Two days after Hub Mechanical finished a project for the Jackson County School District, Hurricane Katrina hit. The six schools that received new ductless units had only minor roof damage. The outdoor units all made it through the storm.
In 2003, Iolani School completed construction of the first phase of a campus master plan - the largest capital project in the school's history. The next phase is now being developed.
The divide between HVAC contractors and engineers is probably at its widest where residential load calculations are concerned. The goal of an ASHRAE seminar was to drive contractor concerns home to engineers and hopefully drive research into better, more practical methods for use in the field.
Tight operating budgets, unique IAQ and heating-cooling needs, and little to no regular maintenance make the school segment a tough challenge for HVAC contractors.
Readers solve "The Case of the Baby Boomers' Heat Pump," from the May 22 issue. The problem with the heat pump was that it ran all day long without cooling down the house.
What kinds of roles do residential HVAC systems play in protecting consumers from an out of the ordinary event? That question was pondered at a forum of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) at the group's annual meeting.
Rarely have we had so many responses to a single System Mystery as we did for "The Case of the Baby Boomers' Heat Pump." The answers that best explained the operating conditions presented in our mystery involved the TXV and the reversing valve.
Retrocommissioning (RCx) is getting to be a buzzword, like "green" or LEED, Tom Poeling said at the National Conference on Building Commissioning session, "Tuning up the RCx Process." It's important to make sure that the owner really knows what retrocommissioning means.
Back in the day, "smart" systems were a futuristic pipe dream, almost like a theme park attraction or something reminiscent of The Jetsons. In today's unitary HVAC systems, however, smart has become practical and much more widely available. The payback potential of smart products with onboard diagnostics is significant for service contractors.
There's more than one way to sell HVAC upgrades to people building a new home. Instead of trying to force the installing contractor into the sales picture, this distributor interacts directly with the consumer by means of an upgrade kiosk, located in the homebuilder's showroom.