Nearly all of them can make scaled tubing layouts, piping schematics and electrical schematics.Ĭomplement your drawings with plenty of on-site photos taken during installation. Some of them can even be downloaded from the internet for free. Today, there are plenty of options for CAD software. Make it a part of your professional routine and price it into the job. It’s also evidence of professionalism that, when properly dispensed, can be a tremendous marketing tool. Proper documentation of systems is not only indispensable during installation, it offers lasting value over the life of a building. I always make piping and wiring schematics for the systems I design, and encourage anyone who’ll listen to do the same. Even if you’re blessed with a photographic memory, there’s no guarantee you’ll be available when it’s time to print out those neural images. It’s impossible for designers or installers to remember every detail of every system they work with. Chances are the design and routing of the heating system will factor into the decisions being made. Long after it’s built, there comes a time in the life of every building when plans for expansion or other renovations will be made. If that’s not acceptable to the potential customer, move on to the next job.
Select what you feel provides a quality system and price the job accordingly. If your customers hear that option B does “essentially the same thing” as option A, but costs half as much, why would they ever choose option A? Why even bring such a possibility up for discussion? Why let people who are usually unfamiliar with the technical intricacies of hydronic heating select the hardware you will use? You know what the system needs to assure a long and reliable life. When it comes to heating systems, you’re the professional who should make the decisions regarding hardware. Even if you wanted to purchase that car with different spark plug wires, chances are it simply wasn’t an option. To some extent, that decision influenced the price you paid for the car. Some design professional made an informed decision for you. While purchasing your last car, did you get to choose between different types of spark plug wires? Of course not. Don’t allow customers to select from various hardware options. If you can’t “see it,” you can’t control it!Ģ. If a proposed boiler-protection scheme doesn’t sense return water temperature, it can’t properly protect the boiler. To properly protect the boiler, the mixing control must sense the return temperature and “feather the clutch” when necessary (by reducing hot water flow through the mixing device). Likewise, a mixing control that senses and reacts to low return temperature allows the full heat output of the boiler to reach the distribution system without pulling the boiler temperature down to where sustained flue gas condensation occurs. In a car, proper control of the clutch allows the full power of the engine to flow to the drive train without “lugging down” the engine. To properly protect a boiler from flue gas condensation, there must be a “clutch” (a mixing device) between the “engine” (the boiler) and the “drive train” (the distribution system).
All because the design engineer wasn’t aware of, or ignored the need for boiler protection. The replacements are piped the same way, and doomed to the same premature death-by-condensation as their predecessors. As a result, all three boilers had been replaced at least once over the last decade. These boilers have never operated above the dewpoint of their exhaust gases. The boilers were connected to the main loop using pairs of closely spaced tees. The loop’s temperature was maintained below 90° F by a cooling tower (when necessary), and above 70° by a staged multiple-boiler system. Each of the 32 heat pumps connected to a constantly circulating piping loop. Case in point: I once visited the main building at a country club resort that was heated and cooled by a large water source heat-pump system.