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38 minute read
If you've ever had a question about Manual J, Manual S, or Manual D, there's a good chance the answer ends with "and that's the way I see it." Ed Janowiak is ACCA's Manager of HVAC Design Education, the host of the legendary "Hey Ed" video series, and the person Bryan Orr calls when he has load calculation questions. With 35 years in the trade — from installer to service tech to contractor to trainer — Ed has probably taught more contractors how to do HVAC design right than anyone in America.
In this episode, we flip the script and ask Ed the questions. What came back was a masterclass in why math matters, what contractors keep getting wrong, and why the current heat pump boom could create an oversizing crisis if the industry doesn't pay attention.
Curiosity Is a Superpower
Ed didn't set out to become the industry's go-to educator. He was a service tech killing time between calls, running efficiency tests over and over, pulling filters halfway out just to see what happened to the sensible heat ratio. He was getting an incredible education on building science and HVAC design — he just didn't know it yet.
"I spent a lot of time where I would do my hour's worth of testing and conversation with the homeowner, and I would do the test again and again," Ed recalls. He'd reduce indoor airflow to see how high he could push head pressure before safety kicked in. He'd mess with variables purely out of curiosity. Years later, all that "killing time" turned into the deep equipment knowledge that would make him one of the most effective trainers in the business.
The lesson for contractors: curiosity compounds. The techs who tinker, test, and ask "what happens if I change this?" are the ones who develop real expertise — the kind you can't fake and customers can feel.
Don't Make Stuff Up
When we asked Ed for the top things he wishes every contractor knew, his number one answer was blunt: "Don't make stuff up."
Too many contractors ballpark their designs — and Ed has a sharp analogy for why that's a problem. "You do a job for 10 grand and they give you $8,600 and say, yeah, it's close. Are you okay with that? Because that's exactly what these contractors are doing." The DOE found that somewhere between 70 and 90% of installed systems don't perform the way they're supposed to. Ed's point is simple: if you're not using math to determine what you're doing, you shouldn't expect to get paid like you did.
A proper design isn't extra work. It's part of the work.
The Manual J Mistakes That Keep Coming Back
Ed breaks Manual J errors into two categories: the intentional and the accidental.
On the intentional side, contractors game design temperatures, add extra occupants, or set infiltration to "loose" — all trying to inflate the load to justify bigger equipment. Ed's not having it. "You've gotta game the design temperature by like 10 degrees or more for it to really move the needle. Start using Manual S — that'll get you to that next size."
The accidental mistakes are more insidious. Ed's biggest concern is contractors who see numbers populating in their load calc software before they've finished all the inputs. "I have six more things to put in, but I already got a number," he says. Critical items like duct leakage get skipped entirely — sometimes because it's a separate button in the software that's easy to miss.
His take? An undersized air conditioner will always provide more comfort than an oversized one, because at least the undersized unit runs long enough to dehumidify. "I'd rather have a piece of equipment that runs nonstop and has the ability to dehumidify than a system that cycles far too frequently and the coil doesn't spend much time below dew point."
The Heat Pump Oversizing Crisis
This is where Ed gets fired up — and where every heat pump contractor needs to pay attention.
The push to size heat pumps to the heating load in cold climates is creating grossly oversized air conditioners. And Ed has watched this movie before. "I'm not against heat pumps. I am 100% for the use of heat pumps. But heat pumps that are used responsibly," he says. "Putting in heat pumps in a way that creates an air conditioner that is grossly oversized is just not the way to do things."
His solution is straightforward: size the heat pump to the cooling requirement and use auxiliary heat. The industry spent decades trying to get contractors to stop oversizing air conditioners — and was finally making progress — until the electrification push created a new reason to install equipment that's way too big for the cooling load.
The real danger? In northern climates, the consequences don't show up immediately. "You go down to Baton Rouge and you install crap like that, within two weeks they wanna take you out back," Ed says. But in heating-dominant markets, it might take several seasons before the mold and moisture problems rear their ugly heads. Ed recalls a summer in New Jersey with 40 consecutive days of dew points above 70°F where his phone rang constantly from contractors dealing with sweating ductwork — a preview of what's coming if oversizing becomes the norm.
The Bottom Line
Ed Janowiak has been preaching the same gospel for 27 years: do the math, follow the truth, and don't blow air on people. That message hasn't changed because it doesn't need to. What has changed is the stakes — with heat pumps now at the center of the industry's future, getting the design right isn't just good practice. It's the difference between systems that deliver on their promise and an oversizing crisis that could set the entire industry back.
As Ed would say: that's the way I see it.
Timestamps:
[00:00] - Episode Teaser
[02:34] - Introduction to guest, Ed Janowiak
[05:56] - Ed talks about his journey into HVAC design and education
[10:52] - Discussing heat pump sizing and the impact on comfort
[14:15] - Ed’s perspective on airflow and its importance in system performance
[17:28] - Common mistakes HVAC contractors make
[23:19] - Manual J and heat pump sizing considerations
[28:27] - Ed explains common misconceptions about Manual J for heating
[30:38] - Properly sizing heat pumps and using auxiliary heat
[42:01] - Insights on technical committees and the importance of industry standards
[46:08] - The importance of Manual T for proper fan pressure and airflow
[49:37] - Closing remarks and key takeaways from the discussion
Connect with Ed:
Transcript
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:58.400
They don't understand that the years and years and years of trying to get people to stop over sizing air conditioners, and it seemed like we were actually making some headway on it. And then all this stuff happens. I'm not against heat pumps. I am 100% for the use of heat pumps, but he pumps that are used responsibly and putting in heat pumps in a way that creates an air conditioner that is grossly oversize is just not the way to do things.
