Welcome back to Teaching the Unteachables, where we dive into teaching and learning methodologies
for professionals like you.
This episode brought to you by HVAC Consulting Services, LLC.
Learn more about JoJo the HVAC Man on YouTube at JoeJoeTheHVACMan.
Alright everyone, thank you for joining Did You Know? the ESCO HVAC Podcast.
So we're spending some time at the National HVACR Education Conference.
And right now we're hanging out with my good friend Joey Henderson.
How are you, sir?
Good, sir, thank you.
Oh, this has been so much fun, hasn't it?
Great.
I had a great time.
Excellent.
So let's dive into some passions of JoJo the HVAC Man, right?
We know that you love so many things about this industry.
I do.
And you bring a wonderful, unique training perspective.
And I love that.
I love when we present things in a different, digestible manner because not everyone learns
the same.
Nope.
That's right.
So we have to be able to give options and create options for delivering content.
And I just love when we bring in new examples of that.
And you do that all the time.
Yeah, thanks.
Let's spend a little bit of time talking about the, let's call this the yes and no of airflow.
Yes, love it.
Absolutely.
Because you dive into airflow quite often in classes.
And let's think about some of the things that we should be doing and think about some of
the things that we shouldn't be doing when we're starting to talk about and diagnose
airflow scenarios.
Yeah, you know, so just a little quick why it's a passion of mine because I'm, you know,
I've been in it 30 years and 15 of that was a tech rep for two different manufacturers.
And a lot of the issues I went on was airflow.
And even more important, it was air distribution.
Oh yeah, definitely.
And a lot of people didn't quite understand the difference between those two and the importance
of it.
Yeah.
So I began to dig deeper and deeper into airflow and started becoming an airhead.
I love that.
That needs to be a sticker.
Yeah.
Airhead.
I stole that from somebody else, but I'll take it.
But yeah, so and I realized that most technicians, well-meaning and installers just didn't know
any better.
Yeah.
They didn't understand it.
So, you know, one of the, of course, the biggest issues in my industry down in my area was
the ever, verb-er-ial, is that the right word?
A traditional sheet metal box with the octopus coming out of it.
And they couldn't understand why that was a problem, because air is getting somewhere.
Right.
They just think we're moving it.
We're moving it.
We're getting it out of here.
The fan's turning, you know, the air, you know, and sometimes you wouldn't see it really
be affected, not necessarily freezing up a coil.
So, but what I was trying to get them to understand, like, so now we get into, okay, so we get
into these scenarios now where more and more, I see a lot of companies, they have a good
startup procedure.
They use the static tips and they stick them in there.
But what they don't understand is that if the air isn't moving around, isn't getting
out of the box, then they'll get a low static pressure reading.
And they think they're good, because the air is just pulling up inside that box like Eddie's
over a river.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So true.
So one of the things I've tried to help them understand is that you can't use static pressure
readings in a sheet metal box like that.
It's not effective.
It's not going to be accurate.
And you can take it in five different places and get five different readings.
Oh, there you go.
So what I began to try to explain to them is that, you know, use some other tools to
see, to show it's a problem, like do an amp draw on the motor.
Right, right, right, right.
You know, see what kind of load it's under.
Yeah, that'll tell you a lot.
They didn't even think about that.
And then, you know, so my, my, my no is don't do that no more.
There you go.
Don't do the box.
And, you know, my yes is at bare minimum, take a square it around, which I'm amazed
a lot of people don't even know what that is, which I just blows my mind.
But I've had a lot of comments from my YouTube training.
People ask me, what, what is a square it around?
So square it around is basically a funnel.
Yeah.
Well, instead of being round at the top, it's square at the top.
Yep.
And square it around at the bottom.
And so we're taking a square dimension and we're smoothly funneling that air flow down
to the round.
And then it gets to straighten out.
Exactly.
And so bare minimum, if you got a box and you're like, well, I don't have enough space
and so understand I have tore out and installed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jobs
in tight attics and tight crawl spaces.
Right.
And where you would think, well, it's impossible to do, you know, a trunk line or whatever,
you can do a square it around and around Y and split your trunk line left and right.
And the distance between the square it around around Y is roughly about two, two and a half
feet.
Oh, sure.
Well, if you've got that for a box, you've got that for a square it around and around
Y.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And the return acts the same way, but we've got to oversize the return compared to supply
to keep it quieter and to keep the velocity down.
Definitely.
And that's another thing too, is a lot of people don't realize that when they start
putting in these high static boxes and bullhead tees, if you've got a constant CFM motor that's
ramping up like a hurricane to overcome it.
Exactly, to overcome, yeah.
Well, now you kill your filtration.
Yeah, sure.
Because a lot of people know that air filters are designed off of velocity as well as CFM.
And if it's going too fast, try to catch a, you know, tell people all the time, I said,
you know, catch a baseball in your glove and a normal whatever, 80, 90 miles an hour
pitch, right?
