EP. 10 Hear me out, this will HELP

Going into my thoughts on how we over complicate psychrometrics. I really think this is a more realistic use for day to day. 

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Transcript

 I've gone through this whole spill so far. You're still listening and I appreciate that and I really hope you'll consider giving this a chance. So where do you start? What's are, what's your first step? What are you gonna do? Honestly, it, in my opinion, it's a very simple one. You start taking readings. So that technician that I was sitting at,

Critical pieces for me that have really made a big difference for my career, my understanding and my ability to troubleshoot a system. And I really want to help translate why I feel the way that I do and why I've spoken about it so much throughout this social media thing. And, and just, I train my guys very heavily on this.

And part of what sparked this for me was I was at the, uh, I was at the truck shop, uh, getting my truck serviced. Uh, one of my techs just came. And was getting his battery looked at and we just sat down and we got to talking and he is one of the guys who is entry level guy. He came in, he's doing extremely well on the team and he's really started to master some of our really basic stuff.

And he's kind of in a transitionary period where he's getting ready to maybe look at. Moving on into a deeper side of our, of our team and, and the industry. And when I started asking him about some of this stuff, he didn't have good answers and he really couldn't explain what the things even were. And in a lot of ways I'm okay with that.

But it, it showed me that it still just not enough focus being put on it because I know for a fact how much it has impacted in a positive way my career in a lot of my trouble. It goes back to this foundation and why I turned left when I turned left and right when I turn right, and how I hone in and how I'm able to quickly analyze.

Now, a lot of things in analyzing a system does go back to just having seen that scenario enough times. You can quickly deduce what could be going on and you. Replace that experience because without it, you're gonna spend a lot more time. But if you can really apply these principles, it's gonna help you just take that analysis further and prepare you to really be able to justify yourself in a way that maybe you, you haven't.

Prior, maybe up to this point, you've had issues where you run into those situations where you just, you can't explain the why. You understand it is what it is, but you can't explain the why. And I, I want to help you explain the why, because a lot of the time in my experience, being able to explain the why could be the difference between you being the contractor that gets that job and you being the guy that doesn't.

So cut into the chase here it is about psychometric.  and now, now stop. Please. It's overcomplicated the way that even myself, and I've really put a lot of thought into this, the way that I even have tried to approach this topic, it's overcomplicated and I, I'm recognizing that now, and I think that when we teach these things in school, one, there's a lot of.

Teachers that don't even hardly talk about it at all. If they, if they touch it, it is very minimally. And I think it goes to, they just have a lack of, whether it be respect or it may be, uh, just lack of understanding. You know, we rarely teach on the things, uh, naturally, at least that we l lack understanding for, cuz we want to sound educated as the person providing the instructions.

And so for the professors in schools, this isn't a topic that they're gonna hit on overly. I, I don't think a lot of them have utilized it enough in the field to be that confident to confidently teach about it. And I think that's why it just gets overlooked so frequently. And if you've ever looked at a psychometric chart, I mean, yeah, no one, the thing is extremely intimidating, even for experienced people to sit there and try to deduce all the lines and curves and all the crazy stuff that happens in there, it's, it's absurd.

And we don't need that. Day to day, but part of my point is it doesn't remove the functionality of what using some of the specific features of psychometrics can help us understand what the ex, the refrigeration side, especially I have found. That. When I say refrigeration, I guess, I mean the refrigerant piece.

I have found that really troubleshooting the refrigerant, whether it be a split system or an R T U or a walk-in cooler or a chiller, well maybe chiller is a little bit of a stretch, but one that is processing air directly A system that the evaporator is a air over evaporator. That psychometrics has a place in that equation.

That has allowed me to explain what it is I'm doing to the customer in a very educated way. And that's, that is something that we lack a lot in this trade is customers being able to be given a very educated explanation. And I get, I've got a lot of feedback from customers over the years because they appreciate the ability for somebody.

To explain it to them in a way that has, it's a meat and substance to what it is they're trying to recommend instead of just, I'm experiencing this, trust me. Because for a lot of customers, especially in a more educated market, like we, I think we have, that's not gonna go over well and they're not gonna just take your word for it because, well, you're the technic.

