Well, hello, everyone. Thank you for joining
us again on Did You Know, the ESCO HVAC podcast.
So today we're spending some time with Mike Hirschbach
from Havtech. How are you doing, sir? Doing very
well. All right. So let's dive into some of our
more advanced pieces of equipment in the industry.
Let's talk about some like VRV, VRF style equipment,
and let's help break it down. Back to the fundamentals,
right? We always talk about sometimes we get
carried away with technology and we don't step
back and think about all those fundamentals that
we learned of what we're actually doing and what
we're working with. So where do we even begin,
Mike? So one of the unique things that I have
the opportunity to witness at Havtech. across
our different divisions is the field and our
own contractors or our mechanics as well as our
mechanical contractors and what we're seeing
is equipment becomes more specialized more unique
we have a lot of mechanics who are rock stars
on that piece of equipment and how it breaks
and how to repair that and how to keep it running
long term but where we're seeing the holes is
the the basic HVAC portion, the portion where
techs in the past had been preached from the
beginning and worked their way up to service
equipment. With the demand of our industry right
now, we're getting specialized training very
early in careers. And what we're finding is a
mechanic that can work on a VRV, VRF system,
if you put them on a conventional rooftop, single
stage compressor. They don't want to work on
it. Oh, no kidding. They don't. And it's not
across the board, but it's becoming more common.
So what we're trying to do as we train and as
we train our own mechanics is get them to understand
that, you know, you don't always, it's not always
a major VRV, VRF problem. Sure. Sometimes it
can be very simple. All the way from the startup
process. So we're seeing equipment started where
there are no registers or grills or filters in
the equipment. Yeah, isn't that crazy? And they're
setting static pressures. Yeah, all from that
as a baseline, not an actual baseline. Right.
So the equipment is not running at proper air
flows because it wasn't started properly. we're
starting equipment this is an industry -wide
problem that's always been there but with high
efficiency equipment and high efficiency coils
we're starting equipment in dirty buildings yes
they haven't been cleaned up ready to roll and
then a year into it we have a coil that's concrete
because of drywall dust compacted that pulled
in and with the moisture so we're seeing that
we're we're trying to coach around that um as
an industry we're also seeing some things that
are standard when we're dealing with most equipment
that is bypassed and not looked at in the VRV
VRF world when a compressor is replaced yeah
we tend with VRV and VRF equipment we go to the
roof to the equipment we take all of our tools
up everything you know we replace a compressor
we you know evacuate we recharge and then we
go from the roof back to our truck we get in
our truck and we go home We don't look at the
air filtration at all. The rest of the system,
yeah. We don't make sure registers and grills
are open. We're not checking airflow at the fan
coils because it's not right there in front of
us. Yeah. So we're making sure, and one of the
big pushes that we need to make is just like
a rooftop. On a rooftop, you would go to the
filter section, the evaporator section. You're
going to check your blower. You're going to check
your filters. We need to do that on a VRV compressor
replacement, a VRF compressor replacement. So
those little things, we always have to, one of
my favorite sayings, and I've heard it many times
in our industry, but ABC, airflow before charge.
And we're missing that at times. We're getting
into the, it has to be complex because it's VRV,
VRF. And we're bypassing sometimes the small
stuff going through. One of the big ones that
I see, and I get a lot of phone calls on from
technicians that are all over our service area,
the design portion of the job. So when I started
in the trade, I was very lucky to have started
a company that I had to do everything. Oh, yeah.
One man show. Yeah. You had to know what you
were doing. You didn't have a whole lot of support
from the office. one of the big things we miss
is design we have to know how the the job was
designed so we get a lot of a lot of questions
where we have an end user who turns their their
thermostat has a range from 60 to 90 degrees
yeah so in cooling they turn it down to 60 and
on the 100 degree day they don't understand they're
calling in a service call absolutely thinking
the system's not working well Yeah, it does.
It's doing everything it can. And they don't
realize the design temperature was 75. Yeah.
