabinet Leaks in Air Handlers & Fan Coils
Planning and Installing Condensate Drain Lines
Washing Commercial Coils and Water Challenges – Short #292
Does AI Belong in Trades Education w/ Ty
Q&A System Oversizing – Short #291
Filters – MERV 13, Myths & More
From High Performance Medicine to High Performance HVAC – Short #290
Training The Next Generation of HVACR Technicians w/ Lenny Diaddario (Copeland)
Communications Might Be Your Best Tool – Short #289
All About Airflow Testing w/ Eric Kaiser
The Deep End with Roman Baugh: Live Call, Grounded Compressor, Mitsubishi Mini-Split
#hvac
Tech Tips:
The thermal balance point is the point at which a heat pump can move heat into the home at the same rate the home loses its heat. Above this point, the heat pump will not need any additional help to heat the home. But below it, the heat pump will need auxiliary heat with it […]
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HVAC work is never just “HVAC” work. One minute you’re brazing copper, and the next you’re troubleshooting a blown fuse in a disconnect or running a new whip to a condenser. Because our trade is so varied, you never know what you’re going to find when you open a service panel or crawl into an […]
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First, let’s state the obvious and clear the air a bit. The photo above is SUPER CHEESY!ย But this story is about three bad techs who don’t know it, so a photo of three models clearly posing in clean clothes makes as good a proxy for a bad tech as anything else. First off, I’m not […]
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This article detailing the three steps to deliver a trades education talk was written by David Richardson from NCI. David is an excellent educator with lots of public speaking experience under his belt, and he has shared some great tips to help people share their valuable trade knowledge. If you have any questions for him […]
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There have been many adaptations of A Christmas Carol over the years, but it all started with a novella written by Charles Dickens in the 1840s. It was early in the Victorian Era, fresh off the heels of the Industrial Revolution. The British were reflecting on past Christmas traditions, like caroling, and exploring new ones […]
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Since heat pumps work by extracting heat from the outdoors to bring it inside, the outdoor coil will almost surely freeze up. To mitigate the freezing, heat pumps enter a defrost cycle in which they run in cooling mode to send hot, high-pressure refrigerant back through the outdoor coil and melt the ice. While the […]
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โTis heating season once again. Itโs getting colder outside, and the heat pumps are starting to frost up outdoors. The defrost cycle helps get rid of the frost, and there are a few different ways we can do that; the methods themselves may differ between systems (time & temperature vs. demand defrost), as may the […]
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When we think of air leakage, a few common scenarios probably come to mind: disconnected ducts at connections, poorly sealed connections, and air leakage around vents are ones weโve mentioned quite a bit in tech tips and videos over the years. However, there are a few that we havenโt really talked about, particularly for fan […]
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The condensate drain is the source of many a service call in Florida. A lot of the time, the problem is just a clogged drain; bacterial zoogloea (drain snot) loves humidity, and the all-aluminum coils donโt do us any favors. Other times, there are some clear drain design or installation flaws that present hazards to […]
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Videos:
Podcasts:
๏ปฟ In this short podcast episode, Bryan talks about considerations for washing commercial coils and water challenges techs might face.ย Despite being the topic of debate within the last several years, cleaning coils matters and will affect performance. When washing coils, we use Refrigeration Technologies Viper cleaners (especially Venom Packs) when we actually need cleaners. No […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ Bryan opens this conversation with Ty Branaman, Head of Training at the GRIT Foundation, by digging into a question that anchors everything else in the episode: what is trades education actually for? Tyโs answer is unambiguous โ itโs about people, not information. He describes his own struggle with traditional, reading-heavy instruction and explains how […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this short Q&A podcast episode, Bryan answers a question from Evan, a licensed mold assessment consultant, about system oversizing: What can be doneย to control humidity and keep occupants comfortableย when an HVAC system is oversized? The extent of the problem will depend on how badly the equipment is oversized, whether it has any turn-down […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this episode of the HVAC School Podcast, Bryan sits down with Kelsey Hei and Andy Fox from 3M Filtrete to pull back the curtain on what really goes into a quality air filter. Most homeowners โ and even some contractors โ think of air filters as simple screens that catch dust, but as […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this short podcast from the 7th HVACR Training Symposium’s Bry-X stage, Ken Davis shares his experience as an HVAC contractor who has brought vital experience from high-performance medicine to High-Performance HVAC. Ken’s experience comes from developing high-reliability organizations (HROs). An HRO has a low fail rate in an industry where high fail rates […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this episode of the HVAC School Podcast, host Bryan sits down with Lenny from Copeland to explore how one of the most respected names in HVAC and refrigeration is actively investing in the next generation of technicians. Lenny leads Copelandโs aftermarket demand creation efforts, which includes everything from working with wholesale networks and […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ This short episode is Andy Holt’s session from the Bry-X stage of the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium: Communications Might Be Your Best Tool. In this session, Andy covers some key communication and customer service principles that can help you become a better technician. In the end, customers won’t remember your technical knowledge; they […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this session from the 7th Annual HVACR Training Symposium in Florida, Eric “Elk” Kaiser delivers a comprehensive workshop on airflow testing and measurement. Eric opens by challenging technicians to think beyond simply pointing an instrument at a duct and reading a number. Before selecting any tool, he argues, professionals must understand exactly what […]
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๏ปฟ๏ปฟ In this short podcast, Roman Baugh takes over with his new series, “The Deep End,” where he shares tech support conversations. This time, Roman is on the other end of a live tech support call about a grounded compressor with an existing Mitsubishi mini-split (Mr. Slim heat pump). The unit in this case had […]
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