A few years back, I was asked to look at a home with a VRF system that wasn’t working correctly. I showed up and found sagging refrigerant lines and Y joints that were improperly installed.
VRF is an amazing mechanical cooling technology that is efficient and quiet. However, it takes proper designing AND installation for the equipment to work as intended. When I showed up at this house in Reno, I went into the crawl space and found refrigerant lines that were sagging and Y joints that were installed incorrectly. They were vertical instead of horizontal.
Why are sagging refrigerant lines bad? In every air conditioning system, RTU, split system, VRF, mixed in with the refrigerant is some amount of oil. The oil acts as a lubricant where it lubricates the moving parts of the compressor, similar as in a car engine. If there are areas where the refrigerant lines sag, it can cause oil to collect and not make it back to the compressor. Not lubricating the compressor can lead to wear and early failure of the compressor. It’s important to always install refrigerant lines straight with minimal sagging.
And why can’t you install Y joints vertically? Short answer: Gravity.
If you install Y joints vertically, gravity naturally prevents refrigerant from going into that top branch. This means that any fan coils coming off that branch doesn’t get the refrigerant it needs to operate properly. And then THAT leads to under cooling/heating in that zone. They need to be installed horizontally so refrigerant can flow to both branches equally.
With any piece of equipment, it needs to be installed properly or else it won’t work as intended, or at the worst, lead to early failure of the equipment. There are trainings available for each manufacturer. If you need training, please reach out and I can direct you to where you need to go.
Variable Refrigerant Flow is THE best technology for mechanical cooling. Here are 3 reasons why:
Efficient
VRF is extremely efficient compared to older technologies such as rooftop packaged units and chilled water systems. How is this possible? VRF systems use variable speed compressors at the outdoor unit and fans with EC motors at the indoor fan coils. By using these, the compressor will only use the appropriate amount of energy to send the refrigerant to only the zones that need it and the fans will only move as much air as it needs to to hit set point.
Real world analogy: when driving, you wouldn’t floor the gas to reach driving speed, let go, floor it, let go, etc. to maintain 65 mph. It’s EXTREMELY inefficient. You would depress the pedal slowly and smoothly to reach 65 mph and hold it to maintain it. This is how variable speed compressors work.
Scalable
VRF technology is scalable, meaning you use it from small applications from an elevator room to large applications such as hotels and college campuses. We can do this because the equipment is modular. Using various size ODUs and combining them to form larger systems, and then grouping these systems and controlling them via a central controller allows us to tackle any size project.
We also have different styles of indoor fan coils, from wall mounted, ceiling cassette, ducted, and using PMV kits, we can use any 3rd party AHU, which means we have a solution that we can use in any space.
Cost Effective
Using VRF can be cost effective over the life of the equipment. Since the systems are very efficient, they use less electricity to operate saving the building owner thousands over the life of the equipment.
It also uses a small footprint compared to other systems. Refrigerant piping takes up a fraction of the space of the equivalent ductwork of a RTU system or CHW/HW piping of a chiller/boiler/cooling tower system. You are able to place the outdoor heat pumps on the roof and eliminate mechanical equipment rooms, or even entire floors dedicated to mechanical equipment and open it up to leasable space. More leasable space to rent out to tenants and generate more money for the building owner.
If you’d like to see if VRF systems are right for your application, please reach out to schedule a lunch and learn.
It’s no secret that most people absolutely fear public speaking. Twenty five percent of people have said they fear speaking in public. In any sales role, being able to effectively communicate the benefits of the widget you’re selling to a group of people is probably the most important part of the job. If you can’t do that, how do you sell anything?
DALL·E 2024–02–27 14.15.07 – An image of a Filipino sales engineer giving a presentation to an audience in a less spacious, more intimate conference room. The audience is seated a.jpg
As I mentioned in the last issue, most HVAC companies do a great job training their inside sales team on products, but they do a terrible job of actual sales training. I gave some tips on how to go out and get started on getting to know your accounts. This week, I thought I’d give some tips on giving presentations.
Know your audience. You need to know who you’ll be presenting to so you can tailor your presentation to them. Are they young engineers? All salespeople or will there be some support staff? Have they heard of you, your company, or your product? Knowing the type of people you’ll be speaking to will help you tailor your presentation so that they get the most value out of it.
