Prepping Non-techs for Winter

HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs

Bryan Orr

Training, Careers, Airconditioning, Self-improvement, Hvac, Business, Education, Refrigeration, Heating, Ac, Apprenticeship

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2016

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Central Florida techs know the Southern winter all too well. Let's face it. It doesn't get super cold here regularly, but when it does, EVERYONE FREAKS. We get an abundance of service calls for unpleasant but not truly problematic conditions when people use their heaters.

When people first turn on their heat, they can get a nasty surprise: a horrible dirty-sock smell and sometimes a shrieking smoke alarm. These are normal, albeit unpleasant, and do not require a service call. Another unpleasant or alarming occurrence is when a heat pump unit goes into defrost mode. Defrost mode shifts the unit into cooling mode, which may make some cold air come out of the vents. On top of that, customers may hear an awful noise and feel concerned when they see steam coming out of their unit!

Pool heaters are a completely different animal in a Southern Winter, and they are often made quite poorly. You may come across gas pool heaters, propane pool heaters, heat pump pool heaters, and even solar ones. Each type has its own set of maintenance needs and varying degrees of effectiveness. When working with them, the goal is to set establish realistic expectations and explain best practices to the customer to minimize those frustrating service calls.

In this episode, we talk about:

Burning off heat strips
Heat pump defrost mode
Gas pool heater
Heat pump pool heaters
The thermodynamic principles of heat pump heating
Defining BTUs
Liquid petroleum (propane) vs. natural gas

And much more...

This podcast is in an unedited "meeting format" and is not usually the type of thing you will get on HVAC school, but I still think it may benefit junior techs and office staff.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This episode on the HVAC School Podcast is sponsored by HVAC-HAC-HAC.
0:05.0	HAC. dot com. Don't be a hack. Oh, And now, the host of the HVAC school and the guy who acts like he knows things, but still
0:31.2	drives around in a white 15-pass passenger van with rust holes in the roof
0:34.8	Brian Orr.
0:37.0	Hey hey hey I am Brian Orr and that was Joel Sharpton with that kind intro and yes I do drive a rusted out roofed 15
0:47.0	passenger van but that's only for my personal use because I have nine wild yelling, hollering banchy kids that I have to haul all over the place.
0:56.4	I actually drive an E 350 for work, which is totally impractical and I'm going to get rid of it soon,
1:00.7	but I feel awesome with that duly diesel especially when I'm driving
1:05.2	through tight city roads and basically taking out everybody on both sides.
1:09.9	But anyway thanks for being here on the HVAC school podcast.
1:12.3	I'm not going to give a big intro on this I'm actually going to release two But anyway, thanks for being here on the HVAC school podcast.
1:12.6	I'm not going to give a big intro on this.
1:13.8	I'm actually going to release two episodes this week.
1:16.3	And the reason is that this was just a meeting that I had
1:18.9	with some of the office staff or dispatcher, CSRs, just letting them know what to expect with a southern winter.
1:25.8	So for those of you who are up north, you've already had the intro to your winter, and some of these
1:30.5	things don't apply, but I talk a little bit about heat pumps, burning off heat strips, some of these things don't apply but I talk a little bit about heat pumps
1:33.2	burning off heat strips some of my experiences with that as well as pool heat and some things to
1:37.9	expect there and so if you especially if you're in the south or southeast
1:42.0	and you have office staff and you want to give them
1:43.8	something to listen to to intro them to the winter and what to expect, then you can forward this
1:48.6	on.
	...

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