We will have an open discussion of readings to take during a system commissioning, what they mean and how to use the latest tools and software to take them. We MAY also be joined by MeasureQuick founder Jim Bergmann as well as taking your calls.
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and find our handy calculators at https://www.hvacrschool.com/
So Jim thanks for joining us, what we're gon na do today is talk about commissioning, specifically how we're using commissioning in you know, kind of a typical residential AC type of environment. There are obviously other applications for measure, quick in combustion analysis and some other things as well, which we'll go through some of the other tests and modes that you can do. But first off before we do that. I think, when you initially designed to measure quick when you initially built it, were you thinking in terms of system commissioning or were you thinking more in terms of system, diagnosis.
Realistically, my hope, my whole thought was commissioning from from day one, because if you don't get the system commissioned correctly, you really can't do much of a good diagnostic right. I mean it's, it's all about. Does each system sort of has its own little personality? So when you, you know it has on line set and that's on stock system has its own electrical and and once you once you get it you know commissioned properly, then you can really really do good diagnostics and that's part of what benchmarking is, which I'm gon Na go, I'm gon na go down and you guys can actually see. I've got an indicator that I move around the screen.
So when I click something that blue indicator comes on, which is actually a really nice feature, I'm gon na show you how to turn that on quickly on measure quick, when you go into settings, you go down to general app settings. These are one of the first things I would suggest doing. I turn on show touch indicators and then also keep screen awake. I ran into a lot of issues when I allowed the screen to shut down, and then I've got loaded in here.
The AC normal operation, which just makes us, gives us kind of a basic set of data to work on which is going to be what you're normally gon na see. If you Commission, a you know a piece of equipment under normal operating conditions, so we're gon na we're gon na go through some of that, but explain what a benchmark is for people who maybe don't know what that isn't. Measure quick and I'm gon na I'm gon na open that up too alright, so a benchmark. You know I have to get the system completely commissioned you go through and you you know.
You got your your air flow side. You get your superheat set. Your sub cooling set whatever, however, you've chosen that system. It's just simply a calculation of all the design temperature differences for the evaporator for the condenser, we record the total external static pressure and we record the superheat of the sub cooling.
Primarily, I kind of TXV system will record a sub cooling because there's a range of superheat and then we use that data going forward to test the system. So when we store that benchmark in the cloud anybody coming out from your company is going to know exactly how that system was set up and exactly how it's supposed to work yeah, and that reason why I bring that up right off. The top is because I think, some people, when they think of the commissioning it's not just a matter of doing a good, solid report on how the equipment is working though it is that it's also so that way, future technicians who show up on that site, they're Gon na have something to go off of because there's a couple different pieces of data that once you set in that benchmark, it locks it in and just to show you again on this once we got everything set up once we have everything the way we want It we would hit this little plus sign and that allows us to either save a snapshot, which is so that we can kind of show how a system is working through its through the different changes. We're making say if I you know, show up and it's got a problem with it. I could save a snapshot and then make a change and then compare those two snapshots against each other, but a benchmark would be a permanent sort of storage of this is this piece of equipment when it's working properly so that now, two years from now, when a Technician comes back. He can compare against that initial benchmark and to me, that's really important when you think about commissioning, because it's more than just just you know making a pretty report that looks nice yeah it's if we really get into the design of equipment and we're. Realistically, I expecting the airflow, you know, like maybe 375 CFM per ton, to get the latent sense. It'll split right or you know, maybe you've got to add additional refrigerant charge because you have got a lot of links and left on the line set or whatever the conditions might be.
You know we have. We have a starting point, which is you know. What's on the manufacturers label, but if you really want to hone in that piece of equipments, you know ideally tuned and the benchmark is a way to sort of document that and then going forward. You don't have everybody tweaking the system to to their to what they think is the right way that it should operate.
It were just basically going forward what it allows. Everybody near company is using the same baseline for performance, and everybody is understand, then very very thoroughly. How that equipments supposed to run and everybody's, taking it back to that benchmark every time that it's serviced right, so it just makes it a lot easier and then non-evasive system testing also becomes very, very not only possible, but very practical. When we know we have that benchmark, yeah and so another thing here and we're not gon na spend a lot of time on this, but when you're setting up a tool, one really nice thing with this is that you can go into your toolbox.
You set up a Bluetooth tool and then, when that data comes out of a Bluetooth tool, it's going to show you that that data came from a Bluetooth tool, which is great, because that confirms that it's not just pencil whipped in place, which we know that that Happens in our industry all the time, and so the ability to see okay, this static pressure measurement came directly from you know this field piece probe that I'm holding up. That tells you that it's not just somebody putting in point five inches of static, but that it was actually a measurement taken and it's much more difficult to game a real-time measurement taken out of a Bluetooth tool than it is. You know some something somebody writes in which to me is is critical, that all these kind of these pieces all come together and it makes this commissioning different than somebody who previously filled out. You know a piece of paper and just wrote down what, but you know the boss wants to see Lucy Jim nope. I was just saying such amazing things that you disagree yeah. It's rare that it's okay break-in at completely. What is this? What is this software for? Again, yeah fair enough all right, so one thing that I want to show you quickly when we're looking at sort of this main screen right off the bat. We have some really key things that are some of the most important regular things we have to know about a of equipment.