Okay.
And then you can use a cannon and try to catch it and blow a hole right through the glove.
There you go.
And if you're screaming air right through the darn filter, it's not going to catch all
the particles it's supposed to catch.
So it can't do what it's supposed to do.
It can't do what it's supposed to do.
And especially these really nice latronic air cleaners, well, they got a low pressure
drop as long as you have the right velocity going through.
Right?
Indeed.
And so that was, you know, so take off the boxes, do a square it around and around Y.
The other, in just doing a lot of studying and looking at manual D and flexed uculators,
we know that when they measure the airflow through flexed duct, it's put on the machine
straight and tight.
Yeah.
Right?
When those things can straight flex that.
So, so I said, you know what, if you go up one size from your, what you would think
of your design pipes.
Yes.
Your design metal round straight pipe size.
Yeah.
Just go up the next level.
So I ran, I ate some, and I realized we could get real specific on sevens and nines and
elevens and I'm just trying to keep it simple.
Right?
Yeah.
Keep it big.
So, you know, I never, I stopped running sixes.
So I ran all eight inch flex supplies with a hard metal trunk line.
And anytime you take a turn with flex, just put a hard elbow, you know, stay away from
the kink flex.
Right.
Smooth it out.
Right.
So every run I would order two elbows.
Right.
One for the takeoff.
One horizontal, one vertical.
Right.
So if I came off my trunk line straight and tight, okay, I didn't need an elbow.
Yeah.
But I had an elbow on every single floor boot coming out or every ceiling register.
Absolutely.
Going in.
Yep.
And then we avoided the kink and then the, you know, the restrictions.
Sure.
If you do that, take your return flex and then remember return is supposed to be bigger
anyway to keep that noise down and keep the velocity down.
So a lot of guys would do a, they would come out with a 16 inch pipe and then they would
wire it off to two 14 flexes.
Well that'd be like reducing it down to two 12 inch hard pipe.
I see.
So I said keep the same size flex.
So it goes 16 hard pipe to two 16 flexes.
And now that's equivalent as if you did go to two 14 hard pipes.
Okay.
Yeah, absolutely.
I see where you're going with that.
You know, a lot of people don't realize the restriction rate of flexed up in comparison
to what we typically calculated with metal.
And the bigger the flex, the less airflow capacity it has because of the ridges.
Right.
Absolutely.
Even if you pull it straight and tight and I tried to pull it off the other side.
Yeah.
So tight, but still you stick your hand in there.
Yeah.
There's still turbulence.
Big deep violence and it causes the valleys cause the turbulence and you got to account
for that.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
That's a great perspective to sit and look at is, you know, it's a good time to challenge
some of the norms of the industry.
Isn't it?
I love to give this illustration and someday I'm going to create this in real world.
But you know, if you took, I always say like, you know, the difference between a bullhead
T and a Y, an idea of how the air flows.
I always think of air as a bunch of cars moving through the ductwork.
Yeah, there you go.
It's just a big old highway across the show.
Yeah.
You can visualize that very easily.
Yeah.
So go to your look, you know, I love putt putt.
So you go to putt putt and you go to that one course and it's a straight shot down the
middle and then you hit a wall and you got to go left or right.
Yep.
So if you hit that wall straight on the ball's coming right back at you.
Right.
Now you go to the next course and it's got the little V. Yeah.
Yeah.
So the V zoom, you know, it's going to go somewhere.
So now go to that same course, get you a 55 gallon bucket of golf balls.
All right.
And just pour them out down that straight one.
And most of them are going to come bouncing right back at you.
Beat on each other.
Beat on each other and all that.
Then if you go to the other course, which has got the V in it, pour out that same bucket
of golf, those golf balls and they will smoothly go left and right.
You know, there you go.
And that's the way air moves through a duct work, you know, and just think about it.
A box is nothing but a traffic jam.
That's all it is.
You know, but if you can do the straight run like a tree trunk, or you can do the splitter
left and right, now you'll get smoother air, better readings, better performance.
Yeah, absolutely.
We think about that square box and all we're doing is just pushing pressure into a container
and trying to give it a place to relieve its pressure.
Right, right.
I said, where does a plumber take a two inch water pipe and run it into a box under your
house and then just do pecs everywhere, willy-nilly, you know, anywhere it goes?
We know that won't work.
Yeah, right.
We know we need a straight main and you've got the hard turns coming off of it for your
hot and cold.
Air flows the same way.
It's just another fluid.
Yeah, it is.
We're still moving an object.
Yeah.
Yeah, we don't realize it.
But I mean, there's that stuff.
Absolutely.
Gases in there that have physical properties to it.
Yeah, yeah.
Like density.
We just don't even power energy companies, I've had to explain to them that you may be
doing static pressure and thinking you get 0.5, you're perfect, but would you ever want
to start out a system at its maximum radiostatic pressure?
