This episode of the HVAC school podcast is made possible by our fantastic sponsors, starting with field peace-filled, peace.com, making all kinds of instruments and vacuum pumps and recovery machines and all kinds of great stuff. I'm sure you know field piece, but it may have slipped my mind. I may have never mentioned to you that my first meter in the trade was a Philippe's meter, so there you go first meeting in the trade field, peace meter. In fact, I still have a field piece.

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They make the Viper cleaners, and one thing that I love about Viper cleaners is that they do the job, but without nasty chemicals you can tell first time you use Viper that it just doesn't have that nasty punch that some of the other chemicals have, and if You give a little bit of it on you for most of the products. It's not going to be nearly as damaging as what a lot of the other competitors have out there so find out more by going to refrig tech, comm and then finally, our longest sponsor the sponsor who stuck with us from the very beginning and really truly made This podcast possible all the way from the start carrier and carrier comm. Every man hits a certain stage in life, a stage where they become more serious. This guy blew right past that stage straight to old man, dad humor, Brian or alright.

Hey t hidey ho t. I probably overdo the hey t: hidey ho t thing, that's sort of become my tagline is start the podcast. This is Brian. It's the HVAC school podcast thanks for listening.

This is the podcast that helps you remember some things that you might have forgotten along the way. Oh, and by the way, it also helps you remember some things you forgot to know in the first place and today on the podcast, I've got Bill, Spohn who's been on the podcast many times. A very good friend, very good man Bill is a good man. I'm proud to call him a friend, as I mentioned often and today, on the podcast, we're gon na talk about different combustion tools, gas tools, combustion tools and so that you can kind of have a perspective on what tool you might want to have on your truck.

You'll know a little bit more about calibration, but that's all about and how to think about different tools and where they fit in the whole. Gas appliance diagnosis, spectrum of things, and so this is one that we haven't done before, so I think you'll enjoy it here. We go bill Spohn talking about combustion tools, thanks for joining me Bill. Thank you, Brian appreciate you inviting me on today to talk a little about what I think I know about.

Ok, I'm glad to hear that my expert thinks he knows something about the topic. We're going to talk about, but in all honesty, there's two things when I think about bills phone I mean there's a lot of things that I think about bills, phone and they're, all good, but the two things that I think about from an expertise. Standpoint are air flow or air measurement in general, so air measurement - I always think of you as kind of the expert in that area and then also combustion, and so am i right to think of you in that way, I'll just preface it by saying my definition Of an expert is someone who's made sufficient enough mistakes in an area to consider themselves an expert, and that just goes along with the idea of continuous learning I'll, accept those titles, I'll say amongst the experts. But I will say that my expertise is more limited to the understanding of the sensors and the technology.

There may be others out there who have more experience to understand the applications of these things and I'm always interested in learning from them. I do air flow seminars. Every year for a couple, different organizations or a couple different trade shows The Home Performance conference and the ResNet the Raiders conference. In each year, I submit a proposal and I call it airflow 2016 air flow 2017 air flow, 2018, etcetera, I'm doing air flow 2019 at both conferences next year, because it's always evolving my understandings evolving.

It's not the same static content. Some of the products evolve, but also my understanding is some of the testing. That's done so we'll go with that with the air flow and on the combustion side, I've worked with Bacharach for 10 years in product development. They have three patents with them.

So a study with some of the people that sort of brought forth digital or electronic combustion analyzers the folks at Bacharach. So that's a study with them work with them worked on products. There then work with testo an international authority on measurement science on measurement products got to learn from them and their great development team. So I feel, like I have had a lot of experience.

Very unique experiences. Put it that way to help qualify me in terms of an expert for today's conversation, all right, so we've established it now quickly before we go any further. I want to mention for those of you who may not know that bill is the host of the building. Hvac science podcast, which is on the blue collar ridge network.

It's a great podcast he's a great host. The guy who edits the show, and maybe not so good, but bill does a great job with that speak for yourself. He has to be for myself. Oh, you were.

I brought bill on today because we've talked quite a bit about combustion. Recently we had Jim on and talked a lot about the practical applications we kind of talked through the new, a key tools, combustion QuickStart guide, that Jim wrote but sort of missing. In that was a conversation about the instruments themselves and that's an area that I really think you're an expert on obviously having helped to develop some of these products and understanding the engineering side, but then also having to support those day-in day-out at true tech tools. True tech tools, comm offer code, get schooled for a great Disko bush and analysis equipment.

So I want to go through kind of step by step and talk through some of the different instruments that are used and particularly talk about how to choose these instruments. And then some of maybe the things that we don't think about like calibration and that sort of thing I'm just going to go through and ask you about different instruments and we'll do it that way. That's okay with you! That's perfectly fine, all right! So one of the first instruments that a technician who works with gas probably touches is a manometer. Some of you may have a gas pressure gauge, that's sort of an old school manual analog way, or maybe even an inclined manometer.

