So I'm here with Santiago from Georgia Balance. Is that right? That's correct? All right. So yeah, it literally just walked up. This is the beauty of doing these kind of live podcasts is people just come up and we talk about things that we've never talked about the podcast before and test and balance: I think I Don't know.

Maybe three. Four years ago we talked to Dwyer a little bit, but we've never talked to somebody who's actually a field practitioner, which is what we prefer at ABC School People will actually do this so you're actually trained as an engineer. Is that right? Is there? Okay, awesome. So tell me a little bit about like All right, Testing balance broadly.

A lot of us know. You know, maybe you hire a tab contractor because it's part of the contract with your client or whatever. but what's the kind of stuff you guys do day in the day? Okay, so once you're a mechanical contractor, installs everything according to the engineering clients. Uh, we go through and we basically calibrate the units to deliver the airflow accordingly and in the right spaces.

Um, after that, we make sure that the air is ventilated properly rather than the space is ventilated properly. setting outside airs and setting exhausts as well. That way you let's say a restaurant won't be extracting too much air through the kitchen hoods and then you're pulling in air from the outside through your front doors. Every time a customer comes in, you always want to make sure that that space ends up being positive so you can keep a lot of that humidity out and the air that's coming in is conditioned.

Um yeah, yeah, a little positive pressure is a good thing. I think I've told this story before but so test and balance expert. All right. So I'm going to put you in the hot seat here as well.

I mean you do it? Yeah yeah um and we got some people coming on. Jonathan Ortiz uh Jesse's here hey? Jesse Um so I have this favorite restaurant that I go to all the time. It was an Indian restaurant and when I would go into the building the door it was kind of hard to open for sure. um but it had this you'd go into the bathrooms and it had this odor that wouldn't go away and it wasn't like it wasn't normal, it was like something was something was a little off so which so it smelled like sewage a little bit.

So what are your thoughts at dry? Pedro Dry P-trap and that's exactly what it was. so that's it. Was actually a floor drain and we're in the bathroom Exactly. So we see that a lot.

Uh, in some restaurants. We've seen it in some colleges when you know in a Janitor's Closet that doesn't get used very often. Uh, you start getting some of that and all you have to do or put your water back in and yeah, it's good to go right? Uh, that stops the smell. but in this site I Told him to get a tab company out because it turned out the ventilation air was imbalanced and so that was making it worse because it was drawing out.

So a little positive pressure makes a big difference. Yeah, I mean a bathroom can have too much exhaust as well. You don't want to be pulling too much out, especially depending on what the rest of the building is doing. You're not able to bring in as much fresh air, but you definitely want to keep the bathroom in a negative pressure to make sure that the other odors also stay in there.

correct? Correct. So the bathroom's negative pressure, but this, in this case, the actual building? Yeah, exactly. I Mean again, if you're under enough negative that you're having a hard time, that is a whole lot. That's a lot And a sign that you're definitely going to be pulled.

Um, all right. So yeah. tell me a little bit about. like, because I think a lot of techs imagine that.

All right? You're going to try to balance. Uh, a big space. It's a new build you've got. You know, kind of your typical you know, balancing dampers.

A bunch of eight inch duct run everywhere. You know, A very typical kind of install. Where do you start with something like that? How do you? How do you get started to try to deliver the proper air to each space? Well, first, what I like to do is be able to go and take a look at the unit and see what kind of you're dealing with. Is it going to be running in a single speed is a system that's going to modulate on me, you know, Vfds or ECM uh controllers on that.

Um, and from there uh. started the test plan and go find all my dampers. Make sure that they're all wide open so there's the least restriction that's possible in the system and read it and then from there go speed it up or slow it down once. I got the right amount of airflow I Like to set it a little bit high and then come back through and balance it accordingly.

Um, and sometimes there'll be dampers that aren't installed and stuff like that. so you just make notes and report it back to the mechanical contractor, get that fixed and finalize it. How do you measure, go about measuring things like system airflow and ventilation airflow. Do you have any like typical strategies you use for them: Total outside airflow versus your complete airflow? Um Up on the Roof Usually there is a a hood, air, fresh air, hood intake and uh, we we measure that using Aville grid.

