Proper Filter Maintenance Cuts Coil Cleaning Costs

Monday, February 8th, 2010
HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

Among the many factors that influence the overall condition of your HVAC system, filtration is right up there at the top. And while they might not seem directly related, your choice of filter and the frequency of filter changes has a direct bearing on how often you will need to perform other maintenance functions such as coil cleaning. › Continue reading

Tags: coil cleaning, filter maintenance, HVAC filters, iaq, indoor air quality, MERV filter efficiency

New Laws Create New Challenges – LEED V3, ASHRAE 189.1 and CalGreen

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Energy Saving Legislation, Green Building Codes, HVAC Regulations and Standards, LEED | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

We at Just Venting have always kept you posted on key developments in the industry – especially about all the new regulations that will affect you in the future. LEED V3, ASHRAE 189.1 and CalGreen are all important pieces of legislation, and they will affect the way we do business for years to come. And while they may approach it from different directions – and they may from time to time come into conflict with one another – the one thing that all these new laws have in common is that they want us to use less energy. › Continue reading

Tags: ASHRAE 189.1, building management, CalGreen, energy efficiency, HVAC expenses, LEED V3

Deferred Chiller Maintenance Comes With Hidden Costs

Monday, February 1st, 2010
HVAC Deferred Maintenance, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

Chiller maintenance deferred is chiller maintenance denied. We’ve all heard stories about delaying or rescheduling maintenance procedures that we once did without a second thought when the economy wasn’t…well, lousy. You probably dismiss as urban legend the horror stories about failed chillers and clogged coils leading to catastrophic incidents. Sadly, they are true.

There are lots of reasons why important tasks like chiller maintenance might be put off .  They range from “We don’t have the manpower right now because we’re all busy with project X,” to “I really hate that job because I can’t stand wearing a respirator and rubber gloves,” to the ever popular “We just can’t afford it this quarter, we’re already over our budget.”

Our reply is “You can’t afford not to do it”.

A too-little-used term in this business is “first-level failure”. In general, this is when a mechanical system begins operating outside of normal parameters. A good example would be a chiller with just a little bit of fouling in its coils. First-level failure in this case, according to process-cooling.com, will be characterized by several subtle and unnoticed, conditions:

• elevated compressor head pressure
• poor airflow through the coils
• increased power consumption
• reduction in true cooling tonnage capacity
• Increased compressor cycling

None of these are good. They start out slow and their effect on your overall system may be negligible. But as time goes on, the effect becomes more and more pronounced. If you keep daily maintenance logs – and you should be – you’ll see the trends in your figures on power consumption and operating pressures.

Sooner or later, if you put off maintenance long enough, you will have a failure. If you are lucky only the chiller will fail, causing you to incur the costs of repairing it and whatever it costs you in lost production time. If you are unlucky, whatever your chiller was keeping cool will also fail. Deferring maintenance doesn’t make the need for it go away. All it means is that your chiller expenses will rise and the chiller will chill less as the likelihood of a failure increases.

For what it’s worth, the way to look at the question of chiller – or any building system – maintenance is not what it will cost to do it, but rather what it will cost if you don’t.

Rich Silverman
Goodway Blogging Team

Image by Dieder Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Under a Creative Commons Generic License

Tags: chiller coil fouling, chiller expense, chiller maintenance, daily maintenance logs, deferred maintenance, first level failure

California Passes Nation’s Strictest Green Building Code

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Green Building Codes, Green Buildings & Green Technology | 1 Comment So Far Add Yours

Even if you don’t live in California, you’re going to want to pay attention to a law that just passed there. It seems that whatever happens in California eventually makes its way to the rest of the country — and in this case, probably everywhere else as well.

The law in this case is the the new green building code, California Code of Regulations Title 24, Section 11, which has already been affectionately dubbed “CalGreen” by locals and the media. Beyond such requirements as a 20% reduction in water usage, recycling of 50% of construction waste and the use of low-emissions paint, carpets, etc., the law will require the inspection of all heating, air conditioning and other mechanical systems in all non-residential buildings over 10,000 square feet, to make sure they are performing to expected levels. › Continue reading

Tags: CalGreen, energy efficiency, energy savings, Green Building Codes, Green Buildings & Green Technology, LEED, U.S. Green Building Council

New ASHRAE Program Grades Building Energy Performance

Monday, January 25th, 2010
Building Energy Performance, Building Energy Quotient (Building EQ) | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has unveiled a new labeling program for buildings which it hopes will help improve understanding of how energy-efficient a given structure really is.

