All right we are live in ahr expo here in uh where are we we’re in Illinois Chicago Chicago I called it uh Chicago California the other day is what I did so that’s nice I am here with my buddy uh Chris use Chris use happens to work
For a test in what what how do we describe the company that you work for we’re a pressure and flow company right so we we measure air flow we measure pressure differential uh we look for building pressures that that could be problematic um mostly known for the
Blower door and now moving into the industry with the digital truth okay so um I was fortunate enough to be able to connect through our group of friends um with a lot of these cool people that have been educating me about the building science side of things and it’s
Been really neat to be able to uh to connect and to to be educated better myself um so we have Adam here that you can’t really see because he’s a little bit off camera but uh he’s over there and uh Adam today had uh the presentation of a lifetime so how’d that
Go today Adam uh I don’t know if it was a presentation of a lifetime but it was something well tell me about it so what okay first and foremost what was the presentation and why did you do it it was what’s the description it’s when building performance meets HVAC design I
Think that’s what what it was called right um it was cool this is like the first time I’ve ever done anything like that but um interestingly enough I went it’s suppos was supposed to start first thing this morning nine o’clock and they locked us out of the room so we have a a
Whole crowd of people standing outside of a locked door so uh what we ended up doing was just hijacking a big banquet halt down the way and yeah it was pretty cool I felt like I was like speaking at a wedding though so I heard that you
Guys lost all your visual like ideas you couldn’t show your slides yeah that was fun uh but it went all right I guess he recovered well I mean it was like uh everything kind of that could have went wrong went wrong get your room you don’t
Have your slide deck for sure but I’ll thr Adam a bone he uh he stayed on track it’s almost like he had the slides you know in your mind kind you like you knew the story what was really good about that class that I sat on when he did it
Was uh I think everybody likes to come to a presentation that there’s a story and that story is real like that really happened Y and so me and Adam have talked about that job you did but I never heard the full spill from start to finish so I didn’t know all the the
Little nuances um so when he went through that story there was a ton of people who were like asking questions to the point I think I feel people left encouraged like one thing that you were talking about it was like four-story house like four story house with one
System and he duck the system I mean that’s crazy who does like I don’t know people who do that and you got to have some major wos right to like pull that move because balance is difficult you know temperature differential could be a problem uh you got one floor buried in
Earth right till heat load and then you got heat load on the top floor and he’s holding two degree Max differential and I think so I think that registered with a lot of people sitting in the room they’re like what like you actually made that happened and it worked and I think
People thought well man you know he could do that maybe I could do that I sense that in the classroom so that was pretty so the the gist is that Adam has been telling us our you know the overtime guys we’ve been hearing these stories for the last year of them of him
Working on the passive house project and even people watching on the overtime Channel right now you guys have heard the passive house project this was everything all together so I’ve heard the whole pass house project story from start to finish but in small increments just like you Chris and then this
Morning he did a run through of his entire presentation with me and it’s like oh I didn’t re like I knew what your presentation was gonna be the concept but I didn’t realize it was like I don’t know I didn’t put two and two together and you started telling me the
Story and it’s like oh this is pretty cool and I I wanted to tell you I wanted to wait till after the show right or after you did the presentation let’s do something with that dude let’s tell that story on YouTube let’s like use those slides make a video like that story was
Compelling condensed and that was perfect for everybody to be seen and I think we need more of those stories from you you guys I can’t express to you the story that he told it was it was engaging and and I’m not a slide person I don’t care for slides but watching the
Slides like it they weren’t boring to me like they were perfect and they gave visual representations of what truly was happening and what he was explaining and it wasn’t just slides it was pictures you know it was it was literally like watching a video watching you run
Through it yeah I that was the whole thing is like you know a lot of these guys that are my mentors like Tai Ty banana man and that um they’re they’re not big slide type Educators right and uh interestingly enough this morning when I was sitting next to Chris we ran
Into Dan hulahan or halahan or however you say his last name and uh he has been like an inspiration to me for a really long time that was really cool I geeked out like I’ve met a lot of cool people but he’s the first guy I’m like dude
You’ve inspired me you know that was a cool moment for me no that was good so I didn’t get to see the presentation but I did see the run through and the run through was freaking awesome dud so thank you I could only imagine and okay
So I’m gonna fuel your ego right now because I ran into tide why is it about me this is about Chris right and we’re gonna talk about Chris but we’re doing an intro here it’s about you because you’re off camera because you’re antisocial hiding I just wanted to sit