And it wasn't even at that 100 -degree day. It
was at a 95 -degree day. Yeah. So the system's
achieving, overachieving what it should, the
75 -degree design, but it might be 68. Well,
it's a service call, and it typically ends up
being multiple service calls. It's multiple times
over the course of a few weeks. It's many truck
rolls for contractors. So it's a financial loss.
A lot of loss revenue. It's an unhappy customer.
And a lot of these sites, if it's multifamily,
it's an unhappy tenant. But it's also an unhappy
building manager. Who would be the one calling
you back in the future? The one calling you back,
the one that's telling the owner this equipment
doesn't work. We're laying all the information
on up the chain. And it's the same thing in heating.
And we deal with that a lot. And because that's
not a physical, I can check it with my meter.
I can go through. It's not right in front of
me. It's not right here. It's bypassed. That
is, that's a big service portion that we deal
with multiple times, you know, weekly as we go
through the severe heating and cooling season.
Yeah. And this equipment is built that, you know,
if it's mild weather, we don't have the issue
because mild weather, we might actually be able
to hit the 60 degrees if somebody wants it or
the 90 degrees. A lot of times we're running
on partial load. Yeah. And that equipment, if
the fan cool is slightly oversized, sometimes
magic happens. Yeah. And at that time, the end
user, the tenant, will say, well, the machine's
done it. And it really is. It's a part of the
industry that I think we, over time, sort of
separated where most technicians, their realm
of responsibility. And normally, as a technician,
you're not required to sort of handle the entire
spectrum of what you're dealing with. They're
for that repair, and that's the component you're
looking at. yeah repair traditional you know
maintenance um and and just not a not an overall
understanding of the complete system the complete
system the and that's one of the things that
that we work on with our service group that we
when we train we're talking about is you you
can't get so micro yeah that you're down to just
components yeah and exactly what the system is
Yeah, I've been wondering too, because I see
a lot of social posts on compressor replacements
on VRV, VRF systems. I'm like, man, I know I've
been out of the field for a few years, but the
VRV, VRF systems that I had in service, I never
replaced compressors on. So I keep thinking,
all right, is it really that the technology is
changing or has it been a lack of other items?
So I'm glad we're having this conversation because
when we look at it, it's hard to kill a compressor.
It truly is, especially when we get into technology
like VRV, VRF systems. We have so many thermistors
and transducers floating around that, you know,
it's doing a lot of work to self -manage itself.
And so it goes back to that fundamental, like,
why does a compressor fail? Right? There's only
a couple things that kill compressors. Airflow
and oil, right at the top of that list, and heat,
right? And so if we have a compressor failure
on this system, yeah, you're... Are they actually
going back and looking at the system going, okay,
why? Why did this happen? Can I prevent this
from happening again? I see weekly emails across
my inbox that are, we had a compressor failure
on this VRV or VRF system. It's two years old.
Why did it fail? And that's the exact amount
of information I have. Wow. And so I respond
with a lot of emails going, you know, there's...
It would be a scientific wild -butt guess for
me to be able to tell you. I don't have enough
data. Yeah, there's no data there. There's nothing
to analyze. A lot more contractors themselves,
rep firms such as Havtech, we actually do compressor
teardown. Oh, nice. So we have built the machine.
I know you know Roman. Oh, yeah. We have the
same machine they have going through, and we
do compressor teardown. Yeah. And I will tell
you the funny thing with VRV, VRF is when they
are tested in the field, every single one. barring
a few, is an electrical failure. It's grounded.
But when you actually take the machine apart,
you see it was an electrical, or a result of
a mechanical. So we're doing a lot of that diagnostic,
going through and finding what's happening, and
we're finding the results of airflow is huge.
It's the most significant one. Dirty filters.
A few years ago, we were on a job site helping
to get to root cause analysis. And it was a hotel.
And the hotel, it was a unique design is the
best way to put it. They had about seven systems
on the building. Six of the systems had about
10 to 12 fan cools per system. One unit had 56.