It goes back to the very beginning of all this. We're going to do a load calc. Let's do an accurate load calc, and let's follow the guidance that we get from it. And not just one half of it. I understand the whole idea about the peak demand issues. And they don't want electric resistance heat. And there's people in New York that are convinced that you're going to be able to have a homeowner spend 15 K on a system and then go to Walmart, buy a 1500 watt space heater because they can't have electric resistance heat because they're scared to death of peak demand.
00:01:02.410 — 00:03:12.710
Hey, everyone! We've got a great one for you today. It's with Ed Janowiak, ACCA’s manager of HVAC design education and host of the legendary Hate Ed video series. Ed is that rare breed of person who can take a topic that is super technical, make it incredibly approachable and understandable, and also make it damn funny. We learned a ton and also had a ton of fun taping this episode with Ed, and I hope you learn a ton and enjoy it as much as we did. And one quick plug. So the Building Performance Association has sponsored this podcast, which we're delighted with, and their annual conference is coming up. Their National Home Performance Conference is coming up April 13th to 16th in Columbus, Ohio.
It's going to be an awesome event. Their event is one of our favorites of the year. Eric and I will both be there. If you're focused on high performance HVAC and how that relates to building envelope work. This is a great event for you to go to, and they have been kind enough to give us a discount code. It is a lot of letters. It is NHPC-HPP that's short for National Home Performance Conference Dash Heat Pump Podcast. So again use our discount code NHPC-HPP if you're interested. The link to their website to register is in the show notes. All right. With that, on to the episode.
00:03:16.550 — 00:04:35.200
Hi and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith and I'm Eric Fitz. We are co-founders of Amply Energy. So today we have Ed Janowiak, the famous Ed Janowiak from AKA. If you've ever had a question about Manuel J. Manuel S, Manuel D or other manuals, there's a good chance the answer ends with and that's the way I see it.
Again, Mike is ACCAs manager of HVAC design education. He runs the legendary Hey Ed video series, and he's the guy Brian or calls when he has load count questions. With 35 years in the trade all across different areas of it, Ed is probably taught more contractors how to do HVAC design than almost anyone in America.
So today we have Ed here to ask him a bunch of questions and dig in. Ed. Welcome to the podcast. Well, thanks for having me. This is the kind of stuff I like doing, because if I'm sitting here talking, I'm not actually whacking away on my computer, having to produce some kind of content or something that somebody wants.
So it is at work. Yes. I relate it to standing in front of people sharing the information that we know is HVAC. It's work, but it's not work. There's times I would still rather be crawling through an attic or worming through a crawlspace than I would typing on a computer, which
00:04:36.480 — 00:05:27.489
true story. I can't type, I can't spell. Eric will appreciate this one. The whisper I love whisper. If you're not familiar with whisper out there, man, you got to check out the whisper. It's voice to text and AI all mixed into one And it's why I'm going to use the F word already. It's fabulous. We're going to take credit for this.
I know who told you about Whisper Flow. He was meanie. Absolutely. And it's because I told Alex Meaney about Whisper Flow while he was like, God, I just can't make any progress on manual D. I called him and I was like, you've got to try Whisper Flow. I know how you work. I know how you think it's going to change.
And so I didn't hear anything back. Except then two weeks later, he called me. He was at the Massachusetts County Fair, and he had a second. He wanted to catch up. And he said, by the way, not only do I love it, I told Ed January about it and he loves it. So
00:05:28.610 — 00:07:54.030
there we go. It's cool. All right, before we go any further, it's Jan-A-Walk, Jan-a-walk. Yeah. And literally my high school yearbook says no, you pronounce it Jan O'Wiak. There's more pronunciations by other people than there are the proper one by me. So when I, I point that out, it's sort of tongue in cheek, but it's funny.
My kid's not that far away from getting hitched. And she can't wait because her last name will be Fisher instead of this thing that somebody mangles. So it's pretty awesome. And I was saying, Jana, but it's Jana. Yeah, and I didn't know how to pronounce it till I was in my 30s. I was at a hotel in Brooklyn and it was Polish place.
And when I walked in, this very attractive young European woman looked at me with just a pure look of disdain, which I don't know why I just some people don't like the cut of my jib when I approach him, but she just looked at me and then I hand her to my credit card. She goes, oh, Mr. Yanukovych. And that's when I learned that that's the pronunciation and that's Siri or whatever will say it that way.
Well. And then it got Americanized where we say, John, oh, so love it. Call me Ed. Yeah, yeah, that's what I say. I'm not going to say your last name anymore. Yeah, that's the easiest. All right. In honor of your video blog and blog. We're going to orient all of our questions around that setup.
So they're all going to be, hey, Ed, and we're gonna ask you a question. All right. Hey, Ed. How did a kid from South Jersey end up becoming the go to guy for HVAC design education in the US? I filled a void, and I was at the right place at the right time. Is the easiest way to describe it. I was a service tech not that long after getting out of high school, and I was always looking for a way to do something better, and something better was to get out of the basement or the crawl space from installing flex or sheet metal, and being one of those cool kids that rode around and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes and fix stuff.
And that's what I wanted to do. And that's what I did for quite a while. And it was at the right place at the right time. I worked at some really cool places. I worked for a guy that did 50% commercial refrigeration, so I not only learned how to install the heating cooling in residential light commercial buildings.
I learned how to actually fix stuff, which helped me greatly.