You know, it just that that's just not been my experience. I get calls from my team at times and as we're trying to work through systems and I'm trying to help explain things to them, you know, these types of principles really can help explain, I think there's two sides to psychometrics. There's the design engineer side who is somebody that's got to sit in a lab or.

Desk, whatever he is doing, and he's got to use these programs to make all these calculations and figure this stuff out and see exactly how this system is gonna perform to control whatever load and conditions it is. It really doesn't matter what that is, whether it's comfort, cooling, process cooling, humidity control is really what it all comes down to.

And if you haven't, if you're not familiar with or you're not comfortable with the term psychometric, it is just the study of air in its properties and. Contains heat. And so it is our ability to map what energy is in the air. And it really comes down in, in my mind how I really break it down. It's our ability to understand what energy exists in that air, because heat is energy and how we need to remove that heat, whether that heat be in form of, of moisture, water vapor, or whether that heat be in the form of.

Sensible. Just read it with a thermometer. So we as technicians, we don't need all of the extra hoop law, the BTUs per pound and the enthalpy with charts and da, da, da. I mean, sure there are things, and I have myself done it where I've gotten involved in some really. Serious in-depth, uh, building efficiency analysis and really having to, uh, spend a lot of time giving some very legal and official reporting.

And like I've, I've done some of that kind of stuff. And when you enter into that world and you're having to make those kind of recommendations, you do end up using quite a bit of that psychometric chart, but it is the furthest. From our actual day-to-day use, and that was one of the big things that really helped me, uh, feel more comfortable with trying to apply psychometrics into my day-to-day was realizing that this chart is a one fit, size, cover everything chart.

For everybody that needs to use psychometrics, but us as field technicians need this one little sliver of the chart over here, and that's really about it. And I can put the rest of this away, all these extra lines and cuts and curves and everything else that's happening in there, I can put it away. I can put it aside and I don't need to worry about that side of it.

There's two major readings that you really have to worry about in my opinion. And all this is just my pure personal opinion, so take it or leave it however you. But it is dry bulb, which is just regular temperature. If you can read temperature with a thermometer, you have a dry bulb temperature. That's all it is.

I mean, there's a whole thing on sling C kilometers and why we use the term dry and wet bulb, and I'll explain that in a little bit. I don't think that's overly pertinent right now. That's just more for us to nerd out on later. But the other reading is relative humidity. Now, wet bulb and relative humidity go hand in.

But I think for me it's, it's really easy to see a system and the load in terms of relative humidity. Now you have to be careful with relative, but on a basic level, it's a very, it's easy for my mind to perceive, okay, I've got 70 degree return air and I've got 55% relative humidity. I can quickly deduce.

A general load analysis from that, and that can help me understand what kind of saturation and superheat I should be expecting to see on my evaporator coil, which is then gonna translate to what kind of condenser saturation is sub cooling I'm gonna have at the condenser. And that's really, that's that.

That's all I'm doing with it. I'm using it to help me build a load profile. Now you can do more with it. You can really analyze a space and so, Somebody's having a comfort issue and maybe mechanically the unit's working perfectly fine. It is on par kicking butt. You're super heat, you're subcool your saturations.

Everything's on point, but they're still uncomfortable. Well, that could be an airflow issue. That could also be a humidity problem because, Everything on the system is set for say, default, and in some situations default doesn't really fit that space well enough, and so you can make some minor tweaks. So a rule of thumb in that case is uh, just lower the fan speed.

If you can just lower the fan speed, it'll slow the fan down It. Pulls more humidity and you'll end up maybe getting these spaces humidity, under control, better, faster, whatever. That is a real solution and there's nothing wrong with that. My question to you is, can you actually explain what's happening though that's making that process happen?

And that's a big part of the challenge that I have for you. Is, are you really okay and comfortable as a technician in today's day and age and, and with all the technologies that's coming at us right now with all the electronics and the V rf and we've got a lot coming down the pipeline and now we've got these new efficiency ratings, which is gonna change how systems are being analyzed.

From what I understand, I still have a lot more research to do on that to really. Myself up to speed on it. But the point is there's a lot changing and it all revolves around how we control efficiency of a system and how well we can move heat and rules of thumb. You can use that, just say, well this is how we do it.