Really? So it was... Not sure where the... Yeah,
what happened here? What was the intent of the
design? Yeah, whose math got off that day? But,
of course, it's always the one where they're
losing 56 hotel rooms when it would go down.
So as we're out there, we start going through
from the very basics. Let's check filters. Let's
look at airflow. And when we start looking at
filters, we find filters that were dated for
startup seven years prior. No joke. Completely.
They were the most efficient filter you'd ever
seen. It was like a sheet of drywall. So we went
to the building engineer and we said, when do
you change the filters? And the answer was a
hydronic answer. It was when it doesn't heat
or cool. No joke. And I asked, and it kind of
blew my mind. I'm sitting there in shock. That's
crazy to think about. And he said, yeah, he said,
you know, the building I left was a four pipe
building. Yeah. And with 2 -pipe, 4 -pipe, you're
not hurting the compressor if you don't change
filters. You just lose either cooling. You go
in, you do the filters at that time. And that
was their maintenance process on a BRV system.
Different animal altogether. It's unique as you're
sitting there and they're going, well, what's
the root cause? The root cause is lack of maintenance.
Yeah. So we do see. A lot of that, not saying
there aren't unique issues, there aren't advanced
issues, but one of the things I remind myself
whenever I'm analyzing data or I'm seeing a problem
on a job. What was it doing before that? Were
we having problems or was everything fine? Because
if everything was fine, we probably don't have
that unicorn. We don't have that problem that
we get to post on social media that no one has
seen. And everybody said, that's amazing. Look
at this. I've never seen anything like this before.
Yes, absolutely. So we've been doing the best
we can to help educate, to go through. What we
typically see is if we have a compressor failure
in the first 24 to 36 months of operation, that's
a sign that we have installation. issues sure
there was an area that we did something on design
we didn't follow manufacturer's guidelines we
have potentially trapped oil trapped someplace
like yeah exactly we have something that way
if we don't have failures until we hit the you
know seven to ten year mark a lot of times what
we're seeing there is maintenance but the reality
of both is there are extenuating circumstances
sure Our group and our VRV team, one thing we
do when we have bad jobs, when we have jobs that
need to be re -piped, when we take them out,
we really... Do a lot of investigation on the
removal of the failing equipment. See what was
in here before. What happened? What does the
system tell us? In those situations, we at times
will do a compressor teardown, even though the
equipment's being replaced, because we want to
see what happened to that machine. What actually
happened. Yeah, can we prevent this? Is there
something we did not notice before? And we see
one thing that I've been noticing. have talked
about as an industry before but with vrb vrf
and the piping sizes and the amount of piping
yeah deburring it's huge isn't it crazy that
people are not paying as much attention to that
as they should we don't have filter dryers in
many of these systems we're just using screens
yep and they're getting they're they're shooting
high velocity projectiles as they break the system
break it off and yeah and then our smaller fan
cools you're restricting some of them a quarter
inch line yeah there there's not a lot of a lot
of diameter there to restrict when you're cutting
with tubing cutters no so we're a lot of that's
being seen on the service end again it's not
the it's not that that unicorn we look for we
all let's face it as service techs there there's
always a an ego a pride um that's very hard to
defeat as you're going through but you always
want the unicorn you want you want that one that
you get to tell your buddies hey guess what this
is my story yeah and check this we'll walk past
the the you know glaring issue that's right in
front of us multiple times because we're we're
looking for that unicorn we we think we see it
as we're going through things but then if you
find your basic issue And you repair that basic
issue, and then you go back and look at your
data. Yeah. Everything resolves itself because
we got back to that point. We corrected that
point. Sure. And the data then lines up with
what we need. And it's very gratifying to be
able to solve an issue for a customer. It's also
very humbling when you realize that you've spent
the time, you've spent the two, three, four,
five service calls. and you've walked past the
basic issue to go through, control calibration.
Yeah, true. We're not dealing with thermostats,
and that's one of my biggest pet peeves. I cringe
when I hear someone talking about VRV, VRF, and
they go, well, I went to the thermostat. Really,
the best term, in my opinion, is user interface.