00:07:55.150 — 00:09:27.400
He went out of business. The two of us went to work for somebody else, and I learned what DSM work is or demand side management. I worked with a contractor that did these radio controlled boxes is the easiest way to describe it. They were things that were used to shed the peak demand in a specific area. And it was, again, one of those things where I happened to be at the right place at the right time, because I learned about conservation on the meter side, meaning I did a blower door test with the guy from Philly, and I was so impressed with the duct system we had installed in that house.
As Pete and I stood underneath this big return grill, it was in the hallway and we could feel that air just pouring on to our heads. And I actually had hair back then, and I was bragging about the good airflow through that duct system, and it was being proven by this contraption in the front door. And then Bud was kind of happy to tell us that that isn't good, that air you're feeling is leakage because you suck at ductwork, which back then we did and we learned about it.
The mastic we started putting on ductwork was white because the gray stuff wasn't invented yet. The duct blaster wasn't a thing yet. We had an approach for measuring duct leakage and it was called the subtraction method. Did a blower door test in the house and then taped up all the grills and registers and did it again and measured the difference.
And that was your subtraction method. Went through the whole
00:09:28.840 — 00:09:46.330
evolution of when the duct blaster came out and it had analog gauges, all my stuff. I still had the original blower door I had from back then, analog gauges and all that good stuff. So I went through this whole progression of seeing how you make houses better to make HVAC better was good. And then
00:09:47.370 — 00:10:39.570
my wife got pregnant. She had a better job than I did. She decided that I was going to stay home with the kid when the kid was born and the place that I worked, we had one contract with the electric utility. Where then this was predecessor of Energy Star best home program built for energy savings. Tomorrow is the acronym.
I was doing duct leakage tests, and the gal who ran the program said, I heard you're leaving. I said, yeah, she goes, do you want to keep doing it? I'm like, yeah, but not for what you were paying them. She doubled the price and I went from working 40 hours a week to 40 hours a month, which really worked out well for us.
And I slowly got involved with some utility program incentive programs, air conditioning when we made the ten to 13 to 14 year transition and
00:10:40.700 — 00:11:58.710
without getting into a real long story, I showed up at a class where airflow and charging and how the paperwork was filled out was taught. The instructor didn't show up and I was there. The guy who ran the thing called and asked if I was there, and he said, you want to do the class? And I'm sure. And it was charging airflow and I had to do those things.
It's not a big deal. And the next day, Bill chew, a contractor from way down in South Jersey, was talking to Harry and Harry s Bill how it did last night. And I quote, well, Harry, it didn't suck. And that was 27 years ago because that was the year my daughter was born. And she's 27 years old now. So this is how I do the pre Andrea and post Andrea and I can figure out the timeline of where I was and what I was doing based off of that, and I worked at a place that needed instruction done, and none of it was hard, but it was incredibly hard.
I worked on utility programs when I worked at A, and B was the name of the company where I was doing measured performance on equipment. So plotting a psychometric chart and quantifying airflow and really understanding the fundamentals of HVAC was something that I am
00:11:59.790 — 00:14:32.700
very familiar with when I learned it at the time and how we used it. I thought it was stupid because I never saw a path for me to sell it to a homeowner. So what? Really, what good was it? And it was one of those deals where I get a kick out of telling this part of it. But I'm pretty transparent about this stuff. There was always a chance somebody was going to show up and say, hey, what are you doing?
So I didn't want to get caught not doing something. So it takes 25, 30 minutes to really do an efficiency test on a piece of equipment. You've got to let it run for 20 minutes and you got to a clock, the meter and none of it's difficult. But if there's nothing wrong with the heat pump, you spend a half hour, 40 minutes making sure that people understand that it's a heat pump, not a hot air furnace.
And you check the system all in in an hour, whether there's something right or wrong with it. Well, that could put you 2:00 at 2:00. You call the shop, they're going to find something for you to do. But if you call them a 2:45, 3:00, three 30th May go home. But I'm already in the parking lot of a golf course somewhere.
I'm just cringing that they're not going to say, we have something for you to do. And by the way, I say call. I was on a radio getting the shop to say no, you can just go. But anyway, I spent a lot of time where I would do my hours worth of testing and conversation with the homeowner, and I would do the test again and again.
Well, I would take the filter out of the equipment and put it in half of it in a garbage bag and rerun it. And I would do all these things that at the time I didn't realize it, but I was learning about what happens with the sensible heat factor of a piece of equipment when you messed with it, how high you could get that head in the winter time to go by reducing the indoor air flow before it shut off on safety.
I learned a whole lot of stuff through killing time because you got to be active, because if you're sitting and I did a lot of crawl spaces, so I'd sit down there, I got to be careful. 230 in the afternoon, I had a big lunch. I'm taking a siesta. I don't want to ever be in that uncomfortable situation. And I never was.
But I did a lot of stuff that I never thought would have any value to it. And then Harry and Bill put me in a situation where I was in front of people explaining this stuff, and it wasn't difficult because it's HVAC 101. Now, we might work in an industry where there's a lot of people,
00:14:33.820 — 00:16:56.640
not a lot of people. There's far too many people out there selling air conditioners that don't understand how they work. That's just the reality of the situation. There's people really good at selling stuff that don't understand how they work, and that's why we have so many crappy installs that are out there, because people don't understand the importance of doing everything proper from start to finish.
And you guys are a big part of that start. Part of it. So you just covered an incredible arc of there's like, I want to go. I want to touch on just a few things there, but I feel like from everything you just said, what I hear in you is that you love this industry. It brings you joy and you are just an inherently curious guy.