Down my legs are oh so you didn’t even want to go live it was just supposed to be me and Chris no but okay so that was my introduction to Chris we we’ve seen each other on social media um we’ve I don’t we didn’t interact very much before but
When I started talking with Adam you started talking with Adam it kind of brought the whole group together yeah I’d say so and then it’s more than just Chris since the entire building science Community there’s an awesome I’ll I’ll throw this out to the HVAC overtime show
When I I was watching the overtime show uh really early on and I would comment and this is kind of funny but I remember getting really nerdy in there and then you guys were like making fun of me in the chat I’m like I I don’t care I that
Doesn’t bother me this is way back and then you ended up reaching out to me about some stuff when I right when I went to TC and that’s and that’s how we met but like funny is y’all bullied me man early on my career so that that you
Know where I got that from early on early early on before I met Zach Yoda I was watching hbac shop talk with Zack and Andrew Greaves and I was doing the same thing commented in the in the chat and I was talking about using an Erv for
A whole house uh ventilation system and using it for bath fans and that and gavves made fun of me I’m like who is this guy and he was calling it like I don’t even want to say it I don’t know there’s people listening here yeah well
So that it was about the same time because when you were going over to tec I had heard of you but then it was the first Symposium that we ran into each other and that’s when it was all happening and and that’s when we kind of
Got to become friends and in this whole building science Community I was talking with someone today I was having lunch uh with Dominic from NCI and we were talking about it and I’ve known the general concept of building science I mean I have the general basic understanding of what happens but I
Didn’t know the nuances and boy let me tell you that I thought I had a little bit of an idea until I started talking to you guys until I started getting educated better and that’s when I realized that we didn’t know anything you know and it blew my mind so I think
You I think you you have a great understanding for it but there is some there there’s definitely more knowledge that’s out there and available but it’s hard to find yes like I would say us as Tec uh our information’s all like on our web store but but it’s not so like out
To the world like advertised heavily like you got to see get out right like we small company in in the scheme of things like this right so like to find that education it does exist but you got to come hunting for it and then we’ll
Plug and play it put you on it wherever but like generally speaking like most guys know that we recirculate air they understand that uh it’s crazy to me though but like airish guys and I’m guilty of this as one it’s like we’re looking for the big problem the fix boom
Fix the equipment done but when you start looking at a lot of a moving slowly and what that can do to a Fielding for Comfort that’s when building science has to come into play and you start looking at room pressurization problems and stack effect problems and you start realizing that
Man I could put a dehumidifier on this job but it may not fix the problem right and then once that hits you’re like whoa like holy crap that if you get bit by that bug and you’re more interested that’s the people who become in my opinion the unicorns who take on
Problematic houses yeah and problematic houses pick good money if you can go in there and fix houses that are broken that are not just equipment driven problems so it started with you know me deciding that I wanted to replace the air conditioner in my house and then I
Decided I want to go ahead and film this and then that’s when Adam goes I think Adam said dude we should like building science this or something like that is what you said but we did it was fun and it was like my my house wasn’t anything complicated but guys have
Definitely put a lot of work in and Adam will sit here and tell you and he’ll be like man those guys T me talk we didn’t really teach anything what we did is we encouraged I would say there was definitely inspiration for sure the inspiration we just pointed to the tools
And there was questions like well how does this work and then you know you just you chase that M man yeah and it’s been a fun process but Adam I do have to say I do have to say yeah that we have a problem because I left my house uh you
Know a couple days before the ahr Expo I left my house in the morning and it was like 34 degrees Yeah and my system was satisfied in my wintertime design temperature is 37 degrees Yeah we oversized it I think we oversized it it’s a fny talk about what tonnage
You had in your house before you started so on my house project I had a 100,000 BTU gas fired furnace with a four ton cooling coil with two and a half tons of air moving across that cooling coil with a blower door number of 3,400 cfms of
Leakage wait 34 or 2 I think 24 2400 24 let let me ask you a question though like other I know you had noise but did you have mold you didn’t so this this to put something in perspective because I I don’t know the job very well but I’ve
Seen pictures in the early on stages uh you had return leage yes you also had Supply leot I a lot of Supply Le so I think this is a big prominent problem in our industry why people have gotten so hung up on this tonage works and I’m used to square
Footage per ton well if you’re sucking in let’s say attic hot humid air well you’re you know basically throwing let’s say a ton of capacity at that air conditioning system and then it feels like it’s the right tonnage for the house because you’re throwing a false