But we're going to talk specifically about digital manometers here so for a technician: who's going to be working with gas, the full range of typical residential light commercial gas appliances, water heating, 80 % all the way through 90 plus appliances. What should they look for? In a manometer, what are some things they should know? It should always start with the application and hinted towards that there. You need to understand what your targets are to measure and that's something Jim talks about a lot, and I learned from him is you need to know what you're, after and in addition to the target value that you're after so that helps specify the range in the Meter, you need to know the resolution or what's the acceptable accuracy or a resolution that you're going to see on the screen to help you make the decision to complete your diagnostic or your setup, whichever the case may be, in usually things like a combustion analyzer. We're talking more specifically about that.

The manometers that are built into them are sufficient for measuring gas pressure and for measuring flue pressures or draught. If you will and then the stand alone, manometers can do that also generally the ones that we carry at route act and elsewhere. There are some specialty manometers that will take you into finer resolution for measuring things like room pressure, zonal pressures, combustion, air zone pressures and depressurization, which I think Jim did get into a little bit in his podcast with you and in the Accu tools, blue flame checklist. There specifically lawn manometer, if I'm a regular technician and I'm primarily gon na, be using my manometer for two things I think most common uses would be one for measuring gas pressure, so natural gas, an LP and then I'm also gon na be measuring static pressure with It are there any particular products out there that you like, or you think maybe a technician should consider for that application.

I really like the ones that are coming out that are bluetooth and the reason for that is actually they cost less because you're, basically a lot of these Bluetooth products, you're buying what I call radio sensors, they just deliver data, they deliver a stream of data and Then you can do all kinds of things and data with the other end. So something like the test. Oh five, ten. I delivers a stream of pressure data and then that can be converted into different units of measure within the app you can then data log it and look for changes.

You can snapshot readings, you can get tables of values and then again it sounds like I'm plugging this, but I guess I am measure quick, allows you to merge and to aggregate several streams of data or shortly well on a live stream. It probably by the time you listen to this. I hope that's available, that you could take these relatively inexpensive sub $ 100 extra high-performance manometers and then do all kinds of things with them on the output end through the apps. So I think that's the thing.

That's liberating about the Bluetooth sensors for some people, that's not their piece of cake. That's fine! So you have digital manometers from uei from field piece from test. Oh that have displays built into them. There are some brands out there that also Hale bluetooth.

So you can do that extra data step with them, but the fact that you merge a display, an interface controls. All those kind of things into a product has to increase its cost because you're getting more utility and the thing you put in your hand versus the radio sensor in the Bluetooth item. So the other thing to pay attention to is temperature compensation that will throw off a manometer because they are reading in such fine ranges. So you have to be aware of - and I wouldn't call it a temperature problem, but they do need time to readjust, because they're measuring such small mechanical forces really pressure as a mechanical force that the sensors inside need to have a stable temperature readings on them.

A stable temperature environment to work with them and then from there just make sure that it's warmed up and ready to go when you apply it for your diagnostic. I want to add a little commentary here, which is that for the standard use case which is measuring gas pressure, both Inlet and then output of your gas valve, essentially manifold pressure, your inlet pressure for those applications, I'm definitely going to suggest that you move away and Again, one man's opinion, but move away from the analog gas pressure gauges or on the static pressure side from the magma he'll ik. Unless you have some specific reason for wanting those devices, because you can do both of the use cases with these modern digital manometers and the price point on them is to the point now, where it really just doesn't make a lot of sense to use an analog Gauge, that's my opinion. Do you think there are applications where somebody might still want to use an analog gauge for that use case, perhaps in the instance that you want to continually measure and just like poke up a magnet he'll like screw it down to the sheet metal hook up the Hoses and be able to just glance at it, maybe for some larger commercial application, but in the moment diagnostic, I think the digital's make more sense.

There's also things like incline: manometers, slack tube manometers that actually do use water or other kinds of chemicals. To give you sort of the physical attribute of that pressure, change to be able to see it visually and then the analog ones, with the fact that you have a mechanical movement and position sensitivity and they come with their own quote-unquote downsides to doing that. And I never try to discourage people from making any kind of measurement measurement neutral as long as you're making one and as long as you're, making the right one using the right tool for the job. I mean that's another consideration so from a calibration standpoint with each one of these tools we talked about, and we kind of asked you two different categories of question about calibration and you can take this any direction you want.

The one question is: how do you know if you're getting an accurate reading and then, secondly, are there any requirements, typically for having these lab calibrated or sending it back in for calibration, so on the manometer side? What what are your thoughts there, the manometer side? Usually, the calibrations are done, and the digital ones they're done digitally or electronically and they're, not a typical adjustment that I've seen that are made. In fact, a true tech. We do calibrations from the gas parameters and you can actually do some of the temperature parameters and some of the products, but not so much on the pressure side, the offsets and the scalings there are sort of restricted or hidden from the user. I believe that's because the stability the sensors there, as long as you don't over range it they don't usually go out of whack the ability to start it up into zero it to make sure that there's no pressure.

Difference between the two ports on the differential manometer gives you the zero point and then the scaling as long as you haven't overloaded it, the scaling is pretty much hard programmed in for more or less the light for the sensor in some situations, if you do want To compare it, I think, actually going back to something like an inclined manometer with the proper technique. You could use that because that does give you pretty fine resolution. If people aren't familiar with an inclined manometer, it's basically a hunk of lexan or polycarbonate that has ordered out passageways in it, and it's filled with the red liquid that responds to pressure changes across that liquid and it moves it up or down a ramp. And then you have to use your line of sight and look at the meniscus against the scale behind it to see what the pressure changes.

