The small damage is usually something like a drippy relief valve.

Bigger damage is someone leaving the faucet on, and rushing out the door.

More common when the parents shout

“Did you make yet?!”

The worst I saw was mold damage from an indirect water heater coil rupturing.

The water heater and piping in your home runs anywhere between 40-60psi. If you have less than 40psi, I apologize.  We should get that corrected. If you have more than 60psi, lucky you.

Consider donating to those with not enough water pressure

In any case, the rupture. The boiler loop that passes through the heater to heat the water in the tank up indirectly (aka the reason its called an indirect water heater), runs at a max pressure of 30psi.

So now here’s what happened.

The water from the tank (40-60psi) pushed through the little itty bitty hole into the boiler water which relief valve relieves itself at 30psi. The people had not only mold from water but mold from hot steam on every surface the steam can cling to.

It’s one of those houses that I shake my head as we pass every few days and say, “What if they had a Moen Flo?”

On the surface, a moon Flo is simple.  I bet you can install one. It’s like arts and crafts.

See the photo of it installed, and then see the video from Moen!

Click here for the video

Thank you for reading,

Your comfort specialist,

Moe

Everyone has their own view on balanced. To some it’s whole wheat pizza and granola bars.

To others, balanced is a diet full of greens, protein, and sweet potatoes.

One thing we can all agree on is that balanced room comfort are rooms that heat and cool at the same rate.

How many times do I hear that there is a rule of thumb to follow.

You wouldn’t follow a rule of thumb for your foundation or thickness of the beams in your house

So why do you accept random measures based off the Stone Age era?

Heres a video what we do to every home or building before modifying or installing equipment.

Click Here!

We don’t guess. We calculate

Your comfort specialist,

Moe H

1. They are generally both used in the summertime. 

2. They don’t operate near their rated output.

Item one is self-explanatory. 

Item two isn’t, so here’s the scoop.

We will start with pool heaters. The explanation is rather simple. Gas pool heaters require a specific amount of cubic feet of gas, also known as the BTU. Many times we find 400k BTU pool heaters running at around ⅔ capacity. Why? The meter and/or the gas line to the pool are undersized. If you were wondering, you can’t just enlarge the diameter of the last few feet of piping near the pool heater to help with the volume.

Why else don’t pool heaters operate near their capacity? It could be due to the pool pump not flowing enough water or because of the unit short cycles. Think about a unicycle. You wouldn’t do a triathlon on one. Pun intended. 

Now, let’s talk about air conditioners. Ever wonder why so many people need 4 and 5 ton air conditioners? How about master bedrooms running on 2 ton central air conditioners?! I’ll explain the BTU of an AC, also known as tons. A high BTU is like a high horsepower car. It can make up distance quickly. In the air conditioning world, that means you can go from 74 degrees Fahrenheit to 68 degrees Fahrenheit quickly. 

Although, you don’t get the BTU you paid for when the duct work is:

• Leaky
• Undersized
• Imbalanced 

Or if the refrigerant wasn’t commissioned properly. It needs to be:

• Vacuumed
• Charged by:
  • Weight
  • superheat/subcool

So you end up paying more money for a larger unit that works half-assed. Also, if you don’t know the true meaning of comfort, you end up keeping your house at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Properly tuned systems with low humidity feel freezing at 73 degrees!

So there you have it. Two items that are used in the summertime and run below capacity due to errors by the installer.

He joked about a friend of his that was so old he used to say, “At my age I don’t even buy a ripe banana”.

But this man had his priorities straight. 

And he wanted his boiler leak free.

When the clock hit 8:00am my phone rang.

In an older man’s voice, “Moe, this is Mr….. are you coming today?”

I’m here thinking,”It’s hot outside. I have places to be and he wants me to fix a boiler?”

Enough persistence, and I show up.

He doesn’t have a car, and he eats dinner at about 5pm sharp. He goes to bed on time and wakes up at the crack of dawn.

Nothing wrong with that!

So I tell him to hang out.

If you’re spending a couple hundred bucks, you want to see what you’re getting for that.

He was so old school that I had to call him back downstairs because he didn’t want to be watching over my back.

A few hours later the boiler was repaired. We made all the dripps stop. We also made all the items that weren’t dripping and were supposed to, drip.

The relief valve was clogged.

The water feeder was clogged.

The expansion tank bladder was ruptured. 

There was no air vent so they bled the radiators every season a few times…. Another old myth.

Be like this man.

Don’t wait until mid winter to make your heat calls that you knew about. 

Benchmark your system today during a proper pre-season maintenance. 