First off. What's the refrigerant super important? If we want to change the refrigerant, all we do is tap the refrigerant. So that's really simple. The next is: what is your, what is your baseline CFM per ton now again? A lot of this is normalized based on the equipment nominal tonnage, as we know, just because a manufacturer says that something is the three ton unit.
It's got a thirty six in the model number that doesn't mean that that is always it going to be exactly three tons and so without knowing the exact data from your manufacturer. There's gon na be a little bit of guesswork here, but it's much better than what a technicians gon na do by just winging it, and so this is one of the first things that I really like about measure quick is that it has built in 350 CFM Per ton for a humid climate, which is what we're in and 400 CFM for a standard climate and then 450 for a dry climate, and you maybe even a little more than that in some super dry climates. But it doesn't. We find that it doesn't make as much of a difference as you think, but what you saw there - and I just did this just so you could see it - is that the targets changed.
So when I went from 400 CFM per ton, you see the green target up here on the on the blue gauge. Here it changed from higher measurement to a lower target measurement, because our target air flow has changed so you're just wanting to show that quickly and so in our market we would want 350 CFM per ton. Anything you want to mention about that. No I mean it's.
That's that's really important that when we benchmark it we're going to get the exact airflow right, because again, this thing is is when you, when you install a piece of equipment, it's gon na operate in in conjunction with the weights that hooked up. So if you got a duct system that you engineered for this thing and you're not going to certainly get exactly 400 CFM per ton, it it may be 405, it may be 390, maybe something between there and you're gon na end up selecting the best speed to Get the best performance that you can out of that piece of equipment and performance is a balance between obviously sensible cooling comfort, which is humidity removal. Alright, the you know we we do have to get it all set up initially and then once we get it set and we'd benchmark the system, we're good to go. Yeah - and one thing I like about this - is that we've got the Justin information here on the screen, so technicians, who want to understand more about why, with a design, airflow change under different circumstances, it's got that information right there for you to look into, and so I'm just going through the most basic things right off the bat and then we're gon na actually go through a workflow here, but just wanting to show you what's on this main screen. So obviously we have our suction saturation temperature right here. Just like you would see on a normal gage, you have your pressure and PSIG in both your liquid side and on your suction side, and then we've got our seer rating and that's one thing that I think some people maybe struggle with a little bit talk a Little bit about this screen for seer rating, because we've got standard, we've got Lenox, we've got custom. What? Why does this matter and is it important that we really nail this seer rating yeah? Well, let me let me back up before you before. I answer that question because I do want you did miss one thing on nothing on the saturation temperature: okay, well by measure quick, yeah measure, quick.
We actually show the center of the glide or blended refrigerants and for pure refrigerants that actually is a saturation temperature so because we're calculating coil temperatures, so we can calculate targets. We show the center of the guide, which anybody doing like refrigeration work. They want to see what the center of the guide is on a refrigerant and then we use dew point bubble point respectively for the for the superheat and subcooling calculation. So when you look at a measure quick when you look at the saturation temperature on measure quick, it's not going to agree with your Danfoss slider or something like that, because we're calculating the the exact center for the condenser and then a weighted Center for the evaporator Coil and that's actually there's a whole piece on that Emerson wrote there's really good PowerPoint they put together.
If you just search Emerson center of the center of the center of the glide, I think you'll find it on online pretty easily. But but that's one thing: we did a little bit differently than everybody else out there. So that's why it doesn't necessarily agree with what test overfilled piece or some other gate sets. We get that question once in a while yeah and I just changed to a TD X, 20, our 458, a just to show that's a high glide refrigerant. Of course it doesn't because the pressures aren't right for that, but it's gon na look at the center and that's it's important because we're talking about average coil temperature and that's actually something. I talk about a lot when you have a high glide refrigerant you care about dewpoint, you care about bubble, point which are the edges, but you really care in terms of how the system is gon na operate about that average coil temperature, and so initially we were Looking at r410a r410a is you know it's it's a near azeotrope, it's it's very, very close to to like an hour 20 to a single component refrigerant, and so you need to see almost no Glide, but when you get to higher glide refrigerants, it's actually really nice. That at a glance, you're seeing what's useful to you, which is what your average coil temperature is, rather than either the dew point or the bubble point, even though those are there, they're just hidden and they're they're used with the superheat and some cool measurements right. So now on to on the seer rating you're asking about the seer on there and and so that's that's again - what I think that the the thing you need to understand when we do a profile, is it's an educated guess about how the piece of equipment supposed To run right, we we don't know exactly how any piece of equipment will run until we actually commissioned and do the benchmark, because you can have a 15-foot line set.
You have. You could have 150 for the lines that you could have two tenths of an inch of static or you could have nine tenths of an inch of static and you could have no no feeding left or you could have. You know 25 30 foot on left on the line set and all those little nuances make the equipment operate differently, and this is what makes your industry like really really hard, because there are no concrete settings for everything when you go out there, it's there's what we Call acceptable ranges of operation and it's really hard because you know when you go out there. First, everybody tells you oh well just take it up to you, know 118 and 350 and you'll be fine and and okay that works for one set of conditions.