Okay got it. So, from a practical standpoint, I'm thinking what I'm hearing from you is manometers tend to be pretty accurate and pretty stable yeah. So, generally, you can trust your manometer if you suspect that maybe it's not working properly, then probably your best bet is just to check it against another manometer. You see odds that you have two manometers that are out of calibration is going to be pretty rare and then there's not generally going to be a calibration requirement.

Essentially, if it gets to the point that you can't trust it anymore, then you just toss it and get another one yeah and I'd. Actually, I would compare it to three. Three is a better discernment than to two other ones or one other one. I suggest seven.

Okay, you need to keep 14 manometers on your truck, so that way you know on times you can line them up and test them to each other. Next thing is gas. Leak detectors are combustible, leak detectors. Do you move a lot of combustible leak, detectors yeah? We do they're pretty simple devices.

Most of them are pretty simple, they're, fairly inexpensive and they're handy because they can detect the actual gas compound rather than detecting the smell. Because a lot of people I smell gas. Well, actually you don't smell gas. Typically, you're smelling the odorant that was added to the gas.

That's not a definitive detection that there is a gas leak there. One of the organization's I work with is the Building Performance Institute and they have a standard on how to inspect a residential home for performance and safety called BPI 1200 and in that standard. In a recent edition, the last couple years they've actually required that you use a measurement quality, a measurement level gas leak detector. They can actually tell you the concentration in percent LEL percent of the lower explosive limit for the gas, because it's a standard and it's required to practice, work underneath that standard by the authority.

That tells you you do. We've seen some movement of those and it's the kind of product that it's fairly easy to use, but you do have to follow certain steps to use it. Would you my naming some of the products that actually show that level, because that isn't something that I was even aware of? I think some might be interested in looking those up sure and actually there's one company in Valparaiso, Indiana called sensit percent suggest technologies. I believe there have been 40 years doing business in the u.s.

they make the most affordable gas leak, detector that has a measurement basis on it. You can get others that are in the 1700 to thousand dollar range, but there's as around 450 bucks, 480 bucks. For it's called a sensit, HX g2d and actually it was developed for another reason. It was developed because there was some safety issues, we'll say with the installation of natural gas.

I don't want to get too specific here, but it was a new. I was a large, a commercial building where they put in black pipe to run the gas and they had failed to detect the presence of the gas by odor, because the black pipe actually absorbed deodorant. So there was a loss of property in life associated with that and it stimulated a standard whereby this kind of product allowed you at a fairly an expensive point to really detect. If there was gas there or not and be able to measure it yeah and from a consumer standpoint from somebody who doesn't know much about this industry, it seems fairly obvious that we would be checking for leaks of explosive gases and that only kind of makes sense And actually, when I was early in the trade, because I live and work in a market where there just isn't that much gas when I first started hearing about combustion analysis and all this, that's what I assumed it was, I assumed whoa you're, just checking to see If there's unspent gas - and it does make sense that that's something that we check for - I see very few technicians in our market who have combustible gas leak detectors.

What are some of the calibration recommended processes of making sure that it is working and or sending it in for calibration? Most of them aren't calibrate able in fact one the actually one. I participate in the design team on the back replicator 10. There actually is a scaling resist that comes with every new sensor, which sort of fine Tunes the sensor, the analog measurement aspect of the product, any analog electrical to the sensor that you get otherwise any other replacement sensor is just kind of scale within a range and Most of the time, the way you use these is sort of like a Geiger counter. If anyone's familiar with that, you just look to see if there's more signal detected here and less over there and many of them allow you to rescale like the Becker allocator jr., you can actually touch a button and it rescales and it sort of drops.

The sensitivity is you move closer to the. If you can imagine like the cloud source of gas, it's you're at the fringes of the cloud you need to have the highest sensitivity you find out. As you move closer you get, it starts to go into a high detection rate, either the lights or the beeper on it goes off. Then you need to dampen down the sensitivity as you move closer and closer to the highest concentration of the leak, and that's like on the many of the products you can either use a thumb wheel or a button, or some kind of scaling step to tune.

Your sensitivities, you move closer to the leak. Yes, so I think this is for those of us who do electronic leak, detection, we're used to this process for refrigerant leak, detection. It's the same basic thing: you kind of keep Reesie rolling as you get closer and closer in order to find the source of the leak you're, not necessarily seeing an exact parts-per-million reading. You just know that, as you get closer, it's sort of like playing the Marco Polo.

Basically, as you get closer, you hear that it's getting closer and closer and you just keep sort of re0 inge and they don't necessarily all have that technology. But then, on the other side, you have a leak detector like the PGM IR by Bacharach. It gives you a number. This is what the concentration of this particular refrigerant is, and that's more like that sense it that you were talking about absolutely perfect analogy to a CD heating, yep you're.