You were doing diagnostics on your diagnostics while you were trying to kill time in the house, and I just, I love that. I feel like having that kind of curiosity leads to all kinds of great things. Whether you're commissioning a system, whether you're designing a system. Man it's great. Well, there's two things that I can fold into that.
It's truth and math, right. Because math is the truth. And I don't know if any of you guys know Steve Rogers. Steve Rogers and I have had this conversation a few times, and I don't know if he was the one who brought the the truth aspect of, of it up to me, or it was me to him. I was in Minneapolis and we were looking at one of the flow chambers, and I was calling it the Chamber of Truth.
And I don't know if I was regurgitating something I had heard or I originally brought that one up, but nonetheless, I like that whole thing about the truth. And when I had to write a thing about, oh, I don't know, describe yourself or something for our company website, and I don't remember exactly what I said, but to paraphrase it is I'm very curious about the truth.
And when it comes to HVAC, math will always be the truth. I try not to, and it's a try. When I go on any kind of social media, which I do a little bit until I get annoyed again because there are too many stupid people. The, the, the dumber people are, the more aggressive they get. And it's just so annoying. It's like current politics.
The more out of line you are, the more you get aggressive and make fun of people. And I just, I don't get well. It's a natural defense. I do get why people do it because it's just how it goes. Nonetheless,
00:16:57.840 — 00:18:05.970
the idea of I use my real name on anything I participated in and I remember where I work. So I try and be kind and I'm not that guy. But sometimes people deserve it, so I figure out a way to do it. If you're ever on social media and you see a fellow by the name of Hugo Jazz, call me Hugh for short, you met him because I'm not you jazz guy right here.
So you can find me on the internet 20 years ago on some forums and I just I can't anymore because there's this people that are. They've got their heels dug in and they don't know the difference between a standard induction motor and ECM technology, and they think they overlap. So I just I can't I can't keep repeating myself and try and get people to understand that there's a difference between some of this stuff.
Totally. It's tough. It's actually it's sort of a great kind of segway into the question I really wanted to ask. Can we just just for the sake of it, can you just close that one out and say, and that's the way I see it. Oh, and that's the way I see it, Nell. I love the inflection. Okay. Go ahead. If you can point at me
00:18:07.130 — 00:18:14.610
as I get to the end. Oh, no, it's it's the trigger. One man. Okay. God. Okay. We'll do
00:18:15.650 — 00:21:02.350
so. Hey, that was a perfect way for me to transition to a question that I wanted to get into, knowing that you probably trained more HVAC contractors and almost anybody else out there. If there's 3 or 4, maybe five things that you could teach folks, what would they be and why? So you got to keep caddies for me because I can't remember anything.
Number one is don't make shit up right. That is, there's far too much ball parking and what needs to be done. Does it need to be ballpark? So that's it. You got to do a proper design, and that proper design isn't extra work, it's part of the work. One of the analogies I like to use about people who make stuff up in ballpark it.
And you want me to do all this extra work. You are ballpark it. You are giving it a good shot when you do a job in somebody's house. If you're not using math to determine what you're doing, well, if the homeowner is going to do the same thing with their payment, are you okay with that? In other words, you do a job for ten grand and they give you 8600 bucks and say, yeah, it's close.
Right. That's exactly what these contractors are doing. How many times do we see that Doe did a study, and somewhere between 70 and 90% of the systems don't work the way they're supposed to. People shouldn't get paid the way they're supposed to. I think that's that's that's a good analogy. All right. There is two.
This is one. The third one is don't be like me. Worry a lot about getting paid. That was probably one of my biggest thing. And I fell right in line with the the fellow who taught me this guy Pete. He taught me a lot. He was probably the best technical person I was ever around in a previous life. He was a vo tech teacher, and then he became he was going to he was going to be a contractor and just tear the world up.
And you didn't do good. He didn't file chapter anything. He paid all of his debts before he completely ended the the business, but I've kind of fell into that same mold. I did some really good work, but I struggled getting paid for it, so I started talking about it instead. I got involved with the whole utility, and the folks from Visy put me in front of some people that wanted to hear what I had to say, and sitting in a room with six different utilities represented for a program and I'm like, you people are out of your gourd.
You're arguing about font and page colors, and you have stuff where you got super eaten sub cooling written backwards on which they apply to the metering device. Come on let's. So that's a big one. Other things that people need to do.
00:21:03.630 — 00:27:40.140
Oof! Well, we already said you got to have a design. I'm going to say follow the truth and do math. And that's the way I see it. All right. Hey, Ed, after all those trainings, is there a contractor who really got it? And you saw their business transform. If so, like they would love to hear the story. I have a couple of brothers that started coming to the classes that I did for our regulatory commission here in new Jersey.
And I want to say they were in their early to mid 20s. They're in their mid 40s now and they cashed in. They were two guys working out of a pickup that. And don't quote me on these. So I'm not going to use their names so I can make up anything I want really. But these two fellas cashed in. They did the whole public equity thing and all that double digits in the millions.
And I want to say they had 35 people working for them. They got the idea of and this is even before I started peddling it the way I do now. I'm all about doing things, following the truth and math because it produces predictability. If something is predictable, we know that we can tell a consumer this is how it's going to work, and at the end of it, everybody's happy.
The simple idea for them was they figured out a way to create value. And the idea that you don't go back for free, do it right. They they had some business coaches and that stuff that's completely out of my lane, but they turned a small operation into a really big one. And again, they're in their mid to late 40s now and they don't have to work anymore.