But it, the rule of thumb doesn't give you the why. It's just somebody who's done it long enough just, well, this is just kind of a slap it on thing and go. And you know, as a young tech who's just trying to figure it out, rules of thumbs can be very beneficial when you need to quickly. Off, out of a situation, but that's not every situation and I would hope it's not most of your situations.

And so I would hope that most of the time you're in a position to where you can apply a little more knowledge and effort and show yourself to be better educated maybe, or just just have a better knowledge of what it is we do in this industry. So, okay, I've said. I've gone through this whole spill so far.

You're still listening and I appreciate that and I really hope you'll consider giving this a chance. So where do you start? What's are, what's your first step? What are you gonna do? Honestly, it, in my opinion, it's a very simple one. You start taking readings. So that technician that I was sitting at, The truck shop with, and we were kind of just having our, our casual conversation and I started to talk to him about psychometrics and he, he's not comfortable with what it is, what that term means or anything else.

And again, I'm fine with that. It means that he can acknowledge a place where he can grow and develop a new skill. And psychometrics is that my number one feedback to 'em as a starting place is just start taking the reading. When you walk up to a system and you normally take just the return air temperature, that's fine.

Or you say, maybe you take just a space temperature, that's fine. Take a web or take a relative humidity reading with it. Get a psychrometer if you can't, or you know, if you have one and you don't need a super expensive psychrometer or gage or reader or anything else like that. You know, the I carry, I have.

Two actual C kilometers myself, I've got the filled piece, little pin style that's in a silver like cylinder tube, and it's a digital readout and I think they're like 80, 90 bucks in my local area. You can get 'em at the counter of the supply house. Or the second one I have is the filled piece, uh, duct probe that you can put a three eight hole in the duct and slide the probe into the middle of the airstream to get a really accurate reading.

And so when I'm working on a return air system, that's, you know, eight. By four foot in size, I'm able to get in the middle of that Airstream and actually see what that return error is doing, where I actually want the reading. So that's the two that I carry. And actually that duct probe, I don't use that often.

I, I refine that. I rarely need to the little small one. That, you know, lit, it goes in your pocket. It's a little pin style. It has, it's a three eight, size two, if I'm not mistaken. And so you can just find a three eight size hole or make one, and that'll slide several inches into the Airstream itself. And most of the time, that's probably good enough.

but you don't even have to go that far, right? I mean, you, you say you may not have a hundred bucks, and that's okay. You don't have to go that far. All you need is a thermometer, just any thermometer, whether it be the little wire thing that comes with your meter, you can plug into it, or just like a regular, uh, grill thermometer or, or a probe.

That has, you know, the metal tip on it, we use for our ducks all the time, and that's fine too. Just take that in a rag with a, with a zip tie or some electrical tape. It doesn't matter, but dip the rag in some water. I mean, heck, even if you went to the condensate drain of the R T U or something you're working on, just dip that and get it wet.

And make sure that it's completely soaked if you can, and then attach that to the end of the thermometers probe, and then just spin the thing around in the air or put it in the Airstream. As long as air is moving across it is the point, and you're gonna watch that. Let's say it started off at 70, for example, you're gonna watch that as that spins in the air, the return air blows across that, the tip of that sensor inside of the, uh, the mater.

The temperature's gonna fall and it's gonna begin to drop. And so it may go from 70 to 60. Well, whatever temperature it stops at that is considered your wet bulb. And that goes back to the whole sling Psychrometer days and what all that means. But the point is, you now have your humidity reading. And it doesn't have to be perfect as long as it's within reason, close enough, and you'll be able to do a lot with that.

And you don't even need the psychometrics chart, and I should probably preference that way back at the beginning. You don't even need a psychometrics chart in today's technology. I personally haven't used a literal chart in years. I used to, I, I carried a laminated one for quite some time until they started producing really good apps for it.

There's two apps I could highly recommend, and I've used both of these for quite some time. One of them more than the other, but. They're both equally solid, and that is the psychometric app and then the psycho app. Those two, I would consider to be absolutely phenomenal. And you'll find that when you first open those up, it kind of goes back to what I was saying way in the beginning.

There's a lot more information built into psychometrics that don't apply to our day-to-day. So all this other stuff that doesn't. This just doesn't make sense to you. Don't worry about it. Please just ignore it. Ignore that it even exists. The three things that I ask you actually pay attention to to get started.