Looking for the concentration of the substance, the one thing you do need to be aware of is sort of background cross interference, other things that this sensor may pick up. In addition to the thing that you're trying to sense so things like pipe dope and other things can be distracting to the sensor and show is a false signal - it doesn't mean it's bad. It may just mean that you aren't able to resolve it. You just have to be aware of it and then checking around fittings joints valves things like that.

The other interesting anecdote is, I was on a gas appliance Manufacturers. Association committee in gamma actually moved into what's called the aah ri air conditioning heating refrigeration Institute on a committee. We were discussing measurement protocols with combustible gas leak, detectors around gas valves. Gas valves are actually allowed to dribble or leak a little bit by the standard, because you need to make something: that's fairly inexpensive and a piece of equipment that is triggered by the available energy.

You have their electrical or whatever, to release the gas. To light up your furnace, your water heater, so there's actually levels that are allowed just like heat exchangers are technically allowed to have some breach to them in the manufacturing process, because it's hard to make these valve hermetically seal or a heat exchanger, hermetically sealed sort of A similar then to the manometer in that, with a gas leak, detector, you're, really just using common sense. They tend to be fairly accurate in case the gas leak detector. The majority of them you're just measuring here, they're, not an absolute number, and so you start to check it against another device.

When you begin to suspect that it's not doing the job that it's supposed to do basically strike up a lighter without any or a gas stove, or something like that, don't drench it in the gas. But you want to see that it's still sensitive, that it's still able to pick up so next thing that I want to talk about. We talked a little bit about this in the podcast I did with Jim and it was not a product that I was very familiar with and he talked about draught gage, a draught gage from measuring in the combustion air zone for measuring pressure differential and so now We're getting into that sort of Pascal range. We talked a little bit about manometers earlier as it relates to measuring gas pressure.

But now, let's talk about measuring those really fine differences in pressure. You want to make sure that, and this would be for atmospherically vented systems for the majority of it. You want to make sure that you do have draft to pull the effluent the byproducts of combustion out of the structure out of the mechanical room. If you will draft gages, there are some from Bacharach, I think.

Actually I still might be producing them that use mechanical, flappers or vanes in them to tell you which direction a draft is moving. I think the one he might have referred to was the Dwyer 460. It's got a ball, that's in the air stream, so as the air is pulled through, the ball Rises at a certain point in this tube this little tunnel. To tell you the amount of draught that's being pulled, and it's a quick check.

It's an inexpensive thing to tell that you do have sufficient draught for the manufacturers standards for the installation for the heating appliance. Are you looking at so from a more accurate standpoint, though say, if you were doing just a pressure test for the combustion air zone, to ensure that you weren't going to backdraft? Maybe you would use because he was suggesting using that to our draught gauge. For that purpose, do you agree with that? Or would you go with a more precise manometer? I'd have to take a second look at the product. It's hard to disagree with Jim Bergman.

Okay, I think again, this is going back to my original dialogue there at the beginning was it's always a learning process got it okay, and so there are some manometers on the market, though, that have Precision's that are beyond what you would typically see for a gas Measuring manometer right sure, and generally speaking, those are the ones that do home performance Diagnostics like the manometers that hook up to the blower doors, duct leakage, testers or things. You might find that our precision manometers that you'd be using with pitot tube for low velocity applications. So, what's usually looking for there is, we call like Pascal resolution, Pascal being at one 250th of an inch of water column, so you're looking for Pascal resolution manometers and sometimes with accuracies of like 1/4 Pascal to be able to tell these fine differences in pressure which Are important to building Diagnostics to determining how much CFM leakage that the building shell has, but they can also be very helpful in to determining if you have pressures created by the combustion air zone, there go perhaps lead to reversals of the atmospheric venting systems, and so In some of these more precise manometers we're not going to talk a lot about blower doors or things like that, but when you get to the more precision devices, those are the ones that you are gon na tend to send back for periodic calibration cranked. Absolutely if you're going to maintain that quarter pascal resolution and then they also have built into them the ones used for those kind of products, thinking we're sort of drifting away from combustion, but they have built in cross-checking valves that little solenoids that will actually shunt the Sensor to itself so that it can be zeroed out electronically digitally, so that's how they can maintain that very high resolution and high performance through an additional mechanic element within the product.

That's what makes them expensive, but that's the cost of precision, got it and for most of what we're doing with combustion, it's not necessary, with the one exception being, if you're trying to measure for small pressure, differences that exist in that combustion air zone. So if I can just get a second of your time to talk to you about my friends over at refrigeration technologies, as I have many many times before - and I want to give you a guilt trip, so the guilt trip goes like this. Why are you buying stuff, that's not made by refrigeration technologies? Why they make it here in America the guys come from the trade they're good guys they make quality products if you're buying leak, reactants, no bubbles. That is not big blue.

Why why? Why are you doing that? Why are you buying cleaners that aren't Viper cleaners, they're great cleaners, you'll like them? They do a great job, the pan and drain sprays. Excellent. Why aren't you using nylon? Dialog is a really good product. It helps you pull deeper vacuums by lubricating the threads and seals and your vacuum hoses, hopefully you're using vacuum.

