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In an effort to keep up with demand, a bourgeoning east-coast microbrewery sought to significantly increase production, but, to do so, it required a more cost-efficient and effective heating process.

Thermostats have gotten seriously smart in the last decade. While they’re a great improvement over traditional thermostats, smart thermostats still cannot affect air distribution across a building to adjust for hot or cold spots, leaving a lot to be desired in terms of making the home a comfortable place.

Yesterday I walked up on one of our managers who was talking to a junior tech diagnosing an intermittent controls issue on a pool heat pump.
In the background, you could hear an extremely loud compressor.

For many, being proactive with chiller maintenance in the early winter has led to better results in the spring, when it’s time to start the systems up again. Performing chiller maintenance as early in the winter as possible gives facility managers the benefit of finding major damage with plenty of time to fix the problems before the chiller needs to be back in operation.

If you are making a refrigerant circuit repair, weighing out and weighing in makes perfect sense, especially since microchannel condensers and scroll compressors make pumping down less viable anyway. But there are many cases where you just need to check the charge to make sure the system is working properly, and in these cases, weighing in and out is just plain silly.

This brief guide provides a brief summary of the issue and specific instructions on how to correct it.

The question is, “Why are more contractors and or builders not offering this value-add to their clientele?” A couple common responses we hear in the field are, “It’s too complicated,” or “Installing zoning leads to too many call backs.” Sound familiar? The truth is, this used to be the case.

I live and work in Florida where most of our fuel-burning appliances are 80 percent efficient with open combustion that utilizes air and oxygen from the space for combustion.

Restrictive, undersized filter selection generally ranks high on the list causing underperforming HVAC systems. There have been effective electronic air cleaners around for many years, but for our conversation within this article, we will focus on media or fabric material filtering.