One Stop Cooling studies technicians’ readings recorded on service calls. If you do the same, you might be surprised with the mistakes you find.

While traditional hospital HVAC systems often consist of chillers and boilers, other types of equipment are becoming more widely accepted in the health care market, including variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems, air curtains, and geothermal heat pumps. 

A lot of refrigerant reclaimers aren’t charging for mixed refrigerants anymore, which may in turn, mean an opportunity for HVAC contractors to make more money.

Chris Forth, VP at Johnson Controls, navigates the complex challenges in the HVAC industry, which include addressing regulatory, code, and environmental concerns.

ABC argues the rule could end up hurting legitimate contractors in the building trades, who are already strapped for workers.

The rule will effectively ban the sale of non-condensing gas furnaces and, according to the American Gas Association (AGA), will affect 55% of U.S. households.

In comments to EPA’s proposed rule regarding HFC management, many HVACR stakeholders expressed concern over issues including tracking cylinders, training technicians, and reclaiming refrigerant.

While refrigerant regulations are important, there are other rules and regulations being implemented that HVACR contractors need to understand.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing back on attempts to regulate consumer appliances.

In early July, the Biden administration proposed a rule that addresses excessive heat in the workplace, as tens of millions of them were under heat advisories — the nation’s No. 1 weather-related cause of death.

Over time, dirt, dust, pet dander, debris, and more accumulate in air ducts. And since the HVAC system works basically as a whole-home vacuum, all of that is recirculated through homes when the HVAC system runs, unless the ducts are cleaned out.

Trained to identify the varying types of asbestos used in old buildings, Matt Mountain of Mountain Duct Cleaning knows what he’s looking for.

HVAC contractors should be prepared to sell geothermal to new customers regardless of any incentives.

While balanced ventilation does have energy benefits, there is a misconception about its ability to reduce humidity.

The "magic number" 1.08 is convenience factor. It is a bunch of math combined into one factor as a shortcut, although sometimes more precise calculation is better.

During the installation of a new walk-in cooler or freezer, it is imperative the box remain square and level during the assembly of its panels.

Saving one compressor will cover the cost of a voltage monitor and then some.

BrainBox AI intends to integrate ABB’s MSR business and its installed base of 12,000-plus retail locations in its current operations.

There’s no doubt the connectivity of mobile devices has made our personal lives more convenient, but now they’re also helping make technicians more efficient, thanks to tool manufacturers developing wireless-enabled devices and test and measurement apps for download.

Designed for HVAC and refrigeration professionals to view electrical and temperature readings, this product logs data remotely using the ExView® W-Series app on smartphones and tablets via Bluetooth.

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Selling products online is a whole new ball game. So, contractors will want to learn about their consumers buying journeys, and thoughtfully consider how to launch the online store, what products to sell, and how to market it.

Hulland is the associate director of strategic planning and market intelligence for residential and light commercial HVAC at Carrier.

Scandinavian green energy startup Aira plans to offer a 10-year service guarantee and a monthly fee that includes installation, maintenance.

Purdue University researchers have designed a predictive thermostat for heat pumps that has been shown to significantly reduce electricity use.

Industry figures are estimates that are derived from the best available figures supplied by a sample of AHRI member companies.

Manufacturers will have five years, from the date the rule is published in the Federal Register, to ensure that new gas furnaces comply with the new minimum.

The latest rule will require every mobile home gas furnace — and every new residential, non-weatherized gas furnace — to have a minimum annual fuel utilization efficiency (or AFUE) of 95% starting in late 2028.

Due to a lack of training, time constraints, and numerous other reasons, many HVAC contracting companies are not performing combustion testing, potentially compromising customers’ safety.

The final rule from the U.S. Department of Energy, issued recently, requires newly manufactured indoor residential gas furnaces to be at least 95% efficient starting in December 2028, meaning furnaces made after then will have to be condensing models.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is leading the charge to assist HVAC contractors in pushing back on the final rule on gas furnace efficiency standards from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

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This Episode is a round table discussion about Ultra-Large Scale Systems. In 2006, a number of authors (among them our guests Linda Northrop, Doug Schmidt, Kevin Sullivan, and Gregor Kiczales) have produced a report that addressed the following question: Given the issues with today's software engineering, how can we build the systems of the future that are likely to have billions of lines of code? In this episode, our guests discuss many of the issues that arise from this kind of system and provide an overview of the research areas that should be investigated in order to tackle the challenge. If you want to get more detailed information, you can read the ULS Report (PDF).

In this Episode I talk about the results of the listener survey and reply to some of the suggestions and criticism expressed in survey replies.

In this Episode we discuss fault tolerance based on the new book by Bob Hanmer. This is the actually the first part of the discussion, the remainder will be published in the next episode of SE Radio. We start by discussing some of the context for fault tolerant systems and the imperfect world assumption. We then discuss a number of terms we will need when discussing the fault tolerance patterns. We then discuss the fault tolerance mindset and connect fault tolerance to a number of related subject areas, such as software quality. We then discuss the shared context for the patterns that follow, among them the important observation that fault tolerance does not come for free! Finally we provide an overview over the different sections covered in the book and start the detailed discussion of the patterns by looking at the Architectural Patterns section. The next episode will discuss the remaining patterns in the book.

This is the second part of the discussion on fault tolerance with Bob Hanmer (if you didn't listen to Episode 77, which contains part one, please go back and listen now; this episode builds on that previous one!) We start by discussing a set of error detection patterns. Among are the well-known approaches such as checksums and voting. We then look at error recovery patterns, including restart, rollback or roll forward. The next section looks at error mitigation patterns, which include shedding load and doing fresh work before stale. The last patterns section then looks at fault treatment patterns. We conclude the episode with a small discussion about how to design systems using (these and other) patterns, and with some thoughts on why actually wrote the book.

In this episode we talk to Galen Hunt about the Singularity research OS. Galen is the head of Microsoft's OS Research Group and, together with a team of about 30 other researches, has built Singularity. We started our discussion by covering the basics of Singularity: why it was designed, what the goals of the project are as well as some of the architectural foundations of Singularity: software isolated processes, contract-based channels and manifest-based programs. In this context we also looked at the role of the Spec# and Sing# programming languages and the role of static analysis tools to statically verify important properties of a singularity application. We then looked a little bit more closely at the role of the kernel and how it is different from kernels in traditional OSes. In a second part of the discussion we looked at some of the experiments the group did based on the OS. These include compile-time reflection, using hardware protection domains, heterogenerous multiprocessing as well as the typed assembly language We closed the conversation with a look at some of the performance characteristics of Singularity, compatibility with traditional operating systems and a brief look at how the findings from Singularity influence product development at Microsoft.

This episode is about being a consultant in the software business.

Tobias Kaatz talks to former Kixeye CTO Randy Shoup about company culture in the software industry in this sequel to the show on hiring in the software industry (Episode 208). Prior to Kixeye, Randy worked as director of engineering at Google for the Google App Engine and as chief engineer and distinguished architect at eBay. […]

James Turnbull joins Charles Anderson to discuss Docker, an open source platform for distributed applications for developers and system administrators. Topics include Linux containers and the functions they provide, container images and how they are built, use cases for containers, and the future of containers versus virtual machines. Venue: Internet Related Links James’s home page: […]