To accomplish this, you must proceed with caution. The dehumidification process without the proper controls can increase your utility bill exponentially and go unnoticed. 

I had to learn the process the hard way which means you won’t have to. Last week the temperature outside was in the low 90s and the humidity felt like a steamed sauna. My house had trouble staying cool, and the thermostat rose to 76 degrees Fahrenheit while the humidity dropped to 47%. By checking the thermostat analytics (I’m a geek for info, and you know it), I found that the AC had been on from 10:00 AM until I got home at 11:00 pm.

Of course, the worst scenario came to my mind, “My own system broke”. However, when I took my shoes off I realized my radiant floor was warm. Now I like a warm floor, but not in the dead of summer. Since the heat was set on high on a separate thermostat (I’m not sure who set it), the AC had to work harder and longer. Therefore, it was lowering the humidity and lengthening the cycle to the point where the AC did not turn off all day. That night my house was unbelievably comfortable albeit the high temperature, due to the low humidity!

There you have it, if you would like to lower your humidity for free all you need to do is raise the temperature on your heat thermostat and let your AC fight it for a while.

We are watching concrete being poured today. It’s like watching a baker make a cake or a florist prepare flowers.

The client spent a significant amount of money to tear up the floor, lower it, level it, insulate it, and have us install Uponor radiant heat tubing.

This is a radiant heat system in a 125ft x 54ft barn. We computer generated the layout and installed it using Creatherm S45 insulated panels. 

The job costs X amount of money regardless of who does it. No matter how free or cheap someone does a job for you, the concrete company costs money, the tubing supplier needs to get paid, and the insulation and wire mesh isn’t free.

So the cost of doing the job is really X+Y. What’s the Y? The Y is the incremental difference between the lowest bidder and the one doing it right.

Cats have 9 lives, but you only have one shot at radiant tubing. That’s before the flooring gets poured or installed. 

Plumbing, heating and cooling services are not commodities. You get what you pay for.

Your Main Man, 

Moe

Myth: Floors are hot.

Truth: They are warm, if they were always hot, your air temperature in your home or business would exceed the air temperature you set on the thermostat. If your floors were hot, you would not be able to comfortably walk on them.

Myth #2

Myth: Radiant floors require a different water temperature for tile and wood.

Truth: While wood needs a specific max temp, and so does tile, and while the max temperature the surface will endure is much lower for wood than it is for tiles, a proper design can utilize a single water temperature. This simplifies the system and lowers the cost of ownership: There are less wheels on the bus to break.

Myth #3

Myth: Radiant overheats your home.

Truth: A poorly installed or running system will overheat your home. This is due to the pent up heat emitting from your floor long after the thermostat is satisfied. A cure to this is to use outdoor reset, a floor sensing thermostat, or a mix of different strategies we discuss in the training section of TurnUpTheComfort.com.

Every home has heating and or cooling, yet not every home is comfortable.

We dial in on the comfort, and we find the perfect balance of heat or cool. We make sure you are never too hot, too cold, too humid, or too dry. We ensure that you have fresh air rather than stale air recirculating in your home or office.

When you’re comfortable in your home, you spend more time there, your mood is better, your productivity increases, and there is no need for the excessive blankets or sweaters. Conversely, you shouldn’t need to strip down to your underwear in order to stay cool.

Allow us to help you find comfort in your own home. 

We look forward to hearing your comments, questions, and suggestions to make this and all future articles geared towards YOU, the reader.

(VIDEO BELOW)

This may sound bland, however I see this every day. The classic conversation is as follows:

Client: Moe, What do you think about XYZ equipment?

Moe: It’s a good product, however where are you planning to install it?

Client: I have a job, building, business, home, etc.

Moe: Well it’s a good product, but it is the wrong product for that application.

Let’s use the case of a combi boiler or indirect hot water heater. Without putting a brand on the pedestal, the product may be perfect for one application and terrible for another. The appliance may work a long lifespan when applied correctly and a short, maintenance-filled, lifespan if it is installed in the incorrect scenario.

The above goes for anything from faucets to mini split heat pumps, or from boilers and radiant to forced air. Every plumbing, heating and cooling appliance, fixture, and part has an application. Misuse of the appliance in a manner that the manufacturer or designer did not intend to have it used, will have the outcome of a miserable failure of the product and will cost lots of money to keep it running.

This my friends, is why brands and types of appliances get bad names. I have a line I always say when someone complains about a piece of equipment or brand.

