Electric Arc Furnace

Now I like to cover lots of heating and air conditioning related topics on this blog so I wanted to talk a little bit about commercial furnaces today. Now the heating principles at play with commercial furnaces is actually quite different from those that are used in residential heating units. Nevertheless I think it is something that some of you all might enjoy. So today I want to present you with a video on electric arc furnaces. This is a nice little video that I found on youtube that actually taught me something that I didn't know. Now you all know that after having worked in this field and taught the stuff for several decades this type of situation doesn't come up too often anymore. However, when it does, I get as giddy as a school girl. OK I'm exaggerating but it is an ahhhh moment and I do enjoy those. So without any further ado let me give you the video:



Good stuff huh? I'm sure you all enoyed that and I just want to say that this is one of the very rare occasions that I am not exactly qualified to field questions on this particular topic. I will help if you have a basic question but I actually have a few myself. If I get some anwswers to my questions I will update this post and share anything else I find out. Cheers!

Oil Furnaces

Have you ever wondered how an oil furnace actually works? I know that this was something that truly fascinated me when I first got interested in the heating and air conditioning industry. How could you control a fire and make sure that it never got too hot but that it was hot enough to heat up the entire house. Also how could you possibly do this without making the home smell like smoke or fire? These were all burning(pun intended) questions that ran through my mind as a young aspiring hvac tech. Well after a long career in the heating and cooling business I can tell you that all of my childhood curiosities have been answered and much more. So I know that there are lots of little kids out there who are just like I was and for them I am here to provide some help. This might just inspire them to make it a go like I did. So here it is, a nice little video that I found that does a good job of explaining exactly how an oil furnace actually works. Enjoy!



Did you enjoy the video? I know I did, I loved it. That is the beauty of the internet for today's generation. See when I was coming up you had to actually go find someone like the guy in the video if you wanted to learn about something like that. Now you can cruise over to my blog with a few keystrokes and 10 minutes later you have your answer. Make sure to stay tuned for even more great HVAC information.

Radiant Heating Systems

Hello readers! I know you all must absolutely love my blog because I constantly find the best and deliver it to you day after day. So what is today's gem? Well I found a video that is nothing short of awesome! The video covers radiant heating systems and for those of you who don't know radiant heating systems are some of the best. Why are they the best you might ask? Well the video will go into more detail but I will simply say that one of their best features is the cost per therm. For those who are uninitiated in the heating jargon, they are cheap to operate. Some people like to call them energy-efficient but I like to just keep it simple. Everyone understands cheap so let's not try to put a shirt and tie on a heater and just call it what it is. OK so now that you know the best(at least in my opinion) thing about a radiant heating system, here is some more information from our friends over at Plumber Surplus.




What did I tell you? A gem right? Yup my thoughts exactly, I really hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did and if you have any questions on radiant heating systems or any other types of heating systems you know that you can always just drop me a comment and i will get back to you lickity split. Have a great day and enjoy the Super Bowl this weekend! I'll be enjoying it for sure!

Heat Pumps Part 1

If you are interested in learning some information on heat pumps then I have the perfect video for you. This is going to be a two part series and I think that the information presented in each of these videos is really spot on. The technician in the video goes through and points out several important components and really gives the novice some very valuable insight from an expert perspective. Since this blog is devoted to all things HVAC, we will be covering heat pumps in great detail over the coming weeks and months. I think this is a great starting point for a video in this series. Stay tuned for part two and then for some in depth treatment of heat pumps and related technologies.



I hope you enjoyed that video and learned something useful. Little by little if you keep learning you will gain the confidence and ability to troubleshoot and or install all common heating and air equipment.

Freon Funnies

This blog is primarily for useful HVAC information but there is always time to have a little laugh. I know that a lot of the readers of this blog are in the heating and air conditioning business and I thought that I would start a little thread that could turn into the joke spot for hvac related humor. I have appropriately titled this post "Freon Funnies". So if you know of a good joke that would fall under this category I would invite you to share it with the world by leaving a comment on this post. Anything related to furnaces, air conditioners, ventilations systems, condensers, or anything closely related is fine. So since I am the author and architect of this wonderful idea I will go ahead and kick things off with a joke of my own. Now I am no stand-up comic but I think that some of you will get a chuckle out of this one. So a guy walks into a bar and says "Sheesh, it's hotter than a $3 Tijuana hooker in here. " The bartender replies, yeah the ac guy is upstairs with my wife getting the blower working." LOL Ok folks your turn. Have at it.

How Air Conditioners Work

Have you ever wondered how an air conditioner works? I'm sure that you have. Well today is your lucky day because I am about to answer all of the questions that you have ever had. OK OK maybe not but I will show you a cool video that I found that helps explain how an air conditioner works. The video has been featured on a lot of other cool hvac sites so I thought what the heck, why not let my readers benefit from a video like this? So that is exactly what I am doing :) You folks can thank me in the comments or by email. OK without any further ado, here is the video:

Did you like it? I sure hope so. It's great when you can watch a video that is only 90 seconds long and really take something away from it. That is what I hope that you have done today. So next time when you want to impress one of your friends start explaining how an air conditioner works, they are sure to look at you in a totally different light. :) Have a great weekend folks!

Atlanta Heating and Air

Hello and thanks for visiting my little corner of cyberspace. In this post I want to talk about a friend of mine who runs an Atlanta heating and air company. His name is Eric and I was speaking with him this weekend about a few new developments in the HVAC industry. For those who are unfamiliar with HVAC, it stands for heating ventilation and  air conditioning. We were talking about 13 seer equipment and what we thought the impact actually was in terms of cost savings for a home owner over 10 seer equipment. Now let me back up for a second and start to define some of these terms for people who may be unfamiliar with heating and air conditioning terminology. 10 seer and 13 seer refer to the Seer rating of a central air unit. Now Seer stands for seasonal energy efficiency ratio(SEER). Now without getting into too much detail on all of this I will simply say that the higher the SEER number the more efficient the unit operates. So a 13 seer unit is more efficient than a 10 seer unit. Similarly a 15 seer unit would function more efficiently than would a 13 seer unit. Now in the case of modern HVAC the government requires that all new  heating and air units have a minimum seer rating of 13. This means that stores no longer sell the less efficient 10 seer units and although many homeowners still own legacy models the trend in the industry is to steer these customers toward upgrading their systems to 13 seer. The mandate that all units must be 13 seer is a rather recent development so most of my career was spend working on 10 seer models.  In our conversation we came to the mutual conclusion that these units probably make up the difference in cost between the older models in utility savings within the first year. Not only that it probably doesn't take more than 4 years or so for an upgraded unit to completely pay for itself. After that you are operating it for free and most likely saving a nice amount of money on that utility bill each month. If you are considering upgrading your system, I would highly recommend you doing so. If you are in the Atlanta area and looking for a solid company, go ahead and give my buddy Eric a call at Atlanta heating and air.