Refine your slide deck. I could write a whole piece on slides.
Lay out objectives. Let them know what you’re there to present and what you hope that they get out of it.
Simplify. If your audience has to read your slides, you’ve failed. Slides are only meant to be visual guides. They should have on them at most, a graphic, a couple bullet points, and/or a statement. They are there to hear YOU speak. They are not there to read slides.
Don’t memorize. You should know the material and the order and flow of your presentation, but don’t memorize what you’re going to say word for word. You don’t want to sound like a robot. Your slide deck should be your visual cue as to what is next on your presentation. Look at the slide and then talk about what is on the slide and get your point across.
Have a consistent theme. Let’s be honest: we all borrow and take from existing presentations. Both internal and external. But at least make it look consistent. Nothing bothers me more than when a slide looks different from the previous slide. Same fonts, font sizes, colors, etc.
Watch your timing. Most humans have an attention span of about 45 minutes to an hour. Keep your presentation shorter than an hour, or include a breaks every 45 mins or so for longer presentations. You’ll lose your audience if you don’t.
Relax. One thing I realized is that people in the audience are generally interested in what you have to say. If you’re nervous, you generally start to talk faster, and the audience senses it. I make it a point to speak slower than I would when conversing. It lets the concepts sink in with your audience and it paces you so you can think of what you’re going to say next.
If you read or watch one thing
Sam Altman wrote a blog post on how to be successful. Sam is best known for being the CEO of Open AI but his thoughts can be applied to any field.
Getting good at communication—particularly written communication—is an investment worth making. My best advice for communicating clearly is to first make sure your thinking is clear and then use plain, concise language.
I think this is underrated. In our HVAC industry, you don’t realize how much you communicate. From a larger scale such as presentations, to even daily tasks such as email, we are constantly communicating in some form. So the better you are at getting your point across clearly and quickly, the better you are at your job. You’d be surprised at how many people love to talk just to hear their own voice.
Sam on building a network:
An effective way to build a network is to help people as much as you can. Doing this, over a long period of time, is what lead to most of my best career opportunities and three of my four best investments. I’m continually surprised how often something good happens to me because of something I did to help a founder ten years ago.
We all know how small our industry is. I’ve had opportunities present themselves just by keeping in touch with people and generally trying to leave a good impression on them.
I was recently at a client’s office and I was making my way around the place and I got to the desk of a young sales engineer. He’d been there for a couple years and he’d finally gotten his break: he was being promoted to sales engineer and given his own accounts. He was talking about how he was going to go out and introduce himself to his new accounts, and the question came up, “What do I do?”
That immediately brought me back to when I got my own accounts and thought the same thing. It dawned on me that aside from a few bits of advice, no one really tells you how to sales engineer. At least the social part of it.
I’ve been around for almost 20 years and worked for and with a number of rep firms and distributors. They are all set up in a similar way: there are inside sales engineers and then outside sales engineers. The inside sales engineers support the outside sales engineers and during this time, they learn the ins and outs of how the sales process works and more importantly, they learn the products and product lines they are selling.
Obviously, this model works great! There’s a reason why it’s copied throughout the industry. But no one really shows you how to call on and service your customers. I mean, there are a few mentors out there that do go over this vital part of sales, but not nearly enough.
So I thought I’d leave a few bits of advice I’ve picked up over the years. This is just from my experience and probably will not apply to every situation.
Find out who is the principal of the company. At larger firms, you may have to go down and find the head of engineering or a project manager. Set up a meeting to introduce yourself and leave them your business card and line card.
Get to know the person at the front desk. They might be a friendly face, but realize they are the gatekeepers. Get on their good side.
Once you get in, identify the key influencers. Head of engineering, project managers, mechanical principals, etc.
Get to know them. I struggled with this part the most. Especially as a young engineer. Most key influencers are senior and a bit older. We were at different stages of life. But one thing that always worked was to find something on their desk or in their office that I could relate to. It could be a picture of their family or something that indicates a hobby. Any common ground, aside from work, that you could stand on, is a great starting point.