Load right so you could have return duct leakage blind duck leakage and eat up that extra Tage that it’s over tonnage right and I think problems like that is what gets us we Overlook those things we over was in a humid climate then we would add some serious problems in my
House I live in a dry climate so my biggest driver of changing my air conditioner was I wanted I was sick of my8 $900 electric bills every month those were killing me okay Energy prices were dramatically going up at the time and I’ve always known that the system in
My house was massively oversized but I didn’t know how much and when I got into it I still had that gut feeling guys I’m looking at Adam too I still had that inner tingling we said a two I said maybe we should do a three
Time in my head my head right aren’t you happy now though I’m 100% happy and I’m kind of irritated we didn’t figure out a smaller thing because because I saw okay and this is something that you guys don’t know Adam this is we haven’t really discussed this we need to go go
Into depth on this on another platform or an overtime show or something but Adam has been experimenting on his own house and actually irritated his own wife when she found out that he was over here pushing the envelope undersizing his own system watching the numbers like
This guy’s staying up till two in the morning on day I’m sitting there I’m texting all these guys and I’m like it’s three degrees and we’re still heating right now and this is uh this is Chicago I have 1,800 foot 18 50 sare foot with a
Full basement and I’m running it’s a 3 ton heat pump but I derated it I’m using a 2ton capacity plug so I have a two-ton heat pump in Chicago and like it it it kept up all the way down to one degree outside it was freaking awesome so this has been a
Fun process and it’s kind of become a game Adam and I both I started it Adam was like that’s really cool you’re finally doing your system and then Adam jumped on the bandwagon and then he just blew me out the water with what he did
With his thing I know a few minutes ago we were talking about people in humid climates and Chris is in a dry climate he was really nervous when he was commissioning his system and I didn’t know this I’m not a Carrier dealer Chris doesn’t install carrier residential equipment but I guess with
The infinity controller there’s only three airflow settings unless and I could be completely ignorant to it okay because full disclosure I still haven’t read the installation and operation manual of the system that I installed on my house okay it’s got to be intuitive for me to use it if it’s not in
It’s stupid so uh by the way so he went to go uh set up the air flow and commission the system and Air Balance right and what he noticed was out of those three settings we couldn’t even come close to the correct air air flow
Each one of them way under or way over right so he was asking what I thought we should do and he ended up balancing to the percentage of design and I told him let that thing rip because he’s in a dry climate and we don’t want to dehumidify
And then also you have high electric bills so let’s bring those bills down and let’s drive some sensel be BTUs right now to be fair and I am fully confident in it I still have yet to add fresh air to my house that is something but it just makes me even more
Comfortable knowing that I have the capacity there to add fresh air but I bet you anything when we finally do add fresh air to my system that it’s still going to be slightly precise I have problem try climate I think you’ll be all right yeah we’ll be good all right
Well we’re gonna wrap this up we’re just doing a quick one I want to continue this conversation maybe we can have you on the overtime show maybe we could do something I think uh a good plan would be uh during the uh Symposium there we go that’s where it happens yeah in the
Animal House get room here’s the problem I I anticipated it being just as loud as it is here well another thing that we could do too is we’re trying to book up spots uh in Bri Brian’s podcast area so we could do it during the day as well
Too so we need to continue these conversations again Chris Hughes with the energy Conservatory good friend of ours uh we are hold on hold on before you sign off no I’m not is there a is there a bell on the sound effects on this thing trust me you don’t play
Things why I don’t even know uh it’s gonna go to the audience is isn’t it labeled what it is how can we go live without a bell this is ridiculous though I have problem with dead air I can’t do it so all right sorry all right but again
Chris use from the energy conservatory and the HVAC Great Vine on YouTube okay we need to address that too the hbac gra Vine is a YouTube live show that the guys do um let’s see Eric Kaiser Chris Hughes and Micha Michael C frco I okay I kept saying Michael C Franco that’s what
I said too he’s not the actor so the the mission behind that show is uh what we wanted to do is make it kind of like a news show you know like you have the news you have like CNN and all the other channels like that everybody’s got their
Own spin their own flavor on the shows I thought it’s really cool uh what I thought would be fun was um just having like a a news like relevant news what’s coming out and uh the guys that you know I I knew Eric and I knew Michael I
Didn’t know him very very well but like I could have reached out for co-hosts and like people I I knew well but I specifically chose those guys to bring those interesting Dynamics to the show I’m really happy that they uh jumped on board and did it with me I think it’s
Been a lot of fun I think we’ve poured some awesome content to the world for Education yeah and it’s great so definitely go check out the HVAC gra Vine plug this real quick the rator from the energy conserv man so is this where you like SC six feet away from the house