Yeah, user interface control. You're accessing
that communication network and calibration of
those controls, especially commercial techs.
A lot of commercial techs will tell you when
you're talking to them, they chose commercial
work because they didn't want to deal with the
customers. Oh, yeah. I get that. They're on the
roof most of the time. Running solo, getting
stuff done. Had my ticket signed and I'm on the
road. That's right. And the VRV, VRF world, again,
especially multifamily and schools, office spaces,
they have to interact with that end user. What
complaints do you have? What is actually happening
with your system? And sometimes it can be as
simple as calibration of a control. the it's
it's overshooting and undershooting yep and it's
overshooting and undershooting because it's not
set up properly and it's it's a minute or two
and then they're all adjustable it's not like
you can't do something about it it's literally
a matter of getting an additional tool out to
accurately measure that area that that thermistor
is sitting in whether it's in the user interface
or whether it is remote and go oh wow you're
off four degrees but i can offset you or i can
replace you exactly exactly you can place the
offset you now have a controller operating exactly
where where the customer wants that controller
operating um and it's it's little things like
that listening to your customer what are the
complaints what are the things going through
um another situation that that again we deal
with is in the vr vrf world but We're still fighting
against setback. We're fighting against the programmable
controller because it has been pushed. Used to
it in the past. 30 years we've been telling people
you have to do it. If you go any more than three
degrees, you are already ruined your system,
your capacity. Exactly. And with VRV and VRF,
when you're dealing with a... a full inverter
compressor when you can ramp from 13 to 100 i
want that compressor for the best of my ability
i want it running 24 hours a day as close to
13 as i can get that oil running back to the
system keep that compressor lubricated just let
it roll that's that's one of the the things that
as as mechanics and and as technicians that have
been in the field you're you're the senses your
eyes and your ears tell you so much when you're
on that roof and you may be working on another
machine but if you hear a system that's cycling
repeatedly right we need to look into that yeah
because this this equipment's not designed for
that that's not the intent no so we're we're
seeing in the past probably three years i am
seeing a huge increase in the talent level in
the VRV, VRF world. We've had a lot of mechanics
that were very adverse to change. They wanted
the technology to go away because it was new
and it was scary. And now those same technicians
are learning and they're embracing the technology.
The manufacturers are embracing easier ways to
diagnose. Training tools, service tools. Yeah,
that has so changed. We have, we're of course
a Daikin rep. The Hero Pro Edge and the Hero
Simple Edge have been huge for us. Being able
to look at the refrigerant circuit, to have the
AI built in with the manufacturer's data for
prediction codes. And the AI portion we've experienced
in our own, we have a new office in the Pittsburgh
region. And at that office, before we started
the office we were one of the first pro edge
at a rep firm and we put that in and we're starting
to see some learning data from the ai yeah going
through and that only gets better yeah it's just
feeding it yeah because there's so much data
there a lot of people don't realize how much
data there is it's like on on that on that daikon
side right so i went through uh installation
service commissioning and so the first time i
sat down you know i'm looking at my service checker
and i'm going yeah check out all these inputs
but then everyone around in that same class is
going holy cow what is all that data for i'm
like well that's for reading in between the lines
right that's what all that stuff is for and so
you know Introducing AI to start looking at those
and then comparing against other pre -built algorithms
or the commissioning report that came with that
system when it actually ran well. So that is
going to change completely the way we service
going forward. I'm looking forward to the day.
I've actually been working on a panel within
our industry for like a connected commissioning
panel to introduce that into the residential
market as a universal tool in the residential
market because it could save us so much time.
time if we were using technology to sort through
data for us yeah yeah absolutely it's uh there
there's still a lot of a lot of information provided
there and i think you know as an industry with
our shortage anything we can do that can help
our shortage of talent is is visible yeah um
we we train a lot of people through have tech
last year we trained 1700 mechanics wow so for
you man that's great Yeah, we bring a lot of
people through, and we see some people their
first day in the trade. Yeah. And it is absolutely
drinking through the fire hose. They are bombarded.