There are a ton of other things I’ve picked up along the way but here is the one key takeaway I’ve learned from all my years:
People will do business with people they like.
Think about it. At the end of the day, we are all selling HVAC equipment that more or less does the same thing. Sure, there are differences in the type of equipment, efficiencies, features, etc., etc., but we are all selling things that cool and/or heat spaces. But when you really think about it, if given the choice, you’re more likely to work with people that you like.
So for me, that means being available, honest, and efficient. I’ll pick up the phone when it rings. Or call back ASAP or message back that I WILL call when I can.
I’ll be up front and honest. If our equipment is not the best fit, I’ll give my honest opinion, even if I lose the sale. In my experience, your customer will respect that you were honest rather than pushing to get the sale. Or if I messed up placing an order. I’ll own it, rather than make up an excuse and blame something else.
And the last point: efficient. What do I mean? I’ve learned that another aspect that people look at when choosing who they want to work with is how easy it is to get information that they need. So for me, that means being as efficient as possible. I’ve built systems to help me do my job efficiently, quickly, and accurately. I want my customers to know that I am quick to respond. We are all under some sort of deadline, so if I can help my customer get the information that they need, the thought process is that they will come to me for everything.
If you want to know how to streamline your workflows, please reach out.
Do any readers have good tips to share with fresh outside sales engineers? I’d love to gather them and share them in a future issue.
If you read one thing
AHR was last week and looked like a lot of fun based on the pictures I saw on LinkedIn. Every year, they put together a market trends report for the upcoming year. This is a great way to take a look at what different people think is coming this year. Some common points:
* Decarbonization and electrification
* IoT, automation, and data analytics
* Increased product adoption of technologies such as heat pumps
Toshiba Carrier U Series Launch – Toshiba Carrier launched our new generation VRF U Series product. Check out the introduction video here. There is a separate video going over features and benefits here.
In this edition of the HVAC Pulse, we’re delving into an exciting and transformative topic that’s reshaping not just the world around us, but also the very way we approach our work in the HVAC industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The concept of AI often brings to mind futuristic images and high-tech scenarios. However, its practical applications are far more immediate and relevant to our everyday operations. In this newsletter, we’ll explore how AI can streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and even predict maintenance needs before they become critical issues.
Did you notice anything different about the opening paragraphs? If something seems off to you, you’re right. The opening for this newsletter was written by AI, more specifically, Chat GPT from Open AI. This is what most people think about when AI comes up in the workplace. A LOT of people are scared and think this is going to take their jobs. I understand that. We are naturally predisposed to fear something they do not understand.
Down below, I’m going to show you that you shouldn’t fear AI, but how you can use it as a tool to enhance your workflows.
If You Watch One Thing
I made a video showing you how you can use AI to make you more productive. I even made a AI bot that can answer questions you have about Title 24 requirements.
Links
The Brains Behind 2024’s Status Stove – An induction stove, that runs on 120V power, has a built in smart battery so it can work during an outage, AND it looks like a set of turntables?!
A custom home in Massachusetts – I link to a lot of Matt Risinger’s channel but for good reason, he has great content. Here he takes a tour of a custom home in Massachusetts. The owner is a hands on architect who stopped construction so he could build out the kitchen himself. How baller is that?! And, it’s green and all electric.
The state chose not to require that charger companies meet performance standards as it doled out $1 billion in subsidies, grants and other assistance to charger companies, with billions more on the way.
California is great most of the time. This is one case where it was not.
MKBHD is the best tech YouTuber on the planet and occasionally he covers topics that overlap with my work. In his latest video, he reviews his Tesla solar roof installation and gives his thoughts on the experience.
Not surprisingly, his HVAC system is the one of the biggest consumers of electricity in his house. In his final thoughts, he goes over ROI and his interesting strategy on how to speed up his pay back (hint: it involves installing a heat pump).
I’m a fan of Matt Risinger and his Build Show so I was excited to see J. Michael Carter on a recent episode talking heat pumps and the available rebates under the IRA.
In the second video of my VRF series, I cover the difference between connection ratio and diversity factor. I see a lot of people getting the two confused or treating them as the same thing. I go over the differences and how to use both to properly size an efficient VRF system.