So this is the one case that I can think of that trade tip my tongue. The one fella is bugging me this summer about it was hot. And didn't I tell him once that it's in our market? It only goes above 90 a couple of days a year, but I actually researched it. We were above the design temperature of 90 in new Jersey, 1.36% of the time this year.
So I essentially said, bite me. You're not putting a bigger unit in for 0.36% of the year. So anyway, there's other good stories that I can tell you. As far as I can remember, the guys that were driving a 20 year old whooped that they're driving a Benz when I see them now, and they will give me the fanny pack about that stuff that you shared way back when helped us, or when their kids show up in the classes or it's actually turned in.
I know some of these guys grandkids now. I was at the new Jersey a summit a month ago, and that's pretty cool walking through there, seeing people that I've known for a very long time. People bringing up topics. One fella is like, yeah, I'm not coming to your session. I heard those jokes 25 years ago. And ironically, those jokes haven't changed because I don't need to.
They're funny and my audience changes. So why wouldn't you do it any other way? And that's the way I see it. Nice work. That was awesome. Very well done. Well, so if we're getting into the more specifics of training, ING. Let's talk about manual J. In particular we like there are a lot of design manuals. We often think of manual J as like the foundational component.
A lot of the outputs of ALJ feed in to the other downstream steps and processes that in the the design series. What are the most common mistakes that people make when doing a manual? J. Well, we have to separate whether it's on purpose or a true mistake. So if it's on purpose, people gain the design temperatures thinking that's going to do something.
And for anybody that understands this, you got to gain the design temperature by like ten degrees or more for it to really move the needle. Start using manual s. That'll get you to that next size piece of equipment that you probably are looking for. It's not getting you the 500 square foot per ton that some people think is a real thing.
I mean, if you're in Phoenix, that 500 square foot per ton might really work, but you're also dealing with outdoor temperatures or like a buck 15 approach and 120. So two ton unit isn't really two tons in Phoenix, where it still might be up in your neck of the woods of Maine or someplace where you really don't need air conditioning or whatever.
But and that's sort of tongue in cheek, I guess you do. But there's lots of ways that people game them. They put lots of people in the house, and that really doesn't achieve anything because it just adds latent gain. People will do things like use loose and very rarely. If a house truly is loose, the house should be fixed because trying to condition a house that is truly loose is very difficult.
All right, so the on purpose stuff that's out of the way when it comes to truly doing things incorrectly, that is going to be things such as my number one. I know people that have been doing load calques and dare I say, I know people have been teaching this stuff and they forget to tell people to do things like include duct leakage.
Right. And that's in a lot of these software programs. It's a separate button. And you have to go through the are you actually going to measure the the area of your duct system, or are you going to let the program guess at the surface area? So there's all kinds of ways to determine that gain or loss on a structure.
And that duct leakage can make a big difference. And it should be counted just. And this isn't inherent with any specific software, but this is the society we live in. We live in a society where people are looking for instant gratification. So people will be doing a tabular input program, and the program starts to count BTUs.
As soon as you start whacking the keys, there's some numbers. Oh, I got it. I got an answer. If I had the pixie dust to spread amongst every software. If I could include this in our process where it gets certified. You got to be done before an answer shows up. But I don't think people would buy products if that's the way it was programed.
So I understand why it's not that way. So you got to make sure the whole thing is done correctly. And the issue there is you're worried that people, they're going to see numbers showing up and they'd be like, oh, I like that number. So I'm going to stop actually thinking about the inputs and not actually finish the process.
Yep, yep. It's the simple idea. I have six more things to put in, but I already got a number. And
00:27:41.660 — 00:29:07.960
I don't hate when people come up with numbers that are short of the truth. And undersized air conditioner is always going to provide more comfort than an oversize air conditioner. It really depends on by how much, but at the end of the day, I'd rather have a piece of equipment that runs nonstop and has the ability to dehumidifier, then a system that cycles far too frequently, and the Coyle doesn't spend much time below dew point.
So see, I use words like that so I sound smart instead of just. It doesn't get enough water out of the house or whatever, and that's the way I see it. So it's one of those things that and I'm regurgitating some of this stuff too. I learned a lot from Russ King many, many years ago from reading his articles, and it wasn't until like 15 years later, I was in a van coming back from one of the symposiums and we're talking and you start saying this, and I'm like, man, I used to read this guy's stuff, some weirdo from California, and I realized it was him.
So that was a big deal. That and the the one symposium, his kid was there. I don't know if his story at all. So Conner was there, and he's got a bunch of old dudes in the van talking about going to strip clubs and stuff, and he, you know, he's this wide eyed kid. Listen to all these stories about, I don't know about you.
I never thought about my dad going to places like that, but it was just. It's good stuff.
00:29:11.360 — 00:32:13.790
Russ is great. We know him a bit. At some point, we'll maybe we'll get him on the show. Be great. But they're the the biggest actual mistakes is leaving stuff out. And whether it's because they just see that answer too quickly or not, but the doing things to make it come out with bigger numbers is not your friend, and really it's trusting it.
The whole idea. I don't know if you've ever heard I do the three generations HVAC grandpa put in steam, so every heating system has got to be 300 K hot water systems, and there was some insulation in the place. It only needed 100, but he couldn't drop it by two thirds. So he put 150 175 in because that made him happy.
It wasn't until junior realized the house now only needs 60 K, and chances are he's not going to go above 80. So there's all these layers of protection, if you will. But I still get into the scenario where when it comes to manual J. I have one camp that says manual J doesn't produce a number that's big enough and that's heating or cooling.
