All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us
once again on Did You Know? The ESCO HVAC Podcast.
So today we're spending some time with Russ King
from Quick Model, Quick Model 3D. Russ, tell
me, do you even load calc, bro? why yes i do
thank you for asking that i do like that slogan
yeah that's it that's a sticker we've been giving
away for a long time and it's very popular every
trade show i go to if someone comes up and grabs
i need some more of these i need some more of
these They put them on their trucks and everything.
And the question I always ask them is, well,
do you? Yeah, do you? Or do you just want my
sticker? Yeah, exactly. Because we've got to
talk here. Yes, yes. And a lot of us say, well,
you know, we mean to and we want to. And I say,
come on, man. We're going to fix this. You can't
harass other people unless you actually do it
yourself. Exactly. Which we have to. We have
to fix this in our industry. You know, low calculation
has always been important. But I feel like as
we're making these transitions, especially into
inverter heat pumps, right, we are. doing energy
efficiency upgrades so now we're changing the
load of our structure we're looking at heat pumps
as primary heating sources it's never been as
important i think as it is right now to load
calc on every job absolutely yeah the only exception
i might allow somebody is if they're doing like
an emergency like for like oh yeah yeah you know
this went down we got to be up exactly yeah no
problem there i have no issue with that i agree
but you know so many of the jobs that are happening
now they're either uh putting it bigger or smaller
equipment yeah they have to justify that you
can't just guess or if they're going from like
a gas furnace to a heat pump you absolutely have
to do that heat pumps are It's imperative that
you do a load calc on a heat pump because, you
know, you've only got one piece of equipment
that has a fixed heating capacity and fixed cooling
capacity. And you have to figure out which one
of those you're going to prioritize. And you
have to know the house in order to do that. Well,
you can't just wing it. You know, gas furnaces
were a dumb beast. You know, they put out heat
and off they go. And then you could pick a different
size air conditioner to match your cooling load.
yeah you just can't do that anymore and it's
really it's it's a big challenge but um i think
um i think it's come a long ways you know since
i first started doing load counts it would take
you a couple hours to go out to a house and sketch
it and measure the windows and all that easy
oh my gosh the technology that's out there today
there's lidar there's all kinds of stuff that's
just it just it it's taken away all the excuses
it really is yeah i agree i don't even know if
you know because we talked about this like it's
probably been two years ago when i was talking
about working on this high performance heat pump
book that I was putting together with the Department
of Energy. Actually, there's a copy of it over
here. There's a section in there where I bring
up quick model, right? Yeah. And like, you know,
what you do to do things right. And it's a requirement.
It's not an option when we're doing things right.
And when we're doing these high performance upgrades.
If you don't have a baseline, you're just throwing
darts at a wall, hoping that you pick the right
thing. Yeah, you may have heard me say this before,
but I resorted to shaming contractors. You know,
I've tried asking them, I've tried begging them,
I've tried bribing them. I'm going to point you
out. Yes, and now I've resorted to shaming. What
I say when I teach these load count classes is,
you've heard the expression that carpenters use
of measure twice, cut once, right? Yeah, well,
they're professionals. That's what they have
to do. Well, I'm not a professional, so I'll
measure once and I'll end up having to cut twice.
I love chopped salt. I can just slide it down
and cut off another sliver. Exactly. And then
the short piece of wood goes into the pile for
later. That's a shim for the one I cut too short.
Exactly. But if you don't measure at all, if
you're not measuring at all, which is exactly
what you're doing if you don't do a load calc,
you're not measuring the house. Can you really
call yourself a professional? It's just unprofessional
to size a piece of equipment to a house without
knowing the house. And I think contractors are
just getting away with it too much. And I think
it's going to come back and bite us all. We talk
about the great heat pump revolt of 2027 when
everyone's just pissed off and just starts throwing
the heat pumps out in the garage. And the driveway
wants their furnaces back. That makes us all
look bad. And so we really need to nip it in
the bud as much as we can. Yeah, I completely
agree. I've actually been working on an initiative
that hasn't came to the industry yet in full
opportunity, but it's very possible. So there's
this project called Connected Commissioning that
I've been working with on. And it's a lot of
manufacturers that are working with organizations
like NEA and looking at ways to verify the actual
performance of a heat pump once it's installed.