Because there is sometimes a disconnect between a building’s expected energy performance and how it actually does perform, the Building Energy Quotient — Building EQ — program will assign two ratings to a building – an asset rating and an operational rating, based on energy use per square foot. › Continue reading

Tags: ASHRAE, Building Energy Performance, Building Energy Quotient, Building EQ, Energy Star vs. Buildling EQ

ASHRAE President Sees A Busy Year Ahead For The Industry, Part 2

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
Building Energy Performance, Building Energy Quotient (Building EQ), Energy Saving Tips, Green Buildings & Green Technology | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

And now, part 2 of our interview with Gordon Holness, 2009-2010 President of ASHRAE, (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers).  To recap Part 1, 2009 was a challenging year, to say the least. In the spirit of closing the door on the less-than-ideal year we all experienced, we’re proactively moving forward to the coming year. What does 2010 hold in store? What  trends and issues will shape how we do business this year, in five years and even further into the future?

To get a broad overview of what is to come, we spoke with Gordon Holness, and in a wide-ranging discussion, he addressed the trends and events that will affect the industry for years to come. › Continue reading

Tags: ASHRAE, energy consumption, energy efficient, energy savings, European Building Performance Directive, green buildings, IES, LEED, Smart Grid

RAM-5 Tube Cleaner – Come Take A Test-Drive at the AHR

Monday, January 18th, 2010
HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, Industrial Cleaning Equipment, innovative HVAC Solutions | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

If you are a regular reader of this blog – and we hope you are – you know that we normally use these pixels to talk about what’s happening in our industry – the trends that affect how you will be doing business next week, next month and next year – and to pass along what we learn from our friends in the industry. But on the occasion of one of the largest events in the HVAC industry – AHR 2010 in Orlando – we’d like to tell you about a product we’ve been offering for more than a decade – the Ream-A-Matic RAM-5SF tube cleaning system.

› Continue reading

Tags: chiller maintenance, condenser maintenance, condenser tubes, Heat Exchanger Maintenance, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, HVAC Maintenance Innovation, HVAC Tube Bundles, thermal efficiency

GDS-15-PH Scale Removal System Featured at Goodway’s AHR Booth

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010
HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, Industrial Cleaning Equipment, innovative HVAC Solutions | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

Our working philosophy at Goodway has always been of the “build a better mousetrap” variety as we’ve gone about the task of re-envisioning how industrial cleaning equipment might be improved.  We like to think this puts us in line with the tenor of the times.  For over a year now you’ve seen us talking incessantly here at our blog about the dramatically changing market and historical period that we live in.  Innovation is in.  Stodginess is out.  User-friendliness is in.  Awkward interfaces are out.  Efficiency is in.  Wastefulness is out.  Hi-tech is in.  Low-tech is out.  “Green” is in.  Whatever’s the opposite of green is out.  (Red is green’s opposite on the color spectrum, but we thought “red is out” would sound weird.)  So one of the major questions we keep asking ourselves is:  How can we bring all of this to bear in the design of our industrial cleaning equipment? › Continue reading

Tags: green HVAC, HVAC Maintenance, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, HVAC Maintenance Innovation, HVAC scale removal

ASHRAE President Sees A Busy Year Ahead For The Industry, Part 1

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010
Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Energy Saving Tips, HVAC Regulations and Standards | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

2009 was not a fun year. So we at Just Venting are resisting the temptation to look back and see where we were and what happened. Rather, we choose to look forward to the coming year. What does 2010 hold in store? What are the trends and issues that will shape how we will do business next year, in five years and even further into the future? › Continue reading

Tags: ACES, EISA, energy consumption, EPAC, foreign energy dependence, geothermal energy, groundsource heat pumps, retrofitting

Goodway Showcasing CC-140 Coil Cleaning System at AHR

Monday, January 11th, 2010
Building Maintenance Industry News, HVAC Maintenance and Efficiency, Industrial Cleaning Equipment | Click Here To Add Your Comment Now

In our inaugural post back in November 2008, we announced that one of the topics we would engage here at Just Venting would be “cutting-edge technological innovations and HVAC maintenance solutions.”  Although this blog is not, as you know, a sales-and-advertising project but a public information service, with the AHR Expo coming up in Orlando later this month.  So we thought we would devote some space to directing your attention to some of the “cutting edge technological innovations” in our industry that we ourselves have brought to the market.

One of the innovations that we’re quite proud of, and that will be available for viewing at our booth (#2138) in Orlando, is the CC-140 CoilPro Self-Contained Coil Cleaning System.  The whole point of this system is flexibility.  That is, you can use it for just about any coil cleaning application you can imagine. › Continue reading

Tags: AHR, coil cleaning, HVAC Maintenance