Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine March 2025

News Magazine March 2025

FEATURE STORY

and microprocessors are in every component from the thermostat to the expansion valve. We could do better educating our customers. As a matter of fact, computer development and HVAC share similar timelines.

Zero In on Missing Pieces to Performance While we cannot make excuses for the industry missing the mark, it is easy to understand how we continue to flounder. Building Science regarding the

HVAC industry was not generally understood as it is today and continues to

evolve. The first codes that even mention insulation levels were developed by American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) 90-75 in 1975. In 1977 the Council of American Building Officials (CABO), developed MCEC 77 that was the future Model Energy Code first published in 1983. Those Model Energy Codes have been revised upward as we gain better understanding of construction and it wasn’t until 1987 that minimum efficiency requirements were set. We did not understand the necessity of sealing duct until the late 1990’s. That really translates to our industry being twenty five years old as technology stands today. This fact does not consider it was only in 2006 ICC Codes recognized duct testing for leakage as a requirement. In 2009 ICC recognized a mandate for air sealing the thermal envelope and have continually updated the code with more stringent requirements ever since. The last “next

If you were born in 1970, you probably had air conditioning of some sort by the time you were 10 years old and personal computers were developed in the mid 1980’s. Apple Power Book and IBM’s Think Pad were developed in 1991 and 1992 respectively. That means by the time you were twenty, a computer was a common tool, and mobile computing was on the horizon. These science timelines are not that far apart. I am thankful for the fact I worked in a university setting in early 1991. I was trained on something called Johnson Controls Metasys that used Microsoft MS DOS graphic interface scheduling. Without that introduction to the computing industry, I would have been scrambling to learn computer operation later in life. Few baby boomers of my day were computer literate. One year later I was learning to write code for Metasys. So, let’s move back to the topic of HVAC alone.