Rated hoses like we've, talked about true blue. Those are great products made by IQ tools. That's a side note. If you haven't looked at refrigeration technologies products and go to refridge tech comm or go to true tech tools, comm and type in refrigeration technologies, if you wish either way, is fine and have a look at everything that they offer another product that they make.

That's a really nice product is called wet rag. It helps protect critical system components from overheating. They also make a spray gel, which is great, for it can be coating, say a wall, for example, let's say you're working next to a wall. Well, you would spray a little bit of that gel cooling gel on the wall and then wipe it off when you're done.

Of course, don't do it if it's like a painted surface, someone's gon na see and without testing at first. You know that you're an adult, but it's good products very good stuff, and you can find it like. I said true tech tools, calm or by going to refridge tech dot-com all right here we go back to bill okay. So the next thing that I want to talk about is the personal carbon monoxide monitor, which again, I think, is a pretty underutilized tool.

It's an important tool I'll, let you just kind of riff on that a little bit so a personal CEO monitor is something that you can carry on your body, your tool, bag. Your jacket set up in your workspace and that's actually, if you're talking about that BPI 1200 standard, that's actually a great thing, even if you're not doing any BPI work. It's just a a lot of the best minds in the country got together to figure out the best protocols for doing testing of combustion systems for testing of how structures things like that. It's a free download just go ahead, get it skim through it.

You might learn something personal Co monitors are called out in there because over the years of experience with BPI, there's been incidences where people have walked in, and BP has really started out from the weatherization industry, but has now moved into the commercial home performance by commercial. I mean consumer home performance, not always program related, but their incidences where people weatherization contractors would walk in to a residence and there would be high levels of carbon dioxide present because going back to people in weatherization they're using a lot of their income for other things. And they can't maintain their heating systems or their houses, so that personal monitor will keep you always aware of your surroundings and carbon dioxide is, I'm sure, has heard this before, but it's invisible, odorless tasteless not detectable by any human senses and it's accumulated to poison. So it's got this double whammy effect that it builds up in your system and you can't tell it's happening, except perhaps from the after-effects that you're experiencing so a personal CI monitor.

We saw them at recheck anywhere from the kirkko cm-1, to the sense that p 100 we're looking at bringing on another line of product, because there's a lot of variety out there, they're sitting there always on the industrial versions of these also there's a test o 317. Three and a fluke co2, two honey - some of them actually avoid the term personal Co monitor, because that has the connotation of being a personal safety device and they're not designed for that. Some of them are called ambient Co monitors. So that's something to watch out for others are called personal Co monitors and they've been tested to standards like the UL 913 standard and other personal safety standards to comply with OSHA regulations such that they can be relied upon for personal safety and do things like give You alarm lights, buzzers, vibrating features and factors, and also last for a very long time and rugged environments or environments where they need to be rugged.

Things like gas utility work, firefighters, other type of work, where there's a lot of stress, put on the product and they have to perform so do they generally have like an expected life? Where you get to a certain point, then you just toss them out and get another one. How do you work with them from a calibration accuracy? Standpoint? That's pretty much it they're designed to do a good job for their lifetime. The sense of brand actually has two three and four year warranty products, and we sell mainly the two and the four-year ones they're just designed to last, with their battery and their sensor for a certain amount of time. They're meant to be economical between one and two hundred dollars so that people actually get out there and use them.

And if you build out factors like calibration from them and also sort of the hassle of having it to ship it around and do calibration, they do become disposable devices, and that was something actually pioneered in the early 90s. I believe before that they were all calibrated. Well devices they were all for gas sensors, and then somebody remembers first name, bananas, last name, Cody @ bw technologies got the idea to make it like cell phones make it so that they're very lightweight, high-volume and sort of started. This whole industry of personal monitors, Co being the largest one, but they're also made for industrial uses for oxygen depletion.

Hydrogen sulfide, which you encounter like oil fields and things like that: nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, other industrial gases, ammonia included, there's a huge industry around personal monitors, and I think it's just starting to touch HVAC. It's just really a great idea to have one with you, because you're working around places where carbon dioxide can build up and impaired you or the clients you're working with. So one of the best examples of this that I've run into is Gary reaker who's, an educator. He contributes to the HVAC school group, all the time so you'll see him around he's, always sharing great links and resources.

He wears one of these, essentially everywhere he goes as far as I know. I don't know that he's still doing it, but he did it for quite some time and he would walk into commercial buildings and there's a restaurant or whatever, and he would have a go off on him. Just doing that - and it makes you realise that there's a lot of cases where there may be carbon monoxide presence we're just not aware of it, and maybe people are getting headaches or symptoms and then they don't know what the cause is and it's another great use. There's is you can actually sort of be a public safety advocate wherever you go when you're wearing one of these things right right.

I carry one with me all the time too, when I travel, but I think it'd be very, very bad PR if I were to die by carbon monoxide. You'd have some splainin to do in that case posthumously, of course, actually you know what you could do. Is you could make a whole set of videos in case you ever die by these, and so, if I die by carbon monoxide, poisoning watch this video and it can be a long apology to your fans, the last but not least, topic that we want to talk About here is the combustion analysis, and so this is this whole own deal. So, let's start with some of the technologies.