If you wanna worry about the rest later, that's fine. But just to get started, your dry bulb, which will be represented by a db, your wet bulb, which will be represented by a WB, and then relative humidity. Which is represented by Rhh. Now, let me take that a step further. The only reason you would even have to worry about wet bulb at all is if you are having to do the, uh, the sock meth or the fabric on your, uh, temperature probe.

So if you have digital, uh, psychrometer, then technically you don't even need these apps. Genuinely, you don't really even need them. You already have a baseline that that'll get you a lot further when you understand what your humidity load. You'll be surprised on how the correlation you see, because you could walk up to two systems that are in two very different spaces, right?

But in terms of the design and their mechanical function, they're functioning identically. But one of them may have a slightly higher saturation temperature and when you got go to looking into it, you realize that, okay, so both of them have a return air of 75. But one of them has a 40 degree saturation.

One of them has a 45 degree saturation, but they both have a return air of 75. Why does this one over here have a 75 d a 45 degree saturation? So it's five degrees higher than the first one. Well, you'll take a humidity. Reading your relative humidity, and you'll find that the 40 degree saturation coil only has a 40% relative humidity, whereas the 45 degree saturation coil has a 60% relative humidity.

And it's just little things like that. It's little things that I just, I think we underestimate and I've heard others talk about it and I'm actually, I'm gonna give Gary McCreedy with HVAC Know-it-all. He recently has a podcast and he even outright called it out in the beginning where he finds psychometrics nerdy.

And I can respect his opinion and that's fine. I do disagree. And the engineer that he brought on disagreed with him as well. Now that engineer is using psychometrics in a different way than we do in like the building science people. They would have probably some objections to some of the things I'm saying because they dive into that really analytical side of things.

And that is absolutely a milestone you can get to, but that's not gonna be something you're gonna.  every day. But I do think starting to pay attention to the relative humidity and adding that one value to your, cuz you're already taking a temperature. So whether you understand it or not, you're taking a dry bulb temperature no matter what.

The moment you take a return air temp and supplier attempt, you have two dry bulbs already. So all you're really adding to the total equation is just a relative hum. , but you're actually now taking into account the total load that's being applied to the system in a way that you were not prior. I just, just try it.

Please. That's what I'm asking. And if I didn't believe in this so firmly, and if I hadn't practiced this in my own career so strongly, I wouldn't speak so much about it, and, and I just, I'm trying to convey. Base argument. Now I have personally studied way deeper into psychometrics and I can talk deeper about it, but I don't think that that's what you need at this stage, and I don't think that's what you care about.

I think it's me just nerding out like, like Gary said, cuz I absolutely will, and I know that. , I know that it's, whether it be a strength or a downfall, depending on what the situation is, it can be both. It can sometimes be a great benefit that I have that and other times I get in my own way because I'm looking too deep.

So take this as an entry level standing. If you are going to use an actual psychometric chart at any point, one I would recommend would be from Engineering Toolbox. They have a fantastic chart, works really well. I say it works. I mean it's just a pdf. So. Yeah. Duh. It works. But the point is, it's a very good one, and it's easy to read for a psychometrics chart.

I mean, take that with a grain of salt. So yeah, if that's what you want to do, you can use that, but I don't even necessarily suggest you go there. I, I just, I, I guess I don't just. , go to the app and worry about those, the, the drywall, wet bulb, relative humidity, and you can also get Dew point. So there's other, like a next step, maybe look at Dew point.

Fine. If you're dealing with a house that's having a lot of condensation issues, you could walk around the house and check Dew point. Now you don't need a cyclometer to do that. It goes back to what I was saying earlier. If you don't have any of these tools, all you need is just a thermometer. Piece of wet fabric and it just needs to have air moving.

That's like the old school sling, C kilometers. As long as air is moving over that fabric and you can take your reading, you have done the psychrometer effect, you're getting that reading. That's all you'd have to do in somebody's space or house or wherever it is you're working on to determine that because you could then take that, that wet ball breeding and instead of converting it into a relative humidity, you can look at what the, the, uh, dew point.

and you might realize that your dew point is really high in that space. Well, why? Maybe it's an airflow or an air exchange, or maybe they've got leakage through a window. Maybe they've, they're too close to a kitchen or just no down the list. And, and I, I do think that this is a applicable in every version of our industry, from heavy commercial to industrial to residential to light commercial.

