What do you get when sharing more than 1,900 exhibitors with more than 51,000 visitors? Sore feet!
When attending a wildly popular show, like
Had we dealt with Diversified Pure Chem we would have, instead, earned money on the returned mixed refrigerants! In the recent past we had to pay to turn in R22 and, only recently, get a bit of cash for returning R22 (and other refrigerants). Diversified Pure Chem is offering more for returning refrigerants than what we can obtain locally and given the fact that they’re in Texas, I assumed that meant the cost to send them ours would cost us more than we could net in our local market. I was wrong. They pay for shipping too! Got reclaimed refrigerants, including mixed bottles? Give Eric a shout at [email protected].
Water heaters and heating domestic water were ever present in every form imaginable at the show! Solar, indirect, tankless, and tank potable water heating exhibits were at every twist and turn. Combi (combined heating/potable hot water) exhibits seemed to be the new-wave, next-generation, be-all, cure-all all-in-one appliance, but with a catch — if you take the time to dig beneath the surface. It’s not at all unusual today to find the DHW (domestic hot water) Btu-demand far exceeds the heat loss of the home. A combi unit built to handle the DHW can obviously tackle the heating too and that’s especially true if it modulates its input downward to maintain peak (up to 98%) efficiency. However, our LEED project is going to be a micro-zoned very-low-temperature radiant home and micro-zoning can cause the Btu load to drop off the radar for a combi unit. Details matter!
Hybrid is the semi-new term being tossed around in the tankless water heater market and it’s good-bye to the cold-sandwich issue when a tankless adds a small storage tank to maintain hot water on board.
Eternal, www.eternalwaterheater.com, rolled out their new hybrid models that incorporate their modulating 98% efficiency burner with a 20-gal. stainless steel tank. Talk about tankless on steroids: A short stone’s throw away, Intellihot, www.intellihot.com, rolled out their 1 million-Btu (and larger) modular all-in-one, self-contained, pre-piped and pre-wired models that incorporate multiple hybrid-tankless water heaters to meet those bodacious Texan-sized DHW needs — like a laundromat for example — with full modulation and equal rotation between the multiple on-board tankless burners. Ye-ha — saddle up and corral those ponies! Navien, www.navienamerica.com, won the 2013
Another unexpected gem: imagine you needed to join multiple refrigerant lines and the work area just happens to be located where an open flame is not practical, presents an unsafe hazard, is not permitted, or you simply want a better, faster, more cost-competitive method that offers an iron-clad, leak-free no-call-back way to get-er-done. The best part? It’s a tried and true 20-year-old technology: http://www.vulkan-lokring.com/index.php?id=22&L=1&S=. The patented LOKRING tube connection system provides a system of solder-free tube connections for different installation situations in refrigeration and air-conditioning technology. Andfor those of you who follow proper brazing/soldering procedures, no lugging around a bottle of process nitrogen to prevent oxidation-contamination.
Factoid: 20% of the world’s energy is used by pumps and circulators! That point was driven home By Dennis Wierzbicki, president of Grundfos USA, http://us.grundfos.com, during the rollout of the newest member of their Über-efficient pumps — the Magna III. Up to 15% more efficient than even other ECM (electrically commutated motor) variable-speed pumps, which are, by themselves up to 85% more efficient than older-technology induction-motor-driven pumps. That’s enough ECV (Energy Conservation Value) to power every single housing unit in the USA for 14 years!
Speaking of ECV where ECM is involved, I was privileged to be included with John Barba, Taco’s director of technical training, Hot Rod Rohr, director of training for Caleffi, Dan Foley, and Eric Aune in a free-wheeling seminar — Mechanical Town Hall — where we each gave our viewpoints on value-added up-selling to consumers. You would be hard-pressed to find five more divergent approaches to the challenges we all face on a daily basis, especially over the past five years — that we each have road-tested and found work extremely well. Tips and methods were freely shared as a value-added take-away for everyone present. I had an opportunity to detail one job where we utilized a Taco ECM Bumblebee circulator that offered a long-term ECV in excess of $1,200. Make sure to join the Mechanical Town Hall at Comfortech 2013, www.comfortechshow.com, Sept. 18-20, in Philadelphia.
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