Okay, yeah, nice. Um, do you ever make much use of like uh, keto tubes or hot wire anemometers or anything like that using like, um, traverses? Yeah. So I Was gonna say with the pita tubes, we do some traverses. we do a lot of traverses.

Um, depending on if it's something that we can read with like a flow hood or another type of air capturing Hood we'll do a a Traverse for that. or if we have a an old system that's very low in air and we're trying to figure out how much leakage is there throughout the whole duct work. We'll try to find a good spot for a good Traverse and bypass all of that linkage and the rest of the ductwork and get a total airflow that way, right? Yeah, and for those of you who aren't familiar with the term Traverse all that literally means is is that you're you're traversing, you're traveling across the duct. and so there's a couple different strategies that are used depending on the type of duct.

There's something called that I just like to say because it's fancy word. a log Chevy Chef Traverse where you're actually taking a bunch of points, a bunch of different point measurements, and then there is a Traverse average Traverse where you just draw it out slowly at a kind of a fixed speed and then the software automatically averages right. Um, what do you typically? What do you typically do? We take multiple points, Multiple points. Yep, Yes, sir, and uh, and so depending on the shape as well, we'll dictate where those points are within the Traverse and how many points we're going to take.

Um, and then you like you say, you just take an average of the Velocity multiply about the the area you're traversing and I'll give you your airflow. Yeah, simple stuff. Simple stuff. Log Chubby Chef Traverse This guy's a lob a log chubby Chef Traverse type guy over here.

Um, yeah, that's really cool. So um, it sounds like you're kind of kind of moving up the world a little bit. You're taking up some new challenges in your business. I Mean you don't have to share it here now, but you know, like they get some good things going? Yes, Yes, uh.

Judge Balance is definitely growing a lot and there'll be some some changes here in the future with it. Yeah, and uh, hopefully we'll keep on growing and putting out the same good work and good reputation that we've always had. Yeah, you were saying um, that a lot of people who do bounces I actually I said it and you just kind of Affirmed There's a lot of you know what we call pencil whipping where you just basically go through and you write in what people want to hear your Waffle House report. Yeah, I don't know what's up, what's it goes into the Waffle House and write a report.

Okay, all right. I see I learned something new Waffle House report. Um, so you were saying that like recently, a lot of clients have been coming back because that stuff comes back to bite you. Yes, Yes, there's people that I mean I'm not gonna say anything about other people, but if you don't report, if you don't do a good report and actually really inspect everything and make sure that everything is set like we were talking about earlier, your restaurant could end up being negative or whatever other space you have.

You may have humidity problems later on on the road. Just because the system isn't able to comply with everything, you may be bringing too much outside air. Therefore Your coils can function properly in the middle of the summer. There's many, many things that could go wrong and so making sure that you take it seriously.

there's actually a pretty significant amount of liability with that if you if you're a client or you're a contractor who's hiring a tab report and you're not taking that seriously. If you don't have proper ventilation rights, there's some pretty bad things that can happen, right? Yeah, yep. and uh. and our job is not to fix or repair anything.

We're literally just going through and making sure that everything is functioning right. Whatever is not functioning right. We reported that somebody else fixes it so that I honestly don't understand why you wouldn't just stop. It's not super hard.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. So uh Santiago Georgia Balance if you are in the so you're from Noonan but you serve like the Greater Atlanta area. Uh, Southeast Yes, yes sir.

Georgia Balance does the whole South we we work yeah all over. um so I say Southeast but we definitely do work both. the Carolinas Alabama I'll be there tomorrow. uh South Georgia the northern part of Florida We don't travel super far down, but if it's for somebody special, we might make a trip.

What if it's me, we might make a trip. Yeah, Awesome. Well thank you Santiago that's awesome. And for those of you who are looking for a good quality uh, balancing contract in the Southeast Contact this guy I Know some I've got some clients who you know you're kind of the engineering side of things contractors, that kind of thing.

Um, you definitely want to want to look them up. Sounds like they take it seriously so that's awesome. Thank you so much Thank you.