Especially in like processed refrigeration and kitchens and stuff. You know, I, I did that for a period of time and that was one of the things that was in my early days of starting to use this kind of information and, and try to find a way where it made sense for me because I felt like it would benefit me.

I if I just in for me, again, I am a nerd, so there's you just upfront. If you didn't know that about me, you do. , I'm a nerd. All right. So for me, it just made sense that this thing has to exist for some reason. I understand now that our entire industry is 100% built on the back of psychometrics and we wouldn't have air conditioning.

Not to the degree we do if psychometrics didn't exist. You know, it is how we understood what we needed to do to make air conditioning functional. So just that is the foundation. Everything we do and why we do it. Anyway, I applied that to walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers and how that affected the product because where you set your saturations and where you set your super heat and how you do your coils and all of those little things make a difference in how the product is controlled in that space because you know, in comfort cooling, most of the time we're trying our best to demid.

because, or at least in my climate, my climate, we deal with a lot of humidity in my restaurants. That was exactly the opposite. Our bigger goal was to take all of the, the temperature out, but leave as much humidity as we could by understanding what the, uh, what the psychometrics was doing.  on the coil and how that coil was processing the air helped me tune that box better to where I kept more moisture in there and that helps protect the products.

Now, I mean, there's obviously an extreme in either direction, but my point is, you know, I, I had issues with it dehumidifying the box more than I had with too much humidity stacking in the box. And you can go both ways. This podcast is sponsored by Phil Pulse. Guys, if you are still using, maybe you've got a, a system that is just really not working for you.

Your technicians don't like working with it, you've had a hard time with it. It doesn't flow well with your customers. Maybe it's some kind of hodgepodge where you've got several systems you're trying to work out of to make your business. And run as a tradesman. I'd highly encourage you to talk to Phil Pulse.

Reach out to Michael or Gabe or one of the guys over there and let them know what your situation is and just let them see what they can do to help. They're a good group of guys. They're putting a lot of effort in. They've got their own podcast going at this point, and it's actually been pretty stinking good.

So I'd highly encourage. To just, just take a look at 'em, see what you think, see if they can help you. If they can't, then all you gotta do is, is just not worry about it. But you might be surprised what you find when you do. Taking all this look at psychometrics and everything I've had to say. If I have one final thought to give it is, take it slow, please.

just take it slow. Don't rush into this, because I think that's exactly how most of us get overwhelmed and we end up walking away from something that could be a really good tool for us because it becomes overwhelming because we, we just, there's a lot, there's a lot there. When you try to push too hard, too fast, it just goes over your head and that's not a, that's not a problem with you.

You're not too dumb to understand it. The problem is, it's just there's, there's a lot. So much of that doesn't have a day-to-day role for us. It really doesn't, and I can agree with that statement, but as I've stated, there is a small piece that I think does. So just take it slow. Take, just take the readings.

You don't even have to try to do anything. Read the readings. Just build a baseline. Okay, I see these conditions and I recognize that I have that humidity in 5, 10, 20 systems later when you've not changed anything, all you've done is just take that one extra reading. You might start to notice. Some patterns that you didn't know were there.

You might start to recognize that some of these kind of weird issues that come up sometimes that are hard to explain. Maybe you're dealing with a lot of extra humidity that you just, you had no other way of detecting before because none of our other instruments read that kind of stuff. Just, it's just a thought.

M t t, everybody take care of your family. Spend time with your spouse is these, these are. It's gonna be an interesting year. It's gonna be a lot happening, and I get the feeling that the next couple of years are gonna be interesting with the changes in refrigerants. I am working on doing some study and really trying to figure out where these things are at and kind of land, and I plan to try to bring some of that content to you guys from a more heavy side and commercial side, and.

Present how I see it affecting our end of the industry. Yeah. If you got any thoughts towards that, let me know. I'd, I'm, I'd be curious to see it. Other than that, I will close it out. Hope you enjoyed it. Give some feedback. I'd really like to know. We'll see y'all later.