When you get into college, I’m telling you now it is going to be nothing like the movies you’ve grown up on. The dorms are not that nice, the frats are not that wild, and the professors are not always that mean. In fact, half the time the professors will sympathize with you because the lot of you will often be in the same problems together. At my university, we have a sprawling array of buildings from all different time periods. The core four buildings are the original set from when the university was first a teaching school in the 1800s. These buildings are always incredibly hot in the winter due to the ancient industrial boilers they all have in their basements for heating. However, in the summer they are also so hot because these buildings don’t have central air conditioning. Instead they have these little window AC units which may or may not work depending on the day of the week and the hour of the day. Then you have the arts and sciences complex that is really two buildings connected by one hallway. The arts half tends to be warmer in the morning due to the sun being right on it, but cooler in the afternoon when the sun shifts. Yet the arts and sciences building is often incredibly cold, because it has both central heating and cooling since it was built in the 90s. Then you’ll often want a sweater even in the summer to keep warm. So you see, the really necessity in college is just to dress in layers. If you’re always comfy, you’ll be focused on your studies.
Space heaters and gaming computers don’t mix
My cousin is one of those classic obnoxious guys who thinks he is so much smarter than he is. Now that I’ve begun getting a bit of following gaming online, he keeps calling me to come over and take a look at his rig. These calls vary from wanting to show things off to asking me to troubleshoot. I know a things about setting up rigs, but I’m no genius. However, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that problem with his gaming rig the last time he called me over for help… He had messaged saying that despite getting a brand new cooling fan, his tower was still overheating. He thought maybe he had installed it wrong, and wondered if I could at least point out where he went wrong. That at least felt within my capability, so I told him I’d come by the next day. Well, when I got there, I could tell pretty quick that there was no problem with the cooling fan. I took a closer look at it to be sure, but the problem was very clearly being caused by his space heater. He had the tower on a floating base beneath his desk, which is supposed to help with cooling too. However, all of the fancy tower bases in the world aren’t going to help when your space heater is less than three feet away from the rig! I told him he needed to move the space heater, because it was causing the tower to overheat. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said no, that was what he bought the cooling fan for. The cooling fan is designed to put up with the heat put off from within the tower, no a space heater aimed right at it!
Ancient thermostats need to go
These thermostats in this apartment have been here since the place was built in the 80s, I swear. They are older than I am, and I am not that young! These thermostats are these dials that just have the temperature of the room on the bottom half, and then the needle and the various temperature settings on the top half. That way you can see the temperature of the room–or at least the temperature of the space immediately around the thermostat–and change the temperature setting of the climate control accordingly. These thermostats are not digital, so there are at least no batteries to change, however they are not able to be programmed to your needs either. This means that you need to constantly adjust the thermostat throughout the day. We need to turn it up when we get up in the morning, turn it down before we leave for work, and then turn it back up again when we get home and wait for the electric furnace to heat the apartment back up again. These things can only do one job–turn the electric furnace on and off according to the temperature of the room–and lately they aren’t even doing that well! Instead of coming one when we want them to, they don’t turn on unless we move the dial up. Then while they turn the furnace on, the thermostats then fail to the furnace back off. They just keep heating the space, regardless of how high the temperature reading gets. One time we dozed off on the couch, and when we got up to go to our beds the apartment was 73 degrees, but we had only set the thermostat for 62 degrees. You could still hear the electric furnace going!