It's going to be shooting out of your ears in
a minute. Hold on. Normally, we start class at
7 a .m. by 7 .05. It's coming out their ears,
but they're learning quickly. They're going back
to the basics. And that's one of the big things
when we teach the service and troubleshooting
course. We spend an immense amount of time on
basic refrigeration circuit. And we go through
and we go through the scenarios of restriction.
We go through the scenarios of overfeeding. We
go through all the different scenarios going
through. And then we break it out on the whiteboard.
We draw a full VRV system. with you know multiple
in cooling mode yeah they're all incorporated
multiple systems multiple condensers multiple
evaporators and how you would find that issue
if a single unit is having a problem yeah and
um we're we're seeing again a desire from technicians
because we we didn't really have a large difference
in the amount of people in training right from
years ago what the difference we have seen is
you know three to five years ago those people
were in class because the boss made them come
yeah somebody had to who's the one who's who's
going and and now we have people that are actually
requesting from their bosses they want to be
in the training they want to learn vr vrf because
they know where our industry is going you betcha
and and we're seeing that and we also you know
at this point you're starting to see the the
in full inverter technology with rooftops yeah
100 that's the next big thing in our industry
right now yeah energy skilled program from the
department of energy is right now writing out
what that curriculum looks like for inverter
rtus that's the big step it's in the the fun
thing we have there is uh so we also are dyke
and applied reps we deal with the rebel and rebel
applied machine yeah so the rebel and rebel applied
machine are are a package vrv essentially the
rebel especially and some of the controllability
we have because of the microtech controller and
the things you can do we we now are sitting between
our our manufacturer with diken and going it
would be great if we could do what we can do
with this here from over here yeah and then and
then vice versa some of the things that you have
to do on uh on the microtech controller we're
going well what if we write that program more
like the it's all the same inputs let's just
reorganize the data exactly let's let's make
it easier for for everybody to go through and
they've made uh huge leaps and bounds forward
in in the control in the ability for us to set
up and adjust and really fine tune these machines
to the building that they're put into the application
right you know when you talk about like that
whole fundamentals it was very interesting for
me and so when i was doing tech support on the
vrv side The one fundamental that stuck out the
most because we had one scenario that was like
a perfect example. Like we always talk about
the lack of proper nitrogen flowing in residential
and how detrimental it is to the system. But
that has a filter dryer that can pick up some
of that. Right. We start seeing the problem after
it starts compacting in the filter dryer. VRV,
VRF is not the same because of those screens.
So one of the applications where I found those
basic practices, the like almost. multiplied
in VRV -VRF. It's like when we're talking about
flowing nitrogen properly on brazing applications.
Like residential, like commercial systems, we
typically have filter dryers that's going to
capture a significant amount of that before it
starts compacting. Then we have our loss, and
now we can find it and go replace it. In the
VRV -VRF where we're using screens, it is so
detrimental for flowing nitrogen. We had an application
where we'd had a new installation. It was actually
Daikin Equipment. Really nice. really nice design,
good installation, bad installation practices,
right? So less than a year into this system,
capacity just was running funky. We were getting
a significant amount of refrigerant coming back
to the compressor. So we knew that we were overfeeding
in different locations. And so the very first
thing we wanted to do was... They said, dive
in, let's see what actually happened to this
thing. So as we're looking through service checker,
we're seeing, man, all of these EEVs are flowing
funky. They're just not flowing properly. And
so then we do 100 % shutdown and see if we can
pump these things down. And all of a sudden we're
running at 50 % flow on 100 % shutdown. And we're
like. How are all of these EEVs failed? So we
started pulling all of them out, you know, pulled
refrigerant, pulled the EEVs out. And we actually
found that every one of those EEV points were
sandblasted down to nubs because of the carbon
floating through the system. And it was constantly
carbon blasting the points of the electronic
expansion valves. And we're like, wow. I mean,
you won't see that in residential. You get here
and boy, right there it was. And I was like,
okay. This is 100 % installation. This is nothing
to do with the product itself. We see that and
we tend to relate the compressor because of the
size of our VRV and VRF compressors. We think
that they're a standard scroll. And the typical
mechanic, if they aren't trained and aren't aware
of the equipment. they don't realize the rps
that that compressor spins out oh yeah and and
you're not anywhere you're not in the you know
you're not in the same game with a residential
scroll compressor and the the velocity when you
have that particulate people don't re realize
when they're brazing without nitrogen that is
a hard material that cooper oxide is it's it's
solid absolutely but because it breaks down so
fine you put it on your fingers it doesn't feel
hard right it feels like a powder yeah and they
don't realize that that's sanding the inside
of the equipment um years ago i was involved
in a project that had a forensic analysis and
uh the during the analysis it was of course it
was a legal situation We were required to be
there as a rep, so I was on site. Dyken was on
site with an FSM at the time. And the contractor
that did the installation had someone on site,
the repair contractor. There were 20 of us standing
there. And unfortunately, I laughed out loud.