But what about the other 10,000 set of conditions that we run under so when you're looking at setting up this profile initially - and we say: okay, 13 to 16 seer! Well, a typical 13 to 16 seer system, the the condenser coil we'll be 20 degrees hotter than the outdoor air. Now, if you look on there, we also have ones for Lennox and Lennox tends to run a little bit hired so does Trane. I should probably change that the Lennox and Trane both, but they run a little bit lower nine temperature difference on the SC Toa, then other pieces of equipment so we're you know we're building these in eventually, in fact, now we're going to start to store that data In the cloud - and it will actually is you guys - put in model numbers and serial number to actually start figuring out what the CTOs are for all the different equipment out in the industry, because you know we'll be able to that's part of the beauty of starting To get big data in the cloud is we can start to make the software better forever. Everybody that's using it. So, as you type start to type in a model number of piece of equipment, we can start to auto profile the system in the future. That's ultimately what the goal is right now we just have to make a you know. We have to rely on you to go through and set the profile and its profile right. You know it's going to get you in the in a ballpark for where the pressure should be, but typically when you see like in the Diagnostics just uh like a low suction pressure or high suction pressure and low head pressure or high pressure, but no other symptoms.
That typically just means that the profile is not quite right for that piece of equipment, and once you set the benchmark, it'll adjust that design temperature difference to what it actually is. Yep and that's and that's the point, is that once you once you hit that benchmark once you've benchmarked it now, all of your ranges move to the center basically and they're, going to now track with changes in ambient conditions or changes in system load accordingly, and that's A that's a really nice thing, and so you're not now using guesses you're using you're, comparing the equipment against itself, which you know, we've already done. This we've all done this for years. If you go at a facility that has multiple units, let's say, you're working at an apartment, complex you're, working at a you know, we do a lot of self storage where you have a lot of small units, you're, comparing one unit against all of the other units And so that helps you to establish what normal looks like and that's essentially you're doing the same thing in those cases you're just creating a benchmark based on other equipment.
We're even better is to create a benchmark against this piece of equipment so that that way, two years down the road you go back and you check it and you see well now this the the subcooling is low or the super heats higher super heats low or Something some sort of significant change that again is still tracking with changes in ambient conditions, because you can't just it's not just one number meting newer technicians get this wrong. Sometimes, obviously you go to a go to a space where the ambient conditions are different. You know one day to the next and it's going to change the pressures and it's going to change some of the measurements, but this in measure quick. It allows that that target to change along with those conditions right and it's really cool - I mean as long as the equipment doesn't get dirty right.
It's it's going to track that really really! Well I mean it's. It's it'll track it right to the psi. Now the thing to realize, too is look when we do a benchmark on a TXV system lean we deadlock in in the sub cooling, because the sub cooling really is not going to. It may change a half a degree to a degree over different load conditions, but it doesn't change tremendously, but your superheat. On the other hand, you know, depending on on with that light, that's located and it could be through a hot attic. You know it could be, it could be a range. So on a really low load day, you might have ten degrees of superheat on a high load day. You might have twenty four degrees of superheat, so you know well when locking the sub cooling number, we allow a wider range for allowable superheat and then what we're really watching at that point is to make sure that the suction gas stays below sixty five degrees.
So we get adequate compressor, cooling right so Frank, just because you do a benchmark doesn't mean that all the variables are going to lock in we lock in airflow, we lock at static pressure with pocket pressures. We lock in the superheat of the sub sub cooling, but there are a lot of things that are function of the load too, and those things will change with the load. You know indoor and outdoor before I forget I wanted to show quickly. This is what we're on the screen, if you click one of the you hit the measure quick logo on one of the gauges than just that, gage will pop up to make it easier to focus in on, but I kept missing how to get back and all You do, is you just you just tap on the measure, quick logo and you can kind of see what I'm doing with the indicators there.
So if you ever get in that screen, that was that was something I screwed around with for half an hour before. I finally asked Jim and - and he called me, a dummy which wasn't very nice, but it's I deserved it. I imagine so, let's, let's move forward into one thing that you can do, and this is just sort of in more of the diagnostic screen - we're gon na go into a project now, but when you're swipe back and forth, you can change what readings show up on The screen and it'll kind of scroll through you see we have the eye icon and then the Sun, which is outdoor measurements than the house, which is indoor, then electrical measurements and then weather conditions. But just by swiping, you can see my my finger swiping across.
We can do essentially the same thing or we can tap those little indicators, which is just a really nice user interface piece there yeah and there's there's two dots, meaning above the the input boxes means there's two screens and then a lot of people still don't know That you can tap on those square boxes and those are input boxes so like if we go to the indoor readings Brian just tap on indoor and you open that up so now you can see all the indoor readings and you can write like manually and put An airflow or something if you want to or you can see what readings of probes are coming off of, but those we did that to clean up the UI, because, obviously, if you, if you got all the probes connected, you don't need to see. You know all those all those readings coming in on the UI. You can just look at them. You know look at the calculations on the display right right, yeah and some of you are gon na, like these sorts of interfaces more. In fact, I spend a little more time in these sorts of screens, but it's still nice to come back to this display, because visually it's great and for those users who are very new to it. You find that a lot of them are just taking screenshots of these things and send them to their boss, which is you know totally fine, because it shows the ranges, and it gives you a sense of what's acceptable and unacceptable, which, for a newer technician is, is A nice thing, but for those who you know, want a little bit more advanced, they want to get a little deeper into the data and change it edit. It. You just click that box, as you saw me, just do there, so I want to go now.