And then in that conversation, we're like, hold
on a second. Part of installation and connected
commissioning really has to be, was it sized
properly to begin with? Because you will never
get the performance out of the system if it's
not the right size and right application. It's
crucial. Yes, absolutely. And then people say,
well, why aren't you talking about ducts? I'm
a big fan of baby steps. Let's get him to do
load counts. But we can't not talk about ducts.
If you put in a heat pump system, one of the
main things that affects the performance of the
evaporator coil and the whole refrigerant cycle
is how much air and the humidity of the air and
the latent remove and all the other stuff. So
there's really two big things that need to be
talked about. But if we can just get him to do
load counts first, we can deal with the ducts
eventually. You know, the worst statement I hear
from contractors when we start talking about
inverters, especially inverter heat pumps, is...
I like an inverter because I can oversize it
and it'll ramp down. Yes. And I hear that and
I go, no, you're not the right person for this
product. You're just not. A good friend of mine,
Adam Muffich, his famous quote. Very good guy.
His famous quote is that an oversized variable
speed equipment is the world's most expensive
single piece of equipment. You bet it is. Because
it's always going to run on the bottom. It's
always going to run on the low speed. It's crazy.
So let's talk about solutions, right? Let's talk
about ways that. all right now we address a problem
now we find solutions and let's give some easy
buttons for these yeah well the first one is
training training training training hit them
early hit them young you know get them used to
it i you know i'm probably on 10 at least 10
facebook groups yeah and i see these texts making
comments about stuff that this they really shouldn't
be it's unfortunate you know they might be amazing
at brazing they may be awesome at fabricating
sheet metal ducks yeah but then they make these
comments about airflow or sizing equipment saying
no no no no no we really yeah and it makes them
look bad because they don't realize that there's
other parts of the country that do things differently
yeah and so they'll see a video of somebody doing
something differently oh that's garbage that's
crap that guy must be a hack i was like That's
how they do it in that way. There, that works
great. Yeah, so we need to expose students to
more variety and get them more used to. One of
the big things, and I'm really starting to see
it this year at the conference, is instructors
walking up to me going, we've got to get. design
into our curriculum back into the curriculum
yeah and it's and it's been missing for so long
you know and and design is a tool design you
don't have to design systems to make you know
to use that skill yeah it's a tool for diagnosing
problems and and you know it's a great tool for
diagnosing problems probably the one of the main
tools for diagnosing comfort problems in a house
yeah whereas you know everyone's like oh well
let's you know let's let's check the charge you
know let's check the amps and all this other
stuff It's a design problem. It's oversized.
The ducts are undersized. They need to understand
that. And so, yeah, I teach a class at a community
college. And the division of the college is a
construction management program. And so the people
in my class, most of them are like. future general
contractors, future framers, future, you know,
those kinds of folks, but it's an introduction
to residential HVAC. To have an idea. Yeah. Yeah.
And so we cover, you know, HVAC and the last
four classes, I exposed them to our software,
to quick model software. Yeah. And at the end
of that, I say, you know, you guys now know more
about HVAC design than 90 % of HVAC contractors
in the country. Wait a minute, but this is an
introductory? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So. yeah we really
need to get that that out there and um yeah i
think we've been focusing too much on the hands
-on stuff yeah which is great and and and that's
my weakness is the hands -on stuff but i think
we really need to focus more on the on the theory
and the design you know why a house is a system
and then probably i think the one thing that
that is missed the most is that HVC is a two
-part equation. You've got your capacity of your
equipment, but then the stuff that's missing
is the load of the house. Look at the house.
You can change the performance of the system
by changing the house and not even touching the
system. Yes. So, yeah, there's a lot to be learned.
And I think we're getting there, I think, slowly
but surely. You know, we see a lot of initiatives
for performance installations. And I'm so excited.
Right. You know, because we've had programs,
you know, like NCI that has just been preaching,
you know, proper procedures forever. And now
all of a sudden people are going, hey, did you
know that there's things like NCI and there's
like all these things out there that are like
helping make performance like pretty again? Yeah.
And we're like. yeah yeah you know everyone's
been ringing this bell for a long time and now
it it's really needs to be mainstream right this
needs to be part of our professional development
you know understanding that things things operated
differently 50 years ago some things operated
very differently 10 years ago and so understanding
the way that we move air and the way that we
move heat is becoming much more customizable.