Obviously this is a topic. You know a lot about, but talk a little bit about how its evolved and where we stand today on combustion analysis. Instrumentation sure real, quick about the evolution, it started out really with what's called pyrites fyr ite, it's a product developed by Bacharach that was basically taking laboratory chemistry and putting it into a portable device that could be taken in the field. And there was an engineer that worked on that at Bacharach by the name of Charlie krischell he since long passed on, but he was a great inspiration and educator and leader and mentor for me and understanding that that kind of thing cuz.

He actually worked on. Some of the first ones that were done for oil heating systems to tune-up oil heating systems from those wet chemicals which actually still made today, you can still buy those systems today they just give like these. I call them slow, speed, snapshots of information with digital sensors that are used now. You can actually get streaming information, it's more like a video of the combustion process when it's under operation, so the combustion is a chemical process.

It's rapid oxidation of the fuel, the chemical in the fuel, whether it's methane, propane, ethane butane, but for HVAC, we're mainly talking about substantially methane. Is the chemical involved rapidly combining it with oxygen and then creating byproducts of combustion? So a combustion analyzer monitors what happens after combustion. It takes a reading of temperature oxygen and usually CEO. There are fewer and fewer products out there that do not include a CO sensor in them.

I think it's because of the cost of sensors and just the more pervasive understanding that carbon dioxides important thing to measure from the oxygen in the temperature parameters. And if you tell the instrument, the combustion analyzer, what the fuel is that you're using it, can then go into some look-up tables and give you the in efficiency the amount of excess air and calculate the amount of co2. So it doesn't actually measure co2. It measures oxygen temperature and, with the fuel based equations, can tell you the amount of co2 that's being produced.

Carbon dioxide and the interesting thing is. The goal of combustion is to create lots of co2, because that means you're burning to completion. If you don't burn to completion, you sort of stop halfway and you only get to see. Oh, I mean the simplest sense, it's more complicated than that in a chemical sense, but the creation of carbon monoxide indicates insufficient, incomplete improper or poor combustion.

So that's one of the reasons why you want to measure Co in addition to its safety aspect. Is it's an indicator of combustion not going to completion somewhere in your process? I'm gon na say a fancy word because I like how it sounds, and so the word that I've heard guys, like you say, is stoichiometric combustion. I love its tweak. It's the wikia metric combustion and my understanding of that is is the idea of achieving perfect combustion.

Where you have the perfect mixture of oxygen and fuel, and so that you only gets safe byproducts vs. producing carbon dioxide? Is that actually true, or am I just making that up you're right on so it's? The stoichiometric point is like the point of ideal chemical balance. It's where you're, creating if you've taken the fuel, the hydrocarbon fuel and you're, converting it into water and carbon dioxide, co2 and, of course, releasing energy in the process heat and because things don't happen perfectly, you need to provide excess air and that's what the oxygen sensor And your combustion analyzers actually measuring is the amount of excess air that's present and then doing all kinds of reliable, inferences back to how the combustion is performing with excess air calculations, co2 calculations, efficiency calculations - something the should be noted - is, through my experience at Bacharach, an Test, oh, I learned of all the things that are done in Europe in terms of having standards for combustion, analyzers and combustion analysis, and actually, during my time at esto, took part in helping to found a committee. That's now housed within a HRI that has developed the first United States standard for combustion analyzers and it's called a h RI, which is the air conditioning heating, refrigeration institute.

Twelve sixty one, two, six zero. So that's a standard! That's was released. I believe in January of seventeen, and it's now going through the process of looking for manufacturers to align with it and, if I'm not mistaken, I believe blue flame. The acute tools analyzer is stated their alignment with that standard in every aspect of it and actually just saw a press release from Bacharach who is also committee, member that their combustion analyzers aligned with the a HRI 1260 standard.

I believe it's a free download, this sort of gives you an idea of the inner workings. I'm right now it's a voluntary compliance, because no one's calling out that standard, but there now is a standard for that, and I think that will help equipment. Manufacturers perhaps point to more and more use of combustion analyzers to monitor, diagnose and set up their products. I think they're looking for sort of an independent third party to say yeah.

This is the way it should be done versus just go out and use a combustion. Analyzer because they agains gets into the choice aspect, if I'm reading between the lines here, there's two things that I'm reading between the lines one is is that maybe equipment manufacturers haven't been as diligent as they could be with including combustion analysis as part of the set Up procedures and maybe not making it easy for that to be part of the process, at least that's been my experience. Would you say that that's true yeah, I think they've been hesitant to say just go out and do it without saying go out and do it in this manner or with this kind of equipment that meets this kind of standard? This is going to help the industry out it'll help both the combustion analyzer industry it'll, help out the equipment installers and the technicians and the consumers to getting something more consistent standards are important and then the other side is it safe to say that maybe some manufacturers Of combustion, analyzers haven't all been consistent with one another and how the combustion analyzers work or in their internal functions. I think it kind of goes back to something Jim Bergman.