And squint and then try to fit the house into the box and then it tells you the load calculation size I’ll have to tell a quick story for this so when I went to energy Conservatory um right when I started I went roller skating with my kids and
Uh and I was kind of overweight and out of shape and I fell and broke my leg and I I was like two weeks at the energy conservatory and I thought oh my gosh like this is not how you start a new career yeah you know and I’m like what
Am I gonna do and I’m just brainstorming like how can I be successful over here and like not look like I just bombed this coming in so I literally I have pictures of this I don’t know you know my wife’s like joking taking for like what you going to do so anyway I’m
Sitting there with like a cast on my leg in a roller round computer chair with a hot wire anemometer and I’m going around and I Steve Rogers the owner was like talking to me about flow and I was really understanding how flow gets measured the calibrated devices and all
That and I I just in my area everything’s centr M return everything right room pressurization is a huge problem but I never stood on a on the level that I needed to learn it till Steve really poured it into me and I was like man I was like that prob exist
Everywhere so I thought well let’s make you know let’s make a device that could measure how bad the room pressure problem is and then give an answer on what size duck that needs to be as passive return so I came up with this idea and it’s set for two years it’s
Called the this is the rimulator basically it’s a credit card it sits your wallet and you measure the door opening and while you watch your micromanometer you have to use a micromanometer because you have to be accurate in Pascal measurements right so you open the door while you read the
Door Gap with the card then you flip the card over and there’s a different strategies like hey if I’m gonna do a jumper duck this is what size it needs to be so I try to make it simple for sizing it but what’s funny is it’s kind
Of like we thought it was kind of Ganky you know what I’m saying it’s like no everybody’s gonna want that I think the bosses were kind of like I don’t know now is not the right time but then um you know NCI we have a relationship going with them and they were looking
For something specific to this and we were going to they were asking us if we could work on it with them and I was like oh wait wait wait wait I have this I have this right now it’s been sitting for two years and David’s like let me
See it and I showed it to him he goes what are you doing he’s like that needs to go to the world like ASAP and so David kind of helped convince my boss that like oh we should do this and so boom Off to the Races we went so you
Know D how do people get them so we sell them on the website uh they’re they’re um five for three for $5 so energy conservatory.edu you know if you catch us at a show we’re basically gonna be handing them out this is kind of like something that we this
Is like the duckator exists right people give away duck lators you know it shows this is the rimulator and this is kind of gonna be like our calling card to our booth from here on out for quite a long time so like that’s I do have to say too
That okay so he just told this story and I’m gonna flash forward to my 40th birthday back in June of the previous year when I turned 40 and I told everybody I’m doing the coolest thing ever I rented a roller skating ring I invited my entire family over right we
Dressed in 80s clothes I had like Mario Cart shirt on and all this stuff and then I get a call from Chris he’s like hey don’t do this dude and I’m bro it’s my 40th birthday he’s like don’t do it I did it I didn’t break my leg Yeah you
Know and I the funny thing is is I can actually rollerblade really well like growing up as kid I was a rollerblader dude like wasad I went but I went old school because I was with my kids and I was like they don’t they were rollerblading
Because that’s what all the kids do and I was like I told my wife I said I’m gonna go to old school so I put on the old school skates yeah and I was get down it the worst when skates lock together when the wheel is that what
Happens I was roller skating in the old school skates get this I was like I’m gonna go backwards I’m gonna do my thing show my kid how cool I am and as I was like transitioning my skates going into the turn the like the top right wheel of
The left skate got wedged between like the skate on the right and I pret and went to the ground and when I fell dude I don’t know if you could like I heard the bone crack while I was staring at it going down yeah my 13-year-old standing
Right there seen the whole thing and heard everything and there was quite a few four-letter words that flew uh and now he won’t skate at all he’s he’s petrified to go skating it’s good what don’t forget um before I forget I’ll be in trouble if I don’t bring up
The point that we have the zoom loock Max tool you guys want to enter to win this uh pay attention to my social media I’ll throw out a link for this that way you guys can enter if you want nice yeah we’re gonna wrap it up wait hold on a
Second Chris just so you don’t have to keep bothering me you take this with so you can size the jumper du for your house that’s what I need to do I still need to size the jumper ducts and add fresh air so do it we’ll talk about it
More I’ll show what I’m doing with this and show how I’m using it wrong and Chris will criticize me and we’ll make good content about it right yeah Budd all right thank you guys so very much we’re going to wrap it up again thanks
So much we’re at the 2024 uh HR expo at the park spil move see you
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