Exactly.
That's a crazy thing to think about in our industry.
Yeah, there's no room for dirt.
Yeah, I get that all the time.
And unfortunately, it's become like the norm even for people who don't test.
Yeah, right.
I bought a new home.
I bought a brand new home.
It's been for three years now.
Had seven degree difference between first floor and second floor.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
So I raised my hand up and tried not to tell them what I do.
Hey, can you guys come back and double check my duct work for me?
I'd really love for you to.
Yeah.
A few more calls.
Quite a few more.
Oh yeah.
They got it down a couple of degrees.
And I just happened to be walking by and I go, hey guys, I hate to be one of them homeowner
YouTuber guys, but I heard that I ought to have my static pressure checked on a system
if I'm having problems like this.
Do you know what it is?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, you're good.
You're a half inch static.
That's right.
Oh yeah.
Where's your manometer?
I wanted to call him out so bad.
I was like, you know what?
I'm going to ride this sucker.
That's right.
So 23 service calls later, we finally walked away to happy machine.
23.
Well, and you know, another thing you mentioned too is that it's not just overall static.
It's where is the static?
Where's it hiding?
Yeah, where's the rest in that?
Like somebody says, well, I got 0.5.
I said, well, yeah, but what if 0.4 was on the return?
You don't want that.
You'll pull water off the coil.
Your filters won't work.
You drink.
Oh, don't get me started on drain lines and static pressure.
Because I went to a lot of terrible site visits and the big M word was all over the stuff
and it was all because the drain wasn't working because the static was too high in return.
Absolutely.
I've seen too many air handlers with ruined motors and all you gotta do is take a cover
off and you look inside and go, well, I don't even have to get my tools out yet.
I can tell you what's going on in this duct system.
When you see splattered stuff all over the floor housing, trust me, it's been going on
all over.
Yeah.
Your drain is a pretty hefty return at that.
Yes, it is.
It's got enough velocity to pull water.
That's right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And you can't, you know, and don't do the J traps anymore.
Yeah.
Those are too shallow.
I mean, not the J traps, the P traps.
The big P's.
Yeah.
Do the deep J's like the easy trap has got the perfect dimension.
Yeah, those are really cool.
I want to have them.
Yeah.
I'm a big fan of those.
Yeah.
But you actually see what's going on.
They've got plenty of room.
It holds a nice deep pocket.
Yeah.
So a great training video, which I would like to recreate.
You know, it's an old quality, but a guy had, um, clear J traps, deep traps, and clear shallow
traps.
And he put different filters in the air handler, and he put food dye in the water so you can
watch the water literally suck itself back up in the air.
Absolutely.
And you can actually sit and watch the actual static pressures in the process.
Yes.
See who pulls from what.
Yeah.
I have found a vendor of clear PVC that I saw in a couple of shows and I'm going to
build it.
and you can watch that order just back up,
get stuff right back in there.
That's some entertainment right there.
Yeah, because I can, I visually,
I see exactly what you're going for,
go to that, Matt.
That's absolutely a perfect demonstration.
And there's another, I'll do a shout out
if somebody can help me.
There is a, I've got a copy of it.
It is a very, very old black and white smack in a video
where they built a Pixie class duck system.
And they designed a bubble generator where the bubbles,
they literally had to create their own composition
of bubbles, the bubbles have the density of the air
so they float in the air stream
and they elongate when the air is straight
and they turbulence when there's turbulent air,
they put a strobe light on it
and you can see all the air, boom, boom.
And then they change out different fittings
on the duck work.
Yeah, just to see the turbulence.
And I've got an old copy of it.
I called smack now, found an engineer who said,
oh, that thing is in a closet somewhere.
I said, I want it.
Can I come on?
I want it.
Let me sort through that closet for you.
I will buy it.
I will build it.
But apparently it's all gone now.
I think if not, I want it back.
And I would like to recreate that because-
It's really cool.
Seeing is believing.
Absolutely.
And people need to see what's happening
inside that duck work.
Yeah, I completely agree.
Awesome.
Oh man, I've had a lot of fun.
You had fun?
Oh, absolutely.
I love this event.
It's great, you know, getting to know other guys
and connecting with everybody
and the amount of information that's available now is wonderful.
It's amazing.
I think we've got another class getting out.
I see people and hear the voices.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
We'll wrap it up.
All right, so Joey, how can people connect with you
if they're wanting to learn more about what you're doing
out here in the training world?
Well, if you just Google Joey Henderson,
Jojo the HVAC man, you'll come up with my YouTube link
and you'll come up with my website.
And I got 15, 20 minute videos on YouTube channel
and I'm gonna be adding some more content here pretty soon.
Love it.
Thank you, my friend.
It's great hanging out.
Thank you, nice talking to you.
See you later.
You can watch hetaihito.com