If you think it's do you think it's okay to start going into an actual project, so we can see how that flow. Jim yeah, I think that's good. I mean the whole. The whole concept of metric work initially was to do Commission like we said so.
The idea is, we set up this project and we go through go through the steps of it and then then we, you know the commissioners system, and then we store that data in the cloud, so we can get to it later on and by the way there Is there's no charge for storing anything in the cloud? If you just use measure quick and and you don't pay some nickel, you know you want to store all your data in the cloud in two years from now. You want to go pull a job down because it was a you just have some questions about it or whatever you wonder how it was working. You can pull that. You know job back down, you'll pay for it, you'll pay for it, then, but there is no charge put data up in the cloud on on measure quick and in fact everybody by the way.
If you update your cloud account, you got twenty dollars of cubits for free on your account right now, so you can use it for report generation. If you want to test out the advanced reporting or you can stream data with it, you know it's very expensive. Treating data, so I mean you could stream hours of data on what the credits would gave. You or you can just add your in logos or whatever.
So you just go to measure quick, comm and then log into your accounts. It's your measure, quick, username and password, and then you can, you can see what's going on there and you can just update your account information and it'll load. The free bits on your account so yeah great and a lot of that is changing. As we speak, I mean, if you use measure quick regularly.
You know how often it's updating all of this is continuously being improved and and changed and to make it better and easier to use and - and I really like the business model moving forward. So, let's go quickly! I want to actually want to click. I'm gon na hit this little like radio button over on that whoa wait! That's not what I wanted to do now. I'm gon na hit the little graphing button to the right of the act. So if you watch my indicator here, there's a little graph here next to the X, I'm gon na hit that because I want to show quickly how we get into the basic mode. So first it's going to go into a trending mode. But if I hit to the right of this, it's going to go into the system, vitals mode, which was we talked about this on a recent podcast, and I just wanted to show this to you. It makes a really simple view based on the data that we've already entered.
We've got subcooling, we've got supply air temperature, low pressure, high pressure, superheat and approach, and then it can also. You can also do the quick charging mode there, which is helpful for newer technicians to actually indicate how much refrigerant to add or remove, based on based on the measurements that you're getting, which is pretty pretty cool. Now you already again, I keep going outside of the what I keep saying, we're going to do, which is going into setting up a workflow on a particular piece of equipment, but I really like this for newer technicians so that way, their eyes are going immediately to Where they need to be focusing yeah, why don't you start a workflow Brian? So we can see how that's done? Okay, let's do it. I'm gon na hit the plus and then that's going to open up wait.
No, I did that wrong. Sorry quit the project project button. That's what I meant to hit. I knew that I was just testing you to make sure that you knew how to use your own software.
Jim I'm gon na hit the project button and then we're gon na go to AC or heat pump cooling. So if you look at my indicator here, I'm going to AC heat pump, cooling and I'm going to start blank now. I can also use cloud data. This is one of the options here so tell me about that.
Why does it say, use cloud data? What does that mean? So if you, if you stored a system in the cloud before and you want to just start the project from the cloud and not have to type everything in or if you have a well actually, if yet, if you had a service, Titan serum and actually be At the top, you start you don't have to use Cloud Data for that, but but basically it just allows you to get all the data pre-populated. So once you put it in measure quick once you know, once you set up this project, you get the model numbers. You get the serial numbers to get the benchmark in. You got all this set you literally when you start a project from the cloud now all you have to do is deploy your probes and wait for the system to stabilize so you can literally, you know if there's nothing wrong with the system, you can do a Tune-Up in ten to fifteen minutes, because that's all about all the amount of time it takes to the probes to stabilize to give you the green flag, hit capture data, and you generate the report and you're pretty well you're, pretty well done so as they do a Tune-Up you mean, after you've done your cleaning and all the other things right. I mean correct, I'm saying I said if there's nothing wrong with a system, so it's clean, the filter is good right and, and I'm just saying that you know to go through and actually retest the system takes almost no time at all, and so once you have That benchmark in now that the Diagnostics are really really accurate, because we know where the pressure should be exactly so. We know what's high, we know what smoke we know if things have drifted off and one of things we'll talk about later is sensible cooling and how important it is to watch that. So I'll talk about that when we get into the performance section. So don't forget to go there but yeah.
Let's get back into the project all right and what you mentioned is also, when you do those tests a lot of times, you're gon na do those non-invasively and that's also we're having benchmarks come in really handy, because it's tough to do a non-invasive test. Unless you have prior benchmarks and that's where using cloud data makes sense - and that's where having somebody previously gone in and created a benchmark on that equipment is great. One more note on the cloud Brian: before we go away there is we only pull up data within about a quarter a mile through your location, so because, once you get it like a thousand systems and then a measure quick, you don't want to hit use code Data have to scroll through a thousand systems. So what we do is we use geolocation and we pull up the ones that are close to you, and then you select the one that you want to use so right now you can, you know I don't forget.