Hot water that never runs cold
My wife has had only one dream for the last three years–to put an end to the hot water squabbles. She has been nothing short of amazing as a mother to our two kids, wife to me, all while constantly moving up the ladder at work. This woman has the patience of a saint, but there is one thing that sets even her off, and that’s when she goes to take a shower at the end of the day only for the tap to run cold. Between the kids baths, laundry, and dishes, hot water is in high demand at our household. She has known what the solution would be for years, but getting there is not easy. There is a type of water heater called a tankless water heater that is able to heat water whenever you need it. This on demand systems means you never run out of water, in the same way a gas boiler never runs out of gas because its being constantly delivered to the house via a line in your city. However, the problem is pricing and requirements. First off, an endless water heater costs to the tune of ten grand. Second, you need a fantastic gas boiler to run the system. Fortunately we already have a gas boiler system in place, we just needed to update to a condenser boiler. We were able to get the new boiler last year, and have been saving up for the water heater ever since. Though saving for that water heater is going to take at least another year, the new gas boiler has been a huge help. The condenser boiler works to recover heat that would otherwise be lost, lowering the utility bill so we can put more aside for the water heater.
I am living my dream
I used to work as a chef for a catering company. On average, I’d spend 40 hours a week in a kitchen, prepping and cooking food for events that served hundreds of people. As you can imagine, this type of job, requires high quantities of employees to work together, meaning that the kitchen was often crowded. Crowds and food do not go together, especially when the kitchen isn’t air conditioned. One time, I was on grill duty. Flipping hundreds of burgers, smoke was everywhere. I could hardly move because the chef to the right of me was cutting onions, and the chef to the left was cooking some sort of stew, only adding to the humid, steamy kitchen environment. Honestly, I was sweating so much that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the sweat on my forehead trickled down into one of the burgers. My coworkers and I had complained many times to the manager that he needed to install some sort of HVAC unit, not only because the smoke kept setting off the fire alarm, but also because it was a public health hazard. Food could get contaminated if not kept at the proper temperature. Plus, no one wants to be a sweaty mess on the job. It took awhile, but we finally convinced our boss to call up an HVAC company to hire an HVAC technician. The technician installed a couple mini-split, ductless air conditioner, which he positioned high up on the kitchen ceiling. The installment was simple. All the technician had to do was drill a three-inch hole in the ceiling to connect the condenser and evaporator, and wallah! All done! Words can’t describe how nice it was feeling the cool air blow against my sweatless neck as I flipped burgers the next day.
Dreaming of a heated driveway
Ever since I moved out in the country, things have both gotten easier and much harder. Sure, we get home from work faster now and with less aggravation because we’re not dealing with heavy traffic and congested motorways. Our home is also a lot cheaper–we get a whole lot more space for less money because we’re not paying those inner-city prices. However, with owning our own place comes a lot more work. There’s no landlord to put out the deicer or to shovel the snow for us before we get out to work. That duty now falls to my husband and I, and we both loathe the work. This means getting up earlier, and having to shower again before we’ve had our breakfast. I’m finding myself sweating so much from all the work that the house is almost too warm, even though we only keep the gas boiler set to about 60 when we first get up. But our neighbors almost never have to deal with it, unless its a real blizzard, because they have a heated driveway. I ran into one of them while walking the dog yesterday, and apparently the heated driveway is installed right into the HVAC system for the house. If you have a gas boiler, which we do, it can be installed as part of the system so the boiler does all of the work. You just have to lay pipes for the heating system, similar to how you would heated floors. I’m hopeful that one day we’ll be able to afford a heated driveway too.
Dad was a HVAC tech
When I was very little I used to sneak into my dad’s study and listen to his old music. I really hate to date myself and reveal how old I am, but this was a while ago, and the music was old even then. Most people these days won’t even know what 8-Track tapes were, they were rendered obsolete long before cassette tapes, which are also long since obsolete. My dad was not keen on anyone invading his personal man cave, so I had to be clever about it. The best times to do it was when he got called out at night for work. He was an HVAC tech and would get emergency calls anytime day or night, so I always stayed alert for when he would catch a call after dark. If he was going to get dressed, load up the van, and go out on an HVAC call after hours, I knew he would be gone at least 2 hours, if not longer. Whenever the HVAC repair van pulled out of the darkened driveway I would put on my slipper and go into his study to listen to 8 track tapes. I had to wear the headphones, which meant I wouldn’t be able to hear if he returned from his HVAC call, so I had to be crafty. I would sit facing the window, and when the headlights of his HVAC van fell across it I jumped up, turned off the stereo, and ran back to bed. I must admit it added an extra element of fun and danger to the music.
