|
My father was an HVAC tech from 1972 to whenever the gently caress he retired (2008-ish). Was service manager for his big brother's HVAC company from the time they came back from being Green Berets in Vietnam until my uncle retired, and Dad worked for another HVAC company for a few years until he retired. I apprenticed with dad for a few summers until I decided to work for Mom remodeling grocery stores. Today Mom and I were in a store during a good 'ol East Texas thunderstorm, and the power went out. Fact #1: A grocery store has just enough of a backup genset to run the lights and computers. Fact #2: A grocery store on generator power is the epitome of the ol' deafening silence. Without the Muzak and the background hum of the ~kiloton (just guessing there) of refrigeration running the freezers, meat/produce coolers, and A/C, it gets rather creepy. It's one of those things you don't notice until it goes away, sort of like how you tune out the sound of your fridge, computer fan, and A/C at home, but when the power goes out the lack of background noise wakes you up, but on a grand scale. Also they turn the automatic doors to "exit only" and flip the metaphorical sign in the window to "closed" (in practice, they had the newbie cashier stand outside the door and shout "we're closed!" at customers pulling in to the parking lot) when the power's out for half an hour, because after that point, opening the freezer doors costs them a lot of money/shortens the shelf life of the ice cream. Edit: Fact #3: the standard policy for tornadoes is to herd all the customers and employees into the backroom freezers. The severe weather will pass before anybody dies from hypothermia, and they probably won't die from hypothermia given that the storm has probably already killed the power and there's plenty of ice cream to eat before it goes bad. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Feb 16, 2016 |
#
¿
Feb 16, 2016 04:18
|
|
Bad Angus! Bad!
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 00:08 |
|
|
ExplodingSims posted:I seriously cannot think of anywhere I'd want to be less than in a walk in during a storm. Seriously, those are made out of paper thin metal and foam. They have no support other than being held to the ceiling by bailing wire, and the walls. They''re not even glued or anything either, just held in place by cam locks. You'd be surprised at how light and flimsy those panels are. Either way, it's gotta be better than being out on the sales floor in a vast open space (once the roof gets ripped off) full of small glass objects in a tornado. ExplodingSims posted:In other news, I went through my phone and found some pics I've been meaning to share.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 2, 2016 02:04
|
|
|
ExplodingSims posted:You know what's really fun? Working on stuff all day then coming home to find your own A/C not running. Oh, more stories from my dad's A/C shop: take a starter cap, duct tape the bottom of it to a sheet of tinfoil, wrap the rest of the foil carefully over the top in the size/shape of a soccer ball.So you've got a bigass cap at the bottom of a ball of tinfoil. Throw it in the direction of the newbie and shout "think fast!" When they catch it, it crushes the foil onto the contacts, makes a big bang, etc.. The foil will probably vaporize before they get lethal amounts of current. Also, crosspost from the GBS OSHA thread: The ceiling of the shop was rather low, and of course they built their own ceiling fans by hanging the fans from scrapped condenser units from the ceiling (if the fan craps out, you replace it, if the compressor craps out, it's often more economical to replace the whole unit with a more efficient one). Dad is not tall, and he once walked into one. Cut a good half-inch into the bill of his baseball cap. If Dad hadn't habitually worn a ballcap (he was bald even then, and wore it to protect against scalp sunburn), he probably would have at best needed stitches and at worst got an accidental lobotomy -- they also did commercial work, so some of their ceiling fans had some serious horsepower behind them. MRC48B posted:Advantages of HVAC: You can get in snowball fights in June. My house's evaporator froze up about a month ago, took me way longer than I should have to troubleshoot it. Weakass breeze from the registers, running constantly when it's 89F out and 91F inside all day ... I literally grew up in an HVAC shop, I should've known.  . Eventually I figured out how to pull the front panel off the air handler and "Oh. There's the problem, innit?" I put a shop light up pointing at it to help the thawing (alas I didn't have any fuckin' incandescent bulbs in the house, but CFLs throw off SOME heat), and the problem was eventually resolved. (Edit: I had a half-inch of snow on top of an inch of so)lid ice.)It's okay if it freezes up once right? It's only a problem if it does it a lot? Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Jun 28, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2016 03:06
|
|
|
ExplodingSims posted:Are you sure you have R22? That suction pressure seems fine for 22, but the head pressure is way too low for it to be 90* outside. The filter needed a washing, yeah (we smoke and are lazy about filter wash/change intervals). And It was fan on + lightbulb, while we sweated.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2016 04:16
|
|
|
rdb posted:When I purged the lines it did not smell of propane. I think it's still R22. Edit: You know it's bad when ADOLPH GODDAMN HITLER sends a telegram expressing his condolences. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jul 26, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2016 04:23
|
|
|
Zhentar posted:Absorption cycle refrigeration is poo poo. If you're thinking you want to use solar thermal for air conditioning, forget about it. It's become far more cost effective to use PV with vapor compression refrigeration. If you've got an industrial process with a lot of waste heat, it can be worth your time. lol yeah that happens every other year around here, oopsie with a can of concentrated skunk getting loose and causing a panic. OTOH, there's a sign on my road saying "DANGER POISON GAS" bc there's oil wells and it's a low spot and sulfur dioxide happens. Edit: SO2 is the smell of rotten eggs, so easy enough to avoid. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jul 26, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2016 05:51
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 00:08 |
|
|
My father was an HVAC tech from when he got out of the Army after doing a tour in Vietnam until he retired. When he built our family's first "real" house (we'd previously lived in a singlewide trailer on the same lot) in the late '80s, he put valves to hook up the guages/bottle in the laundry room, because gently caress humping that poo poo around back of the house outside in the rain/heat. I'm reminded because my uncle (dad's baby brother, whole also worked at their big brother's A/C shop his whole carreer, and is semi-retired but still does HVAC work for friends and family), just came over to poke at the new condenser he installed a month or two ago and top off the Freon. The one Dad put in when he built the house had a catastophic failure of the compressor. Edit for topicality: for getting into any trade, nepotism always helps. Like I said, my uncle ran the company that my father and younger uncle worked for, and I unofficially apprenticed with Dad in high school, so I probably could've easily got my foot in the door with another company and got them to pay for my locensing (I was just muscle when I went to work with Dad) when Dad and his older brother retired and shut their business down. (I ended up going to work with my mom instead, rearranging grocery stores, which is its own weird specialized trade.) Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 01:09 on May 26, 2018 |
|
#
¿
May 26, 2018 00:59
|
|