Actually so next week we should be pushing out an update, so you can go in and pre populate your projects on the cloud and if you put them in and then you go to look for them, they may not be there because you may not be within The location of the project - so just just so you know how that works, got it. Okay, I'm gon na show this again because somebody requests it. I'm hitting AC or heat pump, cooling, and now I'm going to start blank. So now we've got out.
We've got to go through. We've got to populate all this information for this particular this particular location. So we can name the project whatever we want. We can add some we're going to start by adding some details about the project.
We can add notes for the project here if we want and so we're just going to type na here, you notice that note field is really big. Now Brian cuz, we we increase the size of it because I know in the premium projects you can take a whole page if you want to put a whole page of notes on yeah and then job site. That's where you add contacts right here. It's pulling up. My my home address, if anybody wants to send me hate mail. This is correct, so you know anything like that. Maybe a horse head in my bed. This is an option here and so so good important note, there's a site name and automatically came up site to and you're going to want to sometimes change that name to, like you know the or residence or whatever you might want to change that site.
Name too, because what that does for you is when you go into cloud you search for things, you can look at it by site name instead of I, instead of button nothing. So the in-situ may not mean anything to you. I guess is what I'm saying so you can actually edit that now, here's the other, the other catch-22 of that and the reason we automatically named sites and automatically you know date and timestamp is so that if, if you were to get a phone call or measure Quick, we're to you know, crash or you're to drop your tablet or whatever could happen, we're we're always saving that data. In the background, so you don't lose your work.
So if you were to completely close metro, quick and open it back up again, you're going to be right back in the project that you started and until we have to put in some names so that we can store the project and also another thing that I Was just showing people is that you can move the pin, location so say you're on a commercial site and you've got equipment in different. You know places around the around the site. You can actually specifically place the pin exactly on top of where the equipment is located, which is super handy. Well, there's there's two pins, two ones for the site, and yes, okay, all right.
So I was, though, so right now you're just gon na mark the site where you want the site general location kind of got that okay, alright, alright, then weight grabs the right Google address. Alright, you can go in and add the information for the particular customer as well, and once that's done hit submit and now we move on to the equipment, information and system profile. This is where it starts to get into some of the specifics of the system, and now this has a specific equipment location. This is, I was talking about, so my condenser in my house is right back here in case anybody ever wants to sneak up to my house and wash my condenser for me, and I can then name this particular unit.
So I assume this name is specific to this. This particular unit. So I'd say you know, you're poor or whatever you can zoom in on the map too. If you want to pinch and zoom or whatever you can do that too.
Just so you know okay and then we can add our information on the equipment now. This also allows you to scan a barcode and tell me a little bit about that. Does that work with everything or is it limited to certain brands? No, it works well. So it works with everything. It just depends on what the manufacturer puts in in the barcode right what a quitter pulls up so like if you scan Goodman, uses QR codes and if you scan a goodman QR code. It'll, actually do you know, pulling goodman up on the model number and pulling the serial number all three of them, because believe it or not, goodman probably does the best job of using QR codes of everybody in the industry. Other brands like I had him. I think it was carrier lennox when I'd scan the barcode.
It would actually pull the model and the serial number in on the exact same barcode. So you had a delete half of one of the others, so you know you scan it once delete the serial numbers scan. It again delete the model number part of it, and then you know type in the brand name, but depending on what you work on, it could be a little bit hit miss, but the barcode scanner, the QR code - scanner works really really well. You know some manufacturers, don't like Rheem, the only barcode their their serial numbers, but you know, as manufacturers do more and more that we can.
If we can we'll figure out better ways of utilizing it then also. Obviously there is a photo there. So take a photo of your of your of the data plate also, so in case you ever got a reference that later those photos will always come back up with the with the project in the cloud they're stored in the cloud. So you want to make sure that you capture those as you go yeah and one question I had the a HRI certificate number.
Does that do anything right now. If we enter it, does it does not yet HR, and I decided to raise the price of HR. I'm like $ 9,000 a year for that database access. So until we we had it all set up, and then we we decided well until we had to cloud out, then we could use it we're going to repopulate it.
So now we got to go back through and and reload all that data on the cloud, but I just want to get enough users up that are interested in that before we go spending you know nine grand on on something that people may or may not use. So but it does, it will work. What we're doing is actually a little bit different. We had a set up so that we can actually do a reverse search.
So if you put in the model of the condenser the model number of the air handler the bottle number of the evaporator coil, we can actually tell you if that was an HR. I certified system and then print the label, and we had us. I can't remember they couldn't call the boolean search or something crazy like that very complex to do, and it was one of the things were trying to do - was improve that, because so many guys get in the field and they can't figure out the certificate number is So hopefully, when get that back up and running again, but we just got to get more users on the software that are, you know paying for services. So we can do that kind of stuff, because it's it's, if nobody's using it's just a cost. You know that nobody, nobody wants most mainly me right. One question: that's come up here a few times in chat. Is people are saying that I'm saving more than one photo they're having trouble with it? Is that uh? Are you able to save more than one photo or there's other simply not on the model and serial number plate, but on the on the on the premium cloud features you can store? You know, like 40 50 photos on a job report. So if you activate the project there, yes and then what we're doing is you know it's where those photos get stored on an amazon web server, then we just call them up when we call them back in because photos take a ton of memory.