And so part of that is understanding how do we
actually customize this to work properly? Right,
right. And so there's so much in that understanding
of all right in this structure. Where do I need,
because we're in the business of moving heat.
That's what we all do. And so when I look at
a structure and go, okay, I need to add or I
need to remove, where do I need to do that? Are
there places that I can improve that? And in
that. Where did it actually all start from? Because
this is not one structure. It's a bunch of small
structures within a structure. And without doing
an actual load calculation for what those environments,
little mini environments need, and then put them
all together and then showing it, well, we don't
actually have an understanding of the space that
we're trying to condition. Exactly, yeah. That's
a big thing. And the other thing, too, to realize
is... Again, baby steps. Focus on doing a load
calc and understanding what that means. But when
you're doing a load calc, you're really only
focusing on two hours out of the entire year.
It's the one hour that it's the summer temperature
and it's the one hour that it's the winter temperature.
Temperatures change throughout the day. And you
need to realize that things go up and down and
up and down. And as soon as you think you've
got it pinned down, guess what? The temperature
is going to change on you, which changes the
entire dynamic of the house. But in a way that
makes it. because one of my sayings is don't
waste time splitting hairs when your job is to
shave heads. And you just can't focus on little
tiny things. And another analogy is it's trying
to measure a cloud with a tape measure. How do
you measure the length of a cloud with a tape
measure? It's a very nebulous thing. It's a very
squishy target. and then you throw in the variable
of occupant behavior you can have two identical
houses right next to each other with two different
families and they're going to behave very differently
and the hvac system is going to have to compensate
for that difference so so don't i try to tell
people don't stress out on the specifics on the
details get it close you know Understand the
bounds of what you're talking about and just
get inside this big circle that you're trying.
It's huge buckets that we're trying to land in.
It's not these little teeny tiny cups. It's a
big bucket, but you've got to be in the right
bucket. If you're not in the right bucket, you're
way off. And so just doing simple load calcs,
getting good airflow, it's not that difficult.
It's not that difficult. Another pet peeve that
I have found in the industry, only because I've
experienced it myself. is our bulk manufacturing,
right? And so during COVID, my wife and I, we
bought a pretty nice house. It was very nice
for us. You know, 3 ,200 square feet, random
construction, reputable builder. And we move
into it and we've got seven degrees difference
between first floor and second floor, you know,
summer and winter. I'm going, okay, so who designed?
And did you just use this shell design and through
your interior walls wherever you wanted it? And
maybe you moved it up. Maybe you did not. And
it ended up with a poorly operating system. Maybe
in the right calculation. but it wasn't calculated
in different sectors at all. It was just a shell
calculation. And so as technicians and contractors,
we may get called on this call and look at a
new construction and go, oh, this should have
been designed well, not realizing that maybe
our biggest opportunity we have is to actually
re -look at this structure to come up with our
solution. Yeah. And the real challenge is, I'm
guessing it's a two -story house. It's a two
-story. Those ducts go into the first, where's
the equipment? It's in the attic. Equipment's
on the second floor. Of the attic, yeah. So you
got to get - Ducted to the attic, yes. That was,
what you're talking about was my world for, gosh,
15 years. I ran two mechanical engineering departments
that specialized in production homes. Yeah. And
you can do an amazing design. In fact, the second
one that I worked for was a division of a structural
engineering firm. And so they would give us the
CAD files for the structural engineering that
we could overlay our mechanical design to. Even
that did not solve all the problems. We still
had. problems out in the field and so the whole
nature of production homes is we called it the
hair on fire design methodology is just like
they're trying to cram these projects through
so fast and they're just there's so much coordination
that's supposed to happen that doesn't right
and then they get out into the field they're
just like well just There's a conflict. We needed
an 8 -inch duct to go through here, but it won't
fit. Let's put a 6. Yeah, exactly. Right into
that. Yeah, and then you get your upstairs -downstairs
balance issues. But if they would have taken,
at least in our case, if they would have taken
the engineer's duct layout. and they said okay
let's make sure this duct fits to this room yeah
you know you got to coordinate with their plumbing
got to be electrical the framer's going to kill
you no matter what yeah and and it's just it's
a very difficult thing to do and and uh it's
not the good news is the chances are your equipment
is probably oversized And you could actually
downsize the equipment, and then your ducts would
be more appropriate to the size of the equipment.