I tried to control myself. I couldn't. When he
cut the compressor open, when the forensic analysis
technician cut the compressor open, The compressor
was shiny. It was beautiful. And the contract,
the installing contractor literally started running
around the circle. single finger saluting everyone
that was involved and said, that's clean, that's
perfect, that's mine. And the forensic analysis
guy finally lost it and turned around and looked
at him and he goes, this just lost you a lawsuit.
Yeah, it's not supposed to. This is copper plated.
This is because of poor installation practice
and just that knowledge of what the machine should
look like. And that's one thing we share when
we're doing compressor teardowns. A few weeks
ago in our office, we had a mechanic doing a
teardown, and he had just taken the scroll head
off. And that preliminary look, he didn't even,
he was setting the plate down to remove another
piece from the compressor. And if you looked
everywhere but the center of the scroll plate,
it looked perfect. There was no issue. When you
looked at the center of the scroll plate, you
could see that the entire scroll plate had lost
about an eighth of an inch of material. Of the
backing of the plate? Really been grinding that
much? It was grinding that much. And this was
a job that there was copper in the compressor
sump. There was Cooper oxide in the compressor
sump. that's one of my my biggest things if if
we have any contractors that do work for us we
uh we set them up in a station for all thread
and unistrut because i don't want bandsaws anywhere
near where my copper is yeah um it's too tempting
yep and and everybody goes well why would someone
do that when you think about it it's you're cutting
three pipes on a heat recovery system if they're
all the same length chop chop chop and you're
done yeah and and that is one of the biggest
killers it's it's it's truly it's poor installation
practice and it's not it's not a manufacturer
specific i hear that a lot well the manufacturer
makes it too hard and it's this is this is basic
refrigeration yeah this is the way we can grab
a 50 70 year old book and it'll tell you the
exact same thing what shocked me is i had a contractor
push back one side and say it doesn't say anywhere
i can't use a saw so i i pulled out my modern
refrigeration textbook the latest version that
i have on my shelf in my office and uh that version
still stated copper can be cut with a hacksaw
or tubing cutters now it does state that the
copper must be kept clean yeah exactly so it's
it's one of those things where you know just
because you can right doesn't yeah exactly well
mike i sure appreciate this how can people find
out more about havtech uh so our website havtech
.com um you we have multiple different tabs on
that site you can go to our training site we
are running vrv training uh multiple classes
every month. We also have training for our other
manufacturers. Addison, we have a training course
on there. We have a training course on the Microtech
3 and Rebel, Microtech 4 and Rebel applied. So
we do a lot of training, and we're always up
to help the industry. And if you do have issues
on a VRV system or any VRF system, we work on
them all. Our service group is always available
to help. Sweet. All right, man. I really appreciate
you hanging out today. Thank you. It was great
to be with you. All right. Have a good rest of
your conference. Thank you.