That's part of why we had to start charging, for things is because well obviously we need to make money to. I guess everybody might make a living, but but there, when you start getting it intensive with a more detailed reporting and storing projects and storing you know photos, then then it started taking up a lot more space on servers, so we had together stuff to manage all That and make it so that you know app works really fast and doesn't get bogged down with a lot of pitchers and things alright, so we're gon na move into the system profile now so first option is system configuration whether it's split heat only package or mini Split, that's pretty obvious. Next we put in the nominal tons, so whatever the whatever the rating plate tonnage, is that's pretty basic and refrigerant. We already talked about nominal air flow.
We already talked about 350 CFM per ton being the standard in hot and humid climates 400. Being standard most of the country 450 for drier climates, you enter the seer rating. You enter the metering device type. All of those are fairly obvious.
Now, let's talk a little bit about high efficiency or oversized evaporator, that is a toggle button there. What's that all about yeah, so a lot of climates people aren't well actually not even climates today. Do that but a lot of times people are oversize and the evaporator just because they want to get additional either efficiency out of the system or they want to minimize the amount of static pressure drop across the evaporator coil right. A bigger coil has less pressure drop.
So a lot of times, there's many reasons. People might select a larger evaporator, but what happens is with the larger evaporators. It drives up the suction pressure and you drive up the suction pressure. Then you turn around and you and you the coils warmer.
So now you end up not humidifying as well. So then what you may have to do is select the oversized evaporator coil, but that's slow, the airflow down. So I imagine like in your Brian, this is pretty common. You guys oversized evaporator, that's dropped.
The fan down to 350 CFM per ton, and then that runs pretty typical about a 40 degree. Coil on the system you know runs just like you would a regular system. The other note is, if you scroll down just a hair further brian is, there is extended performance data where you can put in an exact BTU of the appliance, if you, if you know it otherwise just go off the nominal and and that'll be close enough right. So it gives you the ability, if you want to be a crazy nerd like Joe Shearer, to enter that in otherwise for the rest of us. I did. I sell Joe in there. You've always got to give them a hard time, all right so below that. So high efficiency of a protocol, the way that I generally the way we do it at Kalos is, I tell our installers when they're gon na commission a piece of equipment, or we have one commissioning tech who does most of the really.
You know advanced systems that if the coil can serve a larger tonnage, because this comes up a lot with like carrier fan coils, where you might have a fan coil that can serve multiple tundishes. If that coil can serve a larger tonnage than what it is serving. The vaporetto coil wise then use the high efficiency oversized evap number and that that we find to be quite accurate on superheat sub cooling, total external static pressure. These all have the like a target symbol on the on the left side there.
What is what is that? All about so that that's your target, superheat your target, sub cooling, your target total external static. So typically, you know what we're doing superheat we target 10 to 12 degrees of superheat on a TXV system. Now we get the manufacturers target, superheat or sub cooling off the label right and and then obviously total external static pressure. If you know a design target, like you know, typically a lot of guys will design for half an interest static, but some guys have designed it for lower some air handlers have lower static pressures, so you know I might go down to three times an inch or Something like that, and so what you're doing is just if you know what the target is put the target you know put the target in and and that'll that'll do that and somebody had asked if you're in measure quick and the app closes it as long as You see that little exclamation mark down my project.
It's a little black box. A lot of you guys are looking at. You probably can't see, there's a mark in it. I want you to see that mark you're in a project and as long as that's open.
If you close the app and you come back in even tomorrow, all the data that you put in is going to be there and until you submit that project, so you don't lose your work that you've done if data is streaming in life in your probes. Obviously, the data will go away for a second till the probes reconnect, but as soon as a probe, three connect you're going to get your data right back in and and then another thing people sometimes mess up. Is they capture data and they don't clear it? So there's capture buttons on some of the screens like if you got out of program judge said a guy called me yesterday's, like that's, not reading right different, I'm like okay, go into outdoor measurements and hit clear, and he goes oh that fixed it. Okay, I forgot. I captured those measurements and you know so there's a couple little things you got to learn, but once you pass those you're good to go alright, so let's keep going on this Brian. You said something about people being upset when their data goes away. That happened to me at a very young age. I've been trying to get my data back.
Doesn't it never mind it's a really bad day. Okay, keep going I'm just like you started this project blinking, and we can go there too. If you want. What do you mean? You've probably start a lot of projects blink anymore.
I do I do okay, so you enter so super heat on TXV you're, generally, not gon na edit - that unless you know, there's some reason that you need to subcooling you're gon na go based on what the manufacturer data plate says. If it's super heat on a fixed orifice, well, that's going to be a moving target depending on conditions right when you change the metering device, real, quick, Brian, just change it from six to TXV or txp toothpicks. Okay, so we're gon na go to a piston all right and then then you'll see the super heats calculated. So all right, so you know we do a lot of stuff automatically for you, so you don't have to worry about it.