So there's ways you can fix those things. You
can replace the registers on the first floor
to get better airflow out of them. Yeah, that's
just an ongoing problem. Even when they spend
a lot of money to do a good design, there's no
guarantee that's what's going to get installed.
Exactly. And that's kind of the scenario. I look
at it as no if. So I can say that after 23 calls
under warranty, a six inch duck got replaced
with an eight inch. Yeah. What a concept. And
so I think you're right that that design is absolutely
critical because that one little change that
came off from that design. created a lot of havoc
yeah um and so it probably had a correct design
it just you're exactly right in that installation
scenario something may have been changed on that
spec model wall may have been shifted a little
bit could have been a plumbing it who knows but
for some reason uh an eight got replaced with
a six and just the right place yeah and now now
we're off yeah okay that's good that's so funny
so it all comes back to the right design right
yeah if something is designed properly and the
equipment is select to match properly and the
duct work is designed for the capability of it,
you can produce a very, very comfortable system
that you've used data to arrive with. You've
got to have a target to shoot for. You've got
to know what you're striving for. I used to love
when the Warn team... A guy from the builder
would call me and say, Russ, we've got a problem
on lot 47. I go, okay, well, what plan is it?
What's a plan two? And they say, are there any
other plan twos having the same problem? He goes,
no, just this one. It's not a design problem.
Why don't you hop up there and I'll tell you
what's supposed to be there. Yeah, exactly. I
always had sort of a bet with the builders. I'd
say, I'll fly down there on our dime all my time.
And if there's a problem, if it's a design problem,
we will fix it. No questions asked. We'll pay
for it, everything. But if it turns out that
they didn't follow the plans or they did something
wrong or the house wasn't built correctly, I'm
sending you a bill for my time. And, you know,
my hotel and my meals and everything else. I
never paid for one of those trips. I never paid
for one of those trips. It was always something.
It was always something. Either they just didn't
follow the plans. Back in the early 2000s when
they first started putting low -e windows in
all the houses, the low -e window manufacturers
couldn't keep up. And so they would just throw
a few clear windows in the truck. They'd go,
oh, they'll never know. And so they would install
two or three clear windows in a house that has
all low E. And we always said invariably it was
the baby's room got the clear window, you know,
the nursery. And that room wouldn't, especially
in Vegas. I've probably designed 60 subdivisions
here in Las Vegas between 1998 and 2005. Yeah.
When this area was going crazy. And so we'd come
down here, we had this little. It looked like
a stud finder. We could put it on the window
and press the button. Yeah, and calculate value.
But guess what? This is a clear window. We did
our load calcs for low E, and this is a clear
window. So just, you know, all kinds of stuff.
Think about how much difference that would have
made. Yeah. Or another common one, you see a
lot of one -story houses where there's like a
wing coming off the front of the house. That's
two bedrooms. Well, the way they frame the roof,
there's what we call California framing on the
roof, comes down and the sheathing comes down
and then they build the front off of it. But
they have to cut a hole through that sheathing
to get to the ceiling. Guess how many times they
did not insulate those front two bedrooms. Oh,
my gosh. They'd just seen a solid wall when they
were insulating. Exactly, from the attic. Yeah,
just stuff like that. So it's not always – you
can have a good design, but if they don't build
the house the way you assumed when you did the
design, you can still have problems. was always
fun to find those kind of things i bet it is
so let's talk about solutions like what's the
easy button oh gosh yeah the easy button is is
again training i always go back to training you
just you have to expose the the noobs the new
people coming into the industry that there are
these things that they need to know about and
sometimes you can just you know put it up to
them just yeah there's so much information on
youtube and stuff like that oh my gosh i've learned
more from youtube than i learned from college
i swear oh i i i learned how to build guitars
From watching YouTube videos for about a year
before I started building my guitar. I learned
how to restore a sailboat. Exactly. Someone has
figured some things out that I don't have to.
Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you could learn to
do a really good load calc just by watching YouTube
and some of the people that are donating their
time, you know, and putting this stuff on YouTube
and all these other opportunities. But yeah,
learn to do it. Practice it. For me, the biggest
feedback, and it's all about confidence too,
right? If you do a design, you want to have confidence
in your design. If you're just like, if I did
my taxes, I'm not quite sure if my taxes are
correct. Did you hand those to the IRS? You're
like, oh, that's okay. I hope that's right because
I don't have any money in the bank if it's not.
Right. But if you're really confident and you
say, here's my taxes, I dare you to find something.
The same thing is with design. And the way you
get that confidence. is by testing your designs
after they've been installed. Because you make
some assumptions. Static pressure, airflow, all
these things, throw, noise, all these different
things that you assume is going to happen. When
you actually go out and you measure that stuff
and it's dead on or even a little bit better
than what you assumed, it's like, oh man, you
start clicking and you start getting that confidence.
And then you start, you know, it just... It just
makes you that much better of an HVAC person.
You can help other people. You can teach other
people. You become better at diagnosing other
problems in homes and stuff like that. So it's
good stuff. Yeah. So tell me how we introduce
that in through QuickModel. Sure. So, yeah, QuickModel,
I used the big two out there, RightSoft and Elite
for my entire career, mostly RightSoft. And I
taught on it. I taught a lot of classes. on rights
and elite. And it was very frustrating to me
to teach a three -day class. And then at the
end of the class, you know, the contractors would
go, Russ, that was a great class, but there's
no way in heck I'm going to do this. It's too
complicated. It takes so much time. So I've been
trying for many, many years. I have a blog article
from 2013 that I wrote that said, it's just too
complicated. We've got to simplify the process.
Well, in 20... In 2018, 2019, my son graduated
from college with a computer science degree and
he wanted to design video games. I said, wait,
I got an idea. If you can help me with this idea.
I got a project. I got a project for you. And
I wanted him to do a demo for me so that I could
show it to some of the big software companies.
And the demo turned out so good. I was like,
I think I have something. Dude, let's run with
this. I don't want to sell this. I think I might
keep this thing. Exactly. So I hijacked my son's
career. He's done a wonderful job. We have a
design tool that looks like a video game. We
were hoping that that would really bring in the
younger generation. But if no one's telling them
to do it, if no one's forcing them to do it,
if it's not being enforced by code. You can't
get them on your own. It's not a requirement.
It's not a if you build it, they will come. If
you build it and force them to come, then they
will come. But anyways, it's there. And the people
who use it absolutely love it and just swear
by it. It's just getting people to realize it's
important. And I think we're finally, finally
starting to see a trend where people are like,
yeah, I guess I better start doing this. And
I think it's been the heat pump. That's been
the whole heat pump thing that's been driving
a lot of that. It's made people rethink and relook
at it, and especially energy incentives. If you're
going to give away money to have a product installed,
you better make sure that you're doing it right.
You're doing your job. You're sizing this thing,
and then you're laying everything out properly.
Yes, exactly. trying really, really hard to keep
it as simple as possible. My goal is to make
our software fun to use. And that's a tall order
for something that's not super exciting. My son's
very proud of what he's accomplished. Every single
line of code in our software, he wrote. My son's
a programmer. And he just thinks it's like the
world's most boring video game. But people come
up at the shows and tell him what an amazing
software it is, and it's good for him to get
that feedback, too. I'm sure it is. So that's
it, that whole gamification, right? Yeah, it
really is. It really is. And the visualization,
you know, the 3D aspect. When I show homeowners,
we walk through their house, and they're like,
this is why. There's no air getting in this bedroom
because there's no way to get it tucked over
there. It's physically impossible. They can't
see that unless it's in 3D. You put it right
in front of you and you take away all of the
things that they actually see. Let's get rid
of these walls. We can leave the framing so you
see where things are, but let's get rid of them.
Oh, by the way, if we took the ceiling out, we
took that insulation out, this is what your house
would look like. And these are the obstacles
that everyone has had to work with. during this
process. Yeah, exactly. Very cool. So tell us,
where can we learn more about Quickmodel? Sure.
Just go to our website. It's spelled K -W -I
-K, model, Quickmodel. Go to YouTube, just search
for Quickmodel. But our website is www .quickmodel
.com. That's it. Fantastic. I appreciate your
time today. Oh, it's great to be here. It's always
fun to do these with you. All right. Everyone
have a great day.