And then I have the people that have bought into it, which are my peeps, and then I have the people that want to tell you that O manual J produces a heat gain that's way higher than I did a study, and we had six days where the machine was still cycling when it was five degrees above the design temperature. All right.
What was the cloud cover? Well, I did this study, and it's like watching politics where they use a lot of words but never answer the question. I'm like, all right, that was a great answer. But what was the cloud cover. Because people don't understand the impact of the sun. So when you don't take that into account in manual J, it shows a thing where basically you can reduce the gain on a structure by 30% if you have cloud cover versus full sun, and if you're not taking that into account, please don't quote your study.
And that's the way I see that. So that that one gets a little annoying. And then there's the the big one with manual J is about sizing for heat pumps and heating. And before I give my take, Eric and Ed, I would love to hear your take on this because I have a very specific reference that I use when I talk about this one, and I'm curious to what you have to say about what is the problem with heating a house with a heat pump and like, wait a second, let's forget about a heat pump.
Where is the issue with manual JS calculation for heat loss? Okay, before we even go there, I'll say when we're talking about manual J it doesn't really care what the equipment is. It's about the house 100% agree. Right. And in terms of the areas that manual J has some factors of safety built in, or it's part of the factors of safety.
One of them on the heating side is we don't include solar gain at all. And some thoughtful people. Oh look at that. We got Manuel H right here.
00:32:15.590 — 00:36:05.580
Daniel J does not include solar gain because generally speaking, design temperatures in a cold climate are happen to occur at night. And we also don't know in the during a winter day it can be cloudy. So we generally don't assume there's any solar gain benefits in a manual J. We don't have benefits for window coverings that provide any protection against heat loss in the winter.
We don't include the internal loads. So any loads from appliances from occupants, those are not considered as part of the heating calculation. There are a few others, but those are the those are the big ones. Okay. And if I could hug you right now, I'm mentally hugging you right now. If you're familiar with that term, I love that answer.
Okay. Just straight up I love that answer. The only thing I do want to point out is that Manuel J. Has inherent and appropriate factor of safety. There is no extra or anything like that. It is inherent and appropriate factor safety. So one seven in that manual H book and it's written in the 60s right. So that we knew about heat pumps back then.
And Alex Meany calls it the blind spot that Manuel J. Has. And I like that term. I quote a bunch of his stuff. Him and I co-presented it. And you've co-presented with Alex also, but I co-presented with something with him recently, and a couple of the things that he says, I thread the needle with Whitman selection and we look at our cats.
I keep I can't get enough of that one. That's a real good one that he that he uses, that I've repurposed or regurgitated. However you want to put it. But one seven In manual H says that your theoretical balance point and your actual balance point in the heating are not going to be in the same reality, because we could have a couple of days of thermal storage being released and we don't take it into account, and that's fine.
And I think that's accurate. The other things that you mentioned, I don't see any reason why internal load somebody couldn't add to a load calc if they really wanted to, if they're trying to get it a little bit closer or a lot closer. The internal shading, that's one that I've never really put that much thought into.
And I'm definitely going to mull that one over. Talk to some people. I'm a little lucky I hang out with some real propeller heads on 4.1, a dash ray for committee for load clocks. See those folks a couple times a year and try and suck as much knowledge out of them as I possibly can. The one that I bicker with somebody about is the infiltration aspect of it.
The 15 or 7 and a half, I don't remember which, I guess. Winter is 15 miles an hour. Yeah, summer. Seven and a half. Yeah. You could have more infiltration and. Yeah, but that's the opposite of needing a smaller piece of equipment. So that being said, one of the things that I hear far too frequently from the heat pump crowd is how bad Manuel J is at doing a heat loss.
But I've enjoyed making the comment that Manuel J makes zero recommendations about heat pumps in the heating mode. Manuel J says watch out, don't oversize it so you don't get caught with poor latent performance. But Manuel J makes no comments at all, and it's going to be in the informative, not the normative.
It's not in the mush shell, it's in the comment section. It doesn't say anything about sizing a heat pump. So that being said, before anybody accuses me of anything different, I love heat pumps. I think they're just as good as any other heating plant. As long as you stick to one of the most important things when it comes to any forced air system.
You guys know where I'm going with this, right? Don't blow air on people because that does not make them comfortable. And that's the way I see it.
00:36:07.260 — 00:37:44.150
That was awesome. Well, before we wrap this topic, I just you you got onto something that I think is we gotta emphasize, which is there is an appropriate factor of safety in manual J. There are a lot of very smart people who have built this standard over many, many years who understand that, like any model, we can't know all the things.
And that factor of safety is in there to have good outcomes happen for the homeowner, for the contractor. And it is that factor of safety that is built into the process. That is why you need to be aggressive and detailed with your assumptions so that you don't pad. Yeah, and there's a real easy way to avoid all that.
And whenever I get an opportunity to speak about it, it's real simple. Size the heat pump to the cooling requirement and use auxiliary heat. It's that simple because the opposite side of what could potentially happen here is happening. And I know it's in one of the questions in here where it speaks to the inverter pieces of equipment and the inverter idea has turned into a nightmare.
I thought for a little while things were getting better, but being up there and asked the other week, I'm talking to folks from utilities that are way up there, and they're convinced. Four ton outdoor unit inverter, one and a half two ton air conditioning load. It's going to air conditioner just fine.