Why did our sub cooling target go to 20 when I went to piston because you're gon na have some sub cooling, so you know it? Tara 20 is a pretty typical range for the older piston type systems, so it could go. You know as low as you'll. Typically always have about 10 degrees of sub cooling on the on those, but depending on the day, because the refrigerant my grease all over the place on it fixed orphis. So when, if you think about it some days you're running, like I don't know - 2530 degrees of superheat and then other days, you're running five degrees right.
So you can have all your going to have a bunch of refrigerant in the condenser and you're running. Like thirty degrees of superheat, when it's 68 degrees outside when it gets up to 120 outside, you might be running almost zero degrees of superheat or sub cooling. You know sir degrees of sub cooling and because you're running really really low superheat and so just moves the refrigerant around, and so you got to have a wider range for sub cooling, otherwise it it would show your outside of the target arranged all the time. One question that somebody had is: why do you show capillary tube and piston? Wouldn't they behave the same they in in theory they would but capillary tubes take a little bit longer to stabilize then a piston does when you're talking about the refrigerant charge.
So we run algorithms and measure quick so that we know you know what, when the system is stable and if you got a capillary tube, it's going to take a little bit longer to stabilize than a fixed orifice will and then also like with a eb. You notice we have a separate one for EE B and and we run a tighter tolerance on the superheat range there set a plus or minus v, it wraps plus or minus three, so it just depends on what you're working on we. We take a lot of characteristics into account, so we can make software work as fast as possible. Alright, and so if you hit the plus button next to refrigerant charge that opens up and it asks you for factory charge and then it also says charge added or removed right, so you can, you can actually store in and what's cool with this refrigerant charge, you Could put in you know: 5.2 5 pounds 5 pounds. 2. Ounces, 82 ounces, anything anyway that anyway, that's on the label. You can just type it in on the display and it'll don't work in measure quick. So we put a lot of logic in that to make it easy, and this this is just storing the factory charge plus or minus whatever you know, added removes the line set, so we can get a total charge and eventually we're going to make some additional pages On the commissioning report, that'll have a lot of the extra data we're capturing right now, like filter type lines that length whew, sighs.
You know we're an electrical we're grabbing the capacitor sizes and things like that. So it's just right now. You know we have the generic report out, but we're building the framework, so we can make you know a tiny additional data for later, so that when you go out to a job in the future, don't have a little bit more Intel about what parts you might Need or you know what filter you're going to take out or what caps in that unit, or you know what kind of refrigerant how many pounds or whatever you want. So it's all going to be there now one thing here underneath there it says retrofit refrigerant use and it has a checkbox there.
What's the purpose of that, so that's! If your, if your you know your system, is in our twenty two system and you're taking it blew on or 407 C or whatever so you can mark, you know that it was a retrofit, it's not the refrigerant that was that system was designed for we haven't Done anything with the performance calculations, because some of the gases do have pretty significant performance drops, but you know we're just trying to capture as much data as we can so that we know you know how that's how the piece of equipment supposed to operate and again, When you pull down the benchmark from the cloud because we're storing the refrigerant type, when you're setting some of the out there don't look at the label and it comes back blue on 4:58, a they'll know right away. Okay, it's not our 22 in this system. If they're restoring from the cloud - but it's just you know additional things to help out going forward whenever I ask you a simple question: if you go off for fifteen minutes with every answer, this is gon na take for four days. Well, it that's, which is for you, Brian, okay, good good good. That's all! That's all! Just for people like me all right, so then, below this we've got again. We've got our extended performance ratings, which I had already opened up, and so we can close that back down. It also has the heating profile, so I can choose what the heat type is and then that'll give us some additional, but we're not going to mess with that right now. Cuz, that's not we're talking about today, all right! So after we get all that system profile done now we go into installation information, so it asks us line, set equivalent line, set location line, set, lift liquid diameter section line.
Diameter is any of this used in a particular way and in the in the software, or is this just for reporting purposes? No actually lisent length is definitely used for correcting capacity calculation, so we normalize capacity, calculations and measure quick, and one of the things we do is is the longer your lines that you start to lose capacity. So we take lines that literally up to the foot into account. We take into account the the filter sizes so actually in the performer section, they'll calculate it well on the version coming out next week, it'll calculate filter face velocity and then it stores the filter in there, and I can't I don't think they're saying else there. It's really relevant, but yeah we are oh.
Why is that lift also falls into the capacity calculations and I think those are the big ones, there's also a belt calculator in there. If you have a broken belt, you know don't know what size it is a couple. Other things, but for the most part yeah we use almost everything we collect to do something, but some things are not yet yeah. There's a lot here and again, I think it serves it potentially serves two purposes.
One purpose is the obvious one, which is: you may need this information later, and this serves as your reference report, think of a manager who wants to later go and find out all the information on this piece of equipment. If they're, you know playing ball with measure quick and they've enrolled in the program and they've got the software, they can go and find this later, which is super important, but then also some of this data does actually play into some of the normalization. Like you mentioned yep all right, so once we get all of that done, this looks like this looks like we're done here, according to the court of the report. What's next we did system information profile, installation, Oh electrical, so we've got the we've got electrical here: a condensing unit, phase single or three-phase nominal voltage, 230 240 evaporator fan phase evaporator fan nominal voltage, evaporator fan type.
