What Owners Need to Know About ... Rooftop-Unit Maintenance

Impacts of deferred maintenance and a strategy for mitigating them

Oct 9, 2014By MICHAEL WEST, PhD, PE, Melbourne, Fla., and RICHARD COMBES, PhD, PE, Beaufort, S.C., AdvanTek Consulting Inc. | HPAC Engineering

http://hpac.com/air-conditioning/what-owners-need-know-about-rooftop-unit-maintenance

In buildings across the country, reductions in operating budgets are delaying important equipment upkeep. This article discusses impacts of deferring maintenance on rooftop package units and outlines a cost-based preventive-maintenance protocol.

For new unitary air-conditioning and heat-pump systems, minimum energy-efficiency ratios (EERs) are 9.7 to 14 MBH per kilowatt, depending on system capacity. A substantial number of installed unitary systems, however, are operating at EERs of 9 or less, depending on condition and maintenance history.

Analysis of a rooftop package unit—RTU-2

Can My Beloved Furnace Get any Quieter or Efficient?

Who Connects a Single-stage Thermostat to a Two-stage Furnace?

September 22, 2014

By Herb Woerpel

http://www.achrnews.com/blogs/17-opinions/post/127673-can-my-beloved-furnace-get-any-quieter-or-efficient

I write and read about HVAC contracting eight hours a day. However, it’s uncommon I actually get to see these skills put to the test. It’s even rarer that such actions occur inside my own home.

Some background: My wife and I purchased our first home about two years ago. After eight months of playing the real estate game, we settled on a two-story colonial built in 1987. The home boasted many recent upgrades including a new furnace. And this isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill furnace. It’s a 96.7 percent AFUE, two-stage, variable-speed furnace. Lord have mercy.

How HVAC Owners Are Wasting Their Marketing Dollars

Danielle Legler June 19, 2014
http://www.godigitalmarketing.com/hvac-owners-wasting-marketing-dollars/

If you’re in the 77 percent majority of HVAC contractors who admit to not having a marketing plan in place, you’re most likely relying on word-of-mouth to gain new leads.

Or, you could be a HVAC contractor who is attempting to increase your business with marketing efforts in the more traditional, and outdated way by listing your business in the Yellow Pages – and completely wasting your money.

The Yellow Pages Are So 2002

Contractors Search for Role in DIY Market

HVAC Contractors Reporting an Increase in Faulty DIY Installation Calls

By Nicole Krawcke

September 22, 2014

http://www.achrnews.com/articles/127664-contractors-search-for-role-in-diy-market

With the availability of hot new items like Wi-Fi thermostats at big-box stores and online retail giants like Amazon, more and more homeowners are choosing to buy and install products themselves rather than go through a contractor. In fact, the do-it-yourself (DIY) smart home market, which the thermostat is indeed a part of, is expected to grow in the U.S. from $1.3 billion today to $7.8 billion by 2019, according to a report by NextMarket Insights.

If this is indeed the trend over the next couple of years, it could present a problem to contractors. Not only would they lose out on a sale, but they could see an increase in service calls over malfunctioning equipment.

Do or Don’t

The Right HVAC/R Tools Can Drive Field Performance

Originally published: 03.01.14 by Bill Spohn

http://www.hvacrbusiness.com/2725.html

The typical goal of HVAC contractors and their customers is to extract maximum performance from installed equipment. This makes sense — it’s a goodinvestment, right?

This usually equates to expending the least amount of energy necessary to satisfy the customer. Equipment performance might also relate to efficient use of space or low noise levels. You want to obtain the smoothest operation and highest efficiency possible. Or, you follow this process: right size, appropriate equipment, correct installation, and proper commissioning. If good processes yield good equipment performance, then good job-related processes should yield high productivity, or good field performance. Let’s take a look at a contractor’s work processes as they relate to the tools that are used. Are you performing as efficiently as possible with the right HVAC/R tools? Are your tools and techniques fast enough to get the job done as efficiently as possible? Fast comes in many flavors: let’s cover a few below.

Physics on your Side:

Keeping Productivity High As Summer Ends

What to do if your customers are telling you "I'll wait until next spring."

Originally published: 08.01.07 by Ruth King

http://www.hvacrbusiness.com/high-summer-productivity.html

Keeping your technicians and office personnel productive during a long, hot summer becomes increasingly difficult as the summer continues. By the end of the busy season, the telephone has stopped ringing off the hook, but it still is ringing. Your technicians may not be scheduled for overtime or even for all 40 weekly work hours. Most of the equipment that is going to break has broken and been fixed. Or if it breaks, many times the homeowner's response is: "What do I have to do to keep it running right now? I'll wait until next spring to replace it." He limps along for the remainder of the season.

To keep productivity high, you must plan some end-of-the-busy-season activities. Here are a few that I find most valuable:

1. Maintain a complete tickler file. (It's critical that you start one, if you haven't already.) For each customer who tells you, "I'll wait until next year," place a reminder note in the tickler file. This will ensure that you call the customer next spring.

Defining The ‘Real’ HVAC System

By: David Richardson

An innocent assumption made by many is that the HVAC equipment is the HVAC system. This has unknowingly turned the specialized skills required to perform HVAC into a commodity in the eyes of many.

If you don’t think this is an issue, think back to the last time you tried to convince a homeowner or building contractor that you are different. Consider how well that is working out for you when you’re selling the Exact same piece of equipment as your competition.