00:37:45.710 — 00:38:56.170
It's not maybe one out of 20, but you're not going to get the latent performance that's required. And the sad part from my perspective is in some of those markets to the north, it's not going to happen next summer. It the mildew issues. It might not happen the following summer, but over the course of the next five seasons, the Servpro vans are going to be out front doing the mold remediation if you get enough days in a row.
Again, I live in new Jersey. We see dew points at 75 degrees on occasion. The summer before Covid though, the summer before Covid and I'm 90% sure it was that or the summer before. We had 40 days in a row where we saw dew points in excess of 70 degrees and the outdoor temperature only one above 82 or 3 times. So we had weeks and weeks and weeks of ductwork that was sweating in many, many addicts.
My phone was ringing. Hey, man, how do I get this ductwork to stop sweating? Ooh, you want to know the secret? Yeah. That's why I'm calling you. Turn it off. Because that's the way I see it.
00:38:57.370 — 00:41:22.350
Well, yeah, I was telling people to turn it off, and they're like, that's not funny. I'm like, you were in a class and we talked about this. You're telling me from your own admission that you have flex touch and other flex. When did that ever become okay? They're fundamental stuff that people aren't following the rules.
But in these grossly oversize air conditioners that these heat pump scenarios are creating. It's not happening immediately. I mean, you go down to Baton Rouge and you install crap like that within two weeks. They want to take you out back and do something nasty to you. But in a lot of these heating climates, in these northern markets, it's going to take a lot longer for these problems to rear their ugly heads.
So it's difficult. And when I talk to some of these people and I'm not going to say I do this, but I talk to some of these people and then I go creep on them and find out they've only, you know, I'm going to sound really hip and cool. They've only been in this space for 3 or 4 years. They don't understand the years and years and years of trying to get people to stop oversize air conditioners, and it seemed like we were actually making some headway on it.
And then all this stuff happens. I'm not against heat pumps. I am 100% for the use of heat pumps, but he pumps that are used responsibly and putting in heat pumps in a way that creates an air conditioner that is grossly oversize is just not the way to do things. It goes back to the very beginning of all this. We're going to do a load calc.
Let's do an accurate load calc, and let's follow the guidance that we get from it. And not just one half of it. I understand the whole idea about the peak demand issues. And they don't want electric resistance heat. And there's people in New York that are convinced that you're going to be able to have a homeowner spend 15 K on a system and then go to Walmart and buy a 1500 watt space heater, because they can't have electric resistance because they're scared to death of peak demand.
I don't know if you can convince people of that more power to you. But as long as the air conditioner has the ability to maintain 50% relative humidity at 75 degrees on a design day, I'm on your team all day long. But as soon as I can't mathematically prove that, I can maintain that 62.5 degree wet bulb on a design day, you're dead to me.
And that's the way I see it.
00:41:24.190 — 00:42:41.650
So I'm from Jersey. We do that dead to me. We get a little mobbed up and talk like that about stuff kind of goofy. And we know what good pizza is. Don't talk about pizza and say something like Oklahoma or something. I'm As a fellow new Jersey. And I agree with all that. Hey Ed, what's the deal with manual E?
The eyeball method? Why is it still a thing? Because it's funny. The goofy idea of taking a piece of paper that has the a couple of houses and a cutout and you hold it in front and it says manual E, and that E stands for eyeball. Well, this is something that I came up with because I've seen that, in fact, I think it was doctor Bayles had a thing on one of the social media things, and I was rather gleeful when I got to send him my copy of manual E, because manual E is actually a it's error distribution configurations, and it's from, I think my, the year of my birth.
Yeah, 1965. So it's kind of funny that they were calling it Manual eyeball, when in reality there is a manual E from Akure. And that's the way I see it. Well done sir.
00:42:43.730 — 00:43:04.689
Hey, did you sit on a bunch of different technical committees? I know you're pretty involved in ashtray in particular. What is that like? And is it a good idea to be part of committees? Should we be avoiding committees? Let's hear more about that. Well, first and foremost, I like the idea of
00:43:05.850 — 00:45:01.110
having a say on things that I think matter. So I get to sit in on some stuff and participate. 62. Two is one that I think you might be familiar with. It's ventilation one, and it's not only good for the industry, there's a lot of drama. So it's really cool. Like they're doing the whole combustion appliances.
Can you have us invented ones or not? And it's like the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. So the entertainment value is pretty sweet. But the importance of the whole idea of what they're doing. I like being able to participate in that. I just got voted in on one where they're doing a standard for variable speed equipment, and another arena where I want to scream from the mountaintops.
Yeah, let's have something where everybody, everybody, any technician can put the equipment in one particular speed, and everybody get an idea if it's doing what it's supposed to or not. I like that, and I'll sneak my don't oversize air conditioners in amongst all the the players that are there because there are people that can actually do stuff.
But the and there's some other ones I think I mentioned about the load calques and duct design and all that kind of stuff that again, it's it's a responsibility that I have, but I don't hate it. It's good stuff. A lot of really good people too, that I know. And I get to take pictures with that. I'm taller. And about that, it's pretty funny.
I'm gonna say by the end of this year's symposium, I should be at least 200, if not 225 pictures of people in the industry that I'm taller then. So Bill Spon today is the only person in these photographs that's taller than me. So what an honor. Yeah, for Bill Spence, he's the only person. I didn't have it in me to ask him to stoop down, because when we actually took the picture, I thought I was taller than him.
And then later, when I saw the picture, he's taller than me. So that's just kind of the way it's worked out. But the
00:45:02.310 — 00:45:25.110
one thing that act is trying to do some stuff that I don't know if it's going to happen at this next Ashrae meeting with the combustion appliances and drilling holes in venting, and the one that I've been talking to a couple of fellows, and I won't name them simply because I don't know if what their intentions are.