It also asks about capacitors. So why would we put the Pasteur information into this? That's a weak. We know what's there when we come back on later. Also, if you had art, start Kitty installed on there. So we capture that data. If you have an aftermarket start, a start assist on there, but primarily just also unlike gon na on the evaporator fan. If it's got an ECM, we ignore the power factor, because we can measure power factor with a red fish meter or with a field piece. 380 B, so you need to know the power factor should be close to one so, but on the ECM it could be like 0.55, so ignore that right and then also on a P PSC motor when you're going into that vitals mode.
We tell you, you know, to increase or decrease your airflow. What speed you need to move it up or down to so there's some some things that some things air we use on that, but and then on voltage we're looking for well, not yet, but it will in the future, look at utilization voltage and tell you if You're in the correct range for the utilization voltage and some things like that, and then it also uses it for power factor so for an assumed power factor. If you don't have a meter that measures power factor so a lot of little things in there. That voltage plays into got it alright, so we've now we've touched on everything.
Of course we didn't fill out a lot of it, but now we're now we're pretty much good to go on on this part of it on the actual project part. So now I can go down and hit submit now we move down into equipment, information and system profile. Oh no, sorry we that's! We already did that hold on. Now we go in to take measurements right, yeah, that's just what we you didn't.
Have your system. Information filled out so this is important to you see. I got the X there next to system information and it's just because you didn't fill out the models and serial numbers. So it's it's looking for those and you don't have them.
So, let's go into measurements section. Alright, so we've already got checks on all these, because I've pulled in some data, but we're gon na go into outdoor measurements, and these are the actual ones that you would fill in. So this takes a very logical. I want to state this again and for those of you who are worried about this, we may go 15 20 minutes over on this, because we got a little bit of a late start, as I have been doing because of Technology issues.
But but this is the this is the logic you're gon na go through. These are the readings that you're going to take and these are manually entered, but in most cases we're gon na want these brought in from the Bluetooth connected tools. What you do by going in the toolbox, assigning tools to different measurements, that sort of thing anything you want to mention about about any of these outdoor measurements. Well, I think that the key thing is sometimes people call us and say hey how come how come it's readings, grayed out or whatever right so, like Turkish süper heats a big one, people say: oh, I don't have a target super heat, it's black and white. Well, it's because you have an outdoor air temperature in or you don't have a return or wet ball bed. So if there's a reading, we need to calculate something we're telling you new, UI, hey, you don't have this and you can't you can't. You know really get the correct reading unless you give us this information and the other cool thing is you know you don't have to you: don't have to break the bank if you, if you don't a handful of probes, you want to use those a measure quick.
Does measure quick work offline? I do not always have internet available
How is MQ making money?
For those of us who have followed MQ since Aug 2017….Thank you for building and improving MQ for the industry. The entire MQ team works very hard to get this right and deserves our support.
Here to report (after 4 weeks of using all my feildpice probs and redfish meter with MQ) THIS THING IS AWESOME can't stress it enough. Besides for the fact that it makes me look like a genius to my customers but it actually makes it so much easier for me. I do see a problem with some guys using MQ because they don't know a thing about HVAC and it will keep dumbing them down. But on the flip side, at least they are getting the job done right. Without MQ they used to just screw customers. I keep encouraging them to understand how and why things happen (by watching you Bryan). Thank you and keep up the great work. A fan from NY
How to get back-and-forth from that single gauge view was worth every second of watching this! 😂 the rest was good too.
How does this work with Sevice Titan?
I love measure quick use it with my Samsung s9. It's ok but not the best. I know the best way to do it is with a separate tablet but I can't afford a second device right now. Any advice what phone would be best. I would appreciate any input. Thank you Service area Kanata??
Thanks for your time and dedication to the trade. You are appreciated! Are you in Ottawa ?
I just watched this for the second time. I just got my feildpice job link kit and was a bit confused yesterday how to do commissioning on MQ. I think I got it now. Thank you Bryan and Jim. You guys are saving the day 😉 will keep you posted
Will the testo 550 manifold with Bluetooth work on MQ ?
Awesome stream. Thanks for doing what you do.
Great livestream bryan
I love, appreciate and can’t thank you all enough for all the hard work that has gone into the product, the app and the video’s along with all the podcasts you all have produced. Just a few questions if I may….what is the best way when commissioning or testing a home with multiple units, possibly different types of units, to list then for future reference? Can you print from the MQ printer and send a pdf file to you and the homeowner? If using a OD hydrometer will it override the weather data being brought in from a weather station? When comm/checking a Carrier packaged unit would you then place your discharge line temp clamp AND the suction line temp clamp on he discharge line where the pressure probe is hooked on?
Bryan thank you for this video.
from Nigeria
Bryan as always thank you. And Jim a separate thank you to you.
Why would anyone thumbs down this? Service area Nepean??
I missed the live cast. First thing I noticed was You changed the into music!