I've talked about a lot is that there aren't many standards for performance and I'm not accusing any manufacturers here preface by saying that you can sort of state whatever you want. You could say whatever you want, you can put down whatever you want in specification. If you don't state the standards or the conditions under which you're achieving those values and the no consistency to that, then it's hard to make comparisons. If someone says I'm accurate within plus or minus five percent on my carbon monoxide reading, does that mean it's at 25 degrees Celsius with where you took your testing? Does that mean that includes the addition of a knock sensor, which we should talk about next in your reading, to achieve it, what kind of flue gas were you actually exposing it to when you determined that was in plus or minus five percent? Was it just test gas or was it actually flue gas that you were using or simulated flue gas? So you start to peel back the onion get into these layers these nuances, and I think it's that kind of thing with the equipment manufacturers really wanted to see something put out there so that they could point to products versus saying these brands say equipment that is Maintained to these standards can be used well, I'll use an example again from air conditioning, because that's where I'm more comfortable, that kind of points this out there's a lot of manufacturers who are saying that their core remover tools are vacuum, rated core remover tools, but they Don't necessarily all measure in the same way or to the same standard, so that makes it really difficult to know what that means.

It's not to say that it's not true! It's just what does that mean because there's not necessarily a standard that everybody's following, so I think it's maybe sort of the same thing here where you can make statements of accuracy or application, but without there being a standard to measure. It's really hard to know and I'll go back into the topic. I just mentioned briefly there, nitric oxide filters, quick story around that. I was working with testo and I received a frantic phone call from one of the sales managers that, in a comparison of a testo combustion analyzer to another brand by a large client.

This testo was reading low or almost no carbon monoxide, whereas the other analyzer was reading levels of carbon monoxide. It turned out to be that the testo had built into it a filter for nitric oxide, so there's a lot of nitrogen in there, 79 %, nitrogen and air and, as a result, in most combustion systems, the oxygen in the air, the nitrogen, the air in the Flame front in from other sources, will combine to create nitric oxide or a no gas. Nitric oxide gas, when you face it to a carbon monoxide sensor, shows up in proportion to the amount of nitric oxide as part of the monoxide signal. If you will so, if you have say zero parts per million CO and a hundred parts per million - nitric oxide, you know look on the sensor like it's 50 ppm Co when there's actually no Co present at all.

That's what was happening with this large client. We figured out, went ahead and took the filter, the NOx filter out of the test. Oh, it read the same as the competitor, but that's only because you were disabling the test. Oh so low readings, don't always mean crippled products or insufficient products out there.

In effect, it was sort of this understanding of this, and I'm gon na take credit for my persistence, along with other people, saying that this had to be part of that BPI 1200 standard that you do have to use a NOx filter in order to give the Correct readings, it's fairly easy to give correct readings, but again you have to know what to ask where a combustion analyzer, not all the brands in the market, have it or build it in. So it's something you need to escort if you're going to rely on that Co level to make determinations of consequence, not safety, necessarily but determinations of consequence for your customer or for yourself and one of the biggest considerations. That is just like what you said: that a technician in the field has to be able to trust their tools, and if they don't understand what may be interfering with their tool, then they're going to tend to just disregard the measurement completely and so either they're gon Na stop taking it or they may continue taking it and just write down whatever they want, as opposed to the reality, because they start to not believe that what they're getting is truthful. So it's really important, even if it's only mentally or they might get on Facebook and say this piece of whatever sucks, because it I compared it to my other one, my buddy's other one and it gave a lower reading.

Well, don't always go down that path! Alright, so there are many different combustion analyzers on the market. I mean a huge range and obviously none of them are cheap tools, they're an investment, no matter what what factors would you use in order to help you make a decision on which combustion analyzer to choose? I would say if you should look for this NOx filter or look to add it, because if you do want to get Co readings, you want to get good Co readings. Reliable ones, be trust in your product and be able to trust in your results and have your customers trust you. The second thing, I would say, is our you, a data junkie and are you the kind of data junkie that likes information in front of you in your hand, on the display of the meter, or is it okay to transmit information to an app and to have The ability to work with it in sort of the app ecosystem pretty much those are the main factors right now for the HVAC building performance industry.

We could get in a combustion analysis and the industrial side, but I'm not going to move into that aspect right here. For our conversation, because of the nature of our audience, so things like a color display the ability to show graphics on the display, if you're, a data junkie. If you're not go with a simpler presentation of the information, look for serviceability and access to service - and by that I mean both self-service because a lot of companies sell parts and usually people using these products are taking apart and reassembling all kinds of electronic and digital Equipment all day long for their customers. You can also self-service your own product calibration, on the other hand, is a different aspect, so you need to find something.

That's easily calibrate able and usually that's a third party that you would involve in calibration because of the handling of toxic gases, the valves, the cylinders, the kind of the stable environment of control. I think it's a better investment to send it off to someone for calibration, whether it be the manufacturer or we do it a true tech also than to set up on your own. Unless you have a service fleet of 2030 analyzers, you might want to train someone to be your dedicated in-house calibration, in which case you can buy the equipment to do that, it could make sense. I guess I'm saying NOx filter first and then it's a decision based upon data.

The next aspect would be to look for products in alignment with this 1260 standard. I think that's something that's going to be coming along and it may become a request from certain clients or may become a request from manufacturers. But the crystal ball is not clear in that one. It could be two five years out, whatever yeah, so finding something.