I really didn’t get it
Living in the Northeastern section of this country means we have a rather short summer season. Actually a lot of folks don’t even bother having a pool here. To me, it’s a massive difference from growing up in a suburb in the south, when almost all of the neighbors had an inground pool. But I know people up north would be a lot more open to the thought of having a pool if they understood that you could use your pool for the bulk of the year with a hydronic heating system. So hydronic heating works by heating water then moving that water through pipes along a surface. And unlike traditional heating which tries to simply push hot air into a space to heat it, hydronic heating simply heats a surface, requiring no vents or ductwork. This ingenious plan of heating can be used inside as well as outside. However, what everyone doesn’t realize about heated homes and pools is that you can use the same system in both places. Actually, hydronic heating is more popularly known as a type of radiant heated floors. Also known as a radiant heater, radiant heated floors are a lovely and efficient way to heat a home. There will be no more shuffling furniture around heating vents, and no more dealing with random cold spots. You see, radiant heated floors heat a home very evenly so you’re never overly frosty. This same heating concept is applied to the walls of a pool, so you can start using your pool earlier and keep it open later every single year. If you hate shovelling snow, hydronic heating can also be used to create a heated driveway which will melt away the snow and ice. With all of these amazing benefits, it’s no wonder radiant gas furnaces with hydronic heating are certainly one of the more efficient forms of HVAC systems of our times. 
Surprise party
All throughout our childhood, my father would always throw a massive surprise party for my mother on her birthday. She always knew it was coming, and always pretended to be surprised, and it was always a really great party. Now that we are all grown and have families of our own, my siblings and I have tried to keep that spirit alive. Every year on our mother’s birthday we always meet up somewhere (it changes every time) and throw a huge party to celebrate the lives of our parents. If this sounds maudlin or melancholy at all, it is quite the opposite! This year we had a bit of a hitch when the central HVAC system stopped working out of nowhere. The system was actually about 15 years old, so it should not have been such a surprise, but neither the AC nor the heating had showed any problems recently. Since there were about fifteen of us there altogether, we decided it was worth it to call in an HVAC specialist to give us an estimate of price and time. The guy gave us a very reasonable price estimate, to them informed us he had a backlog of HVAC repairs and it would take a few days to get to ours. This was no acceptable, as we were only there for a few days, so we needed to find an alternate source of cooling. We went to a local big box store, and bought the smallest, most powerful air conditioning unit we could find to hook up in the main room of the house.
Roadside help
The HVAC unit in my house is 8 years old. When the main warranty ran out after 5 years, my husband and I started having an annual tune-up. The annual HVAC tune-up is a great way to stay on top of large problems. The HVAC tune-up is performed by a certified professional. During the HVAC tune-up, all of our system components are evaluated. This includes many of the mechanical and electronic parts. During the HVAC tune-up, the certified professional also checks our ductwork, air filter, and air vents. The whole HVAC appointment takes about an hour to complete. If there are any major issues, the HVAC technician can catch them during the annual tune-up inspection. Last time we had our annual inspection, the HVAC technician found our Freon levels to be low. He added some Freon during the appointment. If we didn’t have an annual inspection, we would not have realized the freon was low until the air conditioner was not working. Since the HVAC technician caught this problem early, we saved ourselves a service appointment later in the year. My husband and I have the car serviced yearly, and our home appliances receive the same attention. I think proper yearly service is important for many home appliances. The HVAC unit is expensive to replace, but so is the refrigerator, washing machine, and home computer. If my home computer was making noises or running slowly, I would have it serviced. If the family car needed service, we wouldn’t wait days or months. The same should be true for the HVAC system as well.