They're longtime Ashrae people, which I think if I
00:45:27.070 — 00:52:37.740
encourage the participation a standard for draining condensate. There's too much going on and too many opinions, and I, like I can lean back on my elbows and say Ashrae standard 120 states. And this is the way you test the fitting for L or pressure drop or whatever. And I think that's the proper standard for what I was just trying to stay there.
And if it's not, oh well, I got a lot of numbers stuck in my head that it's kind of hard to keep them all straight. But that being said, there is a couple fellows started talking about it. So this is to anybody who attends HR. You're there Ashrae meetings, you can come hang out. All you got to do is give them your name and your email address.
There's no cost to attend the meetings got by your own coffee. Even that they don't give away because of whatever rules that they're real specific about stuff. But beyond that, if you have the ability to spend some time during HR, you shoot over to the ashtray meetings. They run concurrent for the the winter meeting.
I get there on Thursday before I'm tied up from Friday morning all the way through the beginning of the day on Wednesday. And that includes the week. Yeah. The weekends. What the. That's where I get into some stuff that I think's just really out of hand. But again, it's I'll say it, it's for the greater good.
And it's something that I hope to be able to participate in for as long as I possibly can. And that's the way I see it. Hey, Ed, what's one more thing we should know about manual T? That's a common mistake. All right. Manual T is often ignored when it shouldn't be. The whole idea is we got to make sure we got enough fan pressure.
We got to make sure that we don't break the speed limit when we're talking about our duct airways. And we got to make sure that we have dampers to squish the air where it needs to go. Right. And the last part of the four corners of manual D, as I call it, is your thumb over the end of the hose, right? We have to be able to do something so we can ensure that that air goes a distance to where it runs out of momentum, or what's commonly referred to as terminal velocity.
And we get to spread. We want to blow the air, if possible, towards the source of the loss and gain. The biggest part of all that is you don't want to blow air on people, right? The idea of blowing air on people does not provide comfort. Webster defines comfort as not being aware of your surroundings. Residential systems turn on and off, and if people feel air, that is the opposite of comfort.
Now, with that being said, the other big one is returns. People have this, oh, you got to put the return up high or down low. That's all a load of crap, right? If you stick, simply take your hand and go and blow on it. You can feel air on your hand. If you go, you can't feel it. That's the way a ducted system works in a house.
The biggest important part, though, with returns, is when we talk about return placement. You can't have that return set up so that you can have line of sight through the opening to the blower, because if you do, it will be loud AF and no. And I see the grins. AF is airflow. Everybody knows it. Before every class you get a QR code and we have so many acronyms in our industry.
I'm up to like eight different WTF s right? And I do WTF right before 12 because it's where's the food right? And we go through all the different acronyms and sometimes it's hard to keep them straight. But I will guarantee that using that AF acronym for airflow is going to remind everybody whenever they see a system with that line of sight for the return opening and the blower.
They're going to know, Ed said. That is no bueno, because it will. I've used the decibel meter on my phone, and even though there was a straight line between the intake and the blower assembly itself, we made the air go up and down like this and lost the line of sight. More than half was the amount the decibels dropped just by losing that line of sight.
So there are things about return placement that matter. High or low is dumb, but the line of sight is something that is super important, and that's the way I see it. We heard a good Back Emmanuel Acronym joke last week, which is the proper order is manual J, then Z, then STD. Okay, so JS has STDs is a really easy acronym for remembering which order you should do, which order you should do, your manuals.
Hey, I think our final question for you. What's the deal with Skinny Ed on Snapchat? Skinny Ed was born out of my kid was old hockey player. She's a little shrimp. She was quite good, sir, playing in seventh grade. And I worked with a bunch of gals who did my scheduling who were rock stars. Man, I would give them my daughter's schedule for the season and they would.
It was an away game. They'd put me. I made 95% of her games from the time she was in seventh grade until she graduated high school, and loved every minute of it. I was a teen mom, even with a beard. I had a suburban back then. I would put way too many 10 or 12 girls would smelly feet squished into this thing, and we'd go get the readers and get ice cream.
I was the guy making the vodka penny and bringing it so the kids had something to eat after all that kind of stuff. So it would have been too weird for an adult to have 15 or 18 teammates cell phone numbers. But Snapchat was a thing then and that was the norm. Having skinny had Snapchat, and that's how we corralled who needed a ride, who didn't need a ride.
All that good stuff. Now, fast forward ten years later. I'm seeing shots of kids smoking weed at weddings and all kinds of stuff because they don't think of me as Andrea's dad. I'm skinny Ed, and Skinny Ed gets included on somebody puking at the top of the escalator, and they're recording it all the way off the end.
So it's pretty funny. And I use it. I do a lot of heck support through Snapchat of all things. So I've got content all over the place. My QR snap code is on there. I could go a month without it, but I did a class the other day. I had four connections and I got people already asking me questions. So it's another way to interact with people, and it's one that works for me and that's the way I see it.
I also see the time so well. Ed, I was going to say this has been awesome. Thank you for joining us in the Heat Pump podcast. It was entertaining and educational and that's the way I see it.
00:52:39.780 — 00:52:41.820
Yeah, thanks. This has been so much fun.
00:52:44.660 — 00:53:11.060
Thanks for listening to the Heat Pump podcast. It is a production of Amply Energy and just a reminder that the opinions voice were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. Thanks a lot.
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