That's in compliance with this standard is just kind of insurance that your forward compatible that you're not going to end up with a tool or device. That's going to be off kilter with what the industry has, which makes it a lot easier, especially if you do have a fleet if you're more than a one-man show and you've got a bunch of these out there, it's much easier if they all function in much. The same way right and I did say that Becker ik announced it blue flames got it. Testa was on the committee, so I'd say it's a slam-dunk they'll have it, they may not haven't, announced it yet and then Kane USA, which is Yui.

I was on the committee, so I think that they spent all that time in the committee. They're definitely going to put it into their product, so it just hasn't been announced. Yet this is really sort of like late-breaking information here in December 2018. Indeed, okay, so from a calibration standpoint, though, is it pretty much standard to do that once yearly? Is that typical, that's pretty much annual calibrations are recommended and in fact some groups like ResNet the residential energy rating network? They actually audit their auditors details and make sure that their calibration records are kept in compliance with what the manufacturers request so annual calibration.

Ours is around just a little bit over a hundred bucks and they also can help detect things that are going to be breaking down in the investment and your analyzer too. And when we talk about products that are in use for our audience, they range from around $ 600, a lot of them around the thousand dollar point and then there's different accessories like printers that you can get with them. Other types of probes that allow you to enhance what you're, using their good stuff, yeah a lot of resources available at true tech tools, comm pru tech tools, comm, like I mentioned before, offer code get schooled, is valid for a lot of products. If you find something that the code doesn't seem to be working, then I would say just reach out to the contact and they can figure out how to make that connection there, because most of the products out there there is some kind of discount.

If you have a affiliation through us you're on the podcast anything else, you want to add any closing thoughts. I think combustion analysis is necessary, you're, going to discover and find things. I see, I think, as probably as a result of Jim's latest podcasts people have come back around and say: well I really don't need to do it or it's not the kind of thing that makes a difference, but then there's a whole parade of people that will Come in behind real technicians, real applications and say this made a difference for safety. For my client, this made a difference for fuel consumption.

For my client, this made a difference for equipment. Longevity there's just so many factors. The other quick off point here is something that you actually covered recently in the HVC, our school, your blogs or your tech tips was about heat, exchanger testing and combustion. Analyzers absolutely are appropriate to do one type of heat, exchanger, Crack'd heat, exchanger evaluation and that's for looking for a change in the gases where they're not supposed to be you're.

Looking for when you turn the distribution air fan on, if that communicates with the vent system. With the combustion system it shouldn't be because there should be a seal or the heat exchanger contains. The combustion products is supposed to transfer the heat, but not any of the gases. So if you get a gas exchanger instead of a heat exchanger, you could pick up the change from the distribution air pumping air into that system and changing the oxygen or the carbon monoxide levels and thus giving you the idea that there could be a breach in The heat exchanger, so there's processes to do that.

Actually, if you go back to true tech tools and look for our combustion applications guide, which actually Jim Bergman road and I edited years ago - there's still a lot of valid information in there for evaluating heat exchangers and again look for Brian's blog post tech topic there. That gives a nice overview of it too. All right there we go so yeah. Thank you so much bill or another reminder.

Listen to the building, HVAC science podcast. You can find it on all of your pod catchers out there, whether it's the Apple podcast app or whether it's stitcher on a Android device or you can go to blue-collar roots, calm and listen right there. As always. I appreciate you Bill.

Thank you for all. You do for the industry, thank you for all you have done for me in my career. I honestly would not be in this position if it wasn't for so much kind, help that you've, given so keep doing what you're doing, and I hope we can talk again soon back at you buddy. Thank you.

Take care everyone, alright, the hvac school podcast. That's what you've just listened to. I just want to say again, I've said it before, but it bears repeating that you have all made my life better. Hopefully, I've been able to give you something a benefit here and there myself and the people who spend the time doing this, but it's been such an honor getting to know so many of you I've had another conference the other day, I'm not really a traveling man As you know, I have many children, and so I don't like to be gone too often, but was it a conference again the other day and there were CEOs executives who were sitting up and listening when I was talking about how the field needs more respect? How manufacturers need to invest more in the field and technical training, and all that and it's such an honor to be able to? I don't want to say, speak truth to power.

I mean that's kind of a fancy way of saying it, but to be able to be a positive influence on the trade and the only reason that that happens is because some of you encouraged me early on. I many of you did and all of you who continue to listen and better yourselves and share with other people and stay excited about the business that we work in. That's pretty darn cool and I'm proud to know you proud to work in this trade. It's a good thing.

Thank you so much for your part in that. On another note, though, I have a friend who works in a subjects: 2 position: 2 HVAC ever friend who works in the shoe recycling business. I mean my goodness, that is a soul-crushing business. All right, thanks for listening, we will talk to you next time on the HVAC school podcast.

Thanks for listening to the hvac school podcast, you can find more great HVAC our education material and subscribe to our short daily tech tips by going to HVAC our school comm. If you enjoy the podcast, would you mind hopping on iTunes or the podcast app and leave us a review? We would really appreciate it. See you next week on the HVAC school podcast.