There is no such thing as bad appliances, only miss-installed and poorly applied. – Moe

Regardless of whether you are considering a small area such as a bathroom, a medium sized project like a kitchen, or a larger scale location like a floor of a house or even a full home, there is something in it for you. In the coming blog posts, we will discuss how you, the end user, benefits.

Reason 1 – Comfort

Hydronic radiant heating is all about comfort. Below are three reasons radiant is superior in the world of comfort to other heating systems.

1. Radiant heat has more even temperature across all surfaces. With radiant heat, when it is done correctly, the walls, ceilings, and all objects in the room warm up creating less cold spots.

2. It is less drafty. Lower heat emitter temperatures mean less air circulation. Air currents are sped up in proportion to the difference in temperature between emitter and room air temperature. 

3. Radiant heat allows you to have warm comfortable floors. Whether you are walking barefoot or sitting on the floor, a warm floor beats a cold floor any time of the day.

Reason #2 – Efficiency

Why is radiant heat more efficient than the competition when it comes to heating emitters? 

Firstly, hydronic radiant runs on a lower water temperature than all other emitters (e.g. baseboard, radiators, fan coils, etc). This means it is heating water at 100℉ compared to the conventional 180℉ which is the temperature different heaters are typically set to. You save money without a doubt!

Secondly, radiant floor heating allows you to use all the wall space you paid for when building your home. There will be no issue in your mind of “where do I place a bookshelf, beds, or couches without blocking the heat from working?”

Lastly, radiant floor heating, when installed in a low-mass concrete or wood floor, will heat up and cool down rapidly so no extra BTU’s go to waste by heating up unnecessary mass.

Reason #3 – Radiant Is Cleaner

Radiant is cleaner. Here’s why:

With radiant heat, there are no baseboards or fan coils to catch mold, dust, pet hair, etc.

Since a proper designed radiant system runs at low temperatures, there’s less of a temperature differential between the room air and the heated surface, which means fewer air currents. Fewer air currents usually equates to less dust.

Have you ever seen the baseboard heaters on the side of a toilet? ‘Nuff said.

Reason #4 – Radiant Is Safer

Hydronic radiant heat is safer for multiple reasons. There are no radiators for kids to bump into, no hot radiators to be a scold hazard, and there is less air movement and thus less air-born dust. You won’t be breathing air through a ducted system that has surface mold which formed from a poorly designed air conditioning system.

How about in an industrial environment? Radiant heat doesn’t have an open flame as is the nature of many fuel-fired heaters.

Reason #5 – Radiant is Unobtrusive

Hydronic radiant heat is unobtrusive. The heating medium, water, and the tubing hides under the floor, behind the wall, or above in the ceiling, depending on which method(s) is used for installation. There’s no need to have to organize furniture based on the location of a radiator or to figure out a way to hide it. There is no increase in cost or buying a more decorative version, as there is with traditional baseboard heating. Hydronic radiant heat is simply hidden, unobtrusive.

Reason #6 – Radiant is Reliable

Radiant floor heat is reliable. Installed with PEX tubing, the pipe lasts. The tubing doesn’t rust or get holes. The tubing’s inner walls are smooth and don’t attract contaminants to cling together and cause a blockage. Since radiant is covered, it never gets scratched, and it is not painted so it never has chipping paint like a radiator baseboard system may have.

Reason #7 – Radiant is Affordable

Radiant is surprisingly affordable when comparing apples to apples.

When comparing radiant to ductwork based furnace systems, the heating medium (air in the case of a furnace and water in the case of radiant heat) can be routed from one point in the building to another quicker, with less damage, less structural bracing, less interaction from other trades, and less downtime during construction.

While comparing to a ductwork-based furnace heating system, radiant heating doesn’t require added humidifiers. Radiant heating uses small circulators which have less of an electrical draw when compared to fans on furnace air distribution systems.

Radiant heating when compared to a baseboard or radiator system is more efficient due to running at a lower water temperature. It’s simple; heat water to 115°f uses X amount of BTUs. Heat water to 160°f or 180°f uses significantly more BTUs.

 Reason #8 – Radiant is Green

Radiant is green because it uses less energy than conventional heating systems, retains its heat longer than other heating systems, has the ability to be heated by the sun via solar thermal panels, and lastly radiant is green because unlike conventional boiler systems, radiant puts high efficiency boilers in the sweet spot where they want to run. They get the efficiency they are rated for.

To conclude the series, all of the information above has contingencies and should not be taken as face value. Each job is unique. Proper considerations as well as proper installation have to be present.

Thank you for reading! Please stay tuned for the next series!