In the last post, we covered the area of HVAC dealing with air conditioning and refrigeration. For today’s blog post, we’d like to quickly go over the other major topic of HVAC industry – heating systems. In geographical areas where temperature fluctuation tends to be quite extreme, a good working heating system is a vital necessity –especially during the colder winter months. The main challenge of heating systems frequently comes from the heat distribution method. There are a couple types of heating system and it is important to take into account their functionality to decide which is the best type for your application.
The first systems we are going to focus on is central heating, which is the most common heating system in North American residential applications. This system comes with primary heating applications such as a furnace, boiler, and heat pumps. Each heat source is rather unique and uses different methods of distributing heat into the targeted environment. Furnaces use ducts to blow heated air through in order to disperse the generated energy. Implementation of such technology in the USA is controlled by the Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency where it estimates seasonal efficiency, averaging peak and part-load situations. Boilers utilizes hot water which travels up to radiators and gets circulated around in a system – so instead of using a fan and ducts, appliances which utilizes boiler as a heat source commonly uses pump to flows the hot water to other parts of the house/building. Since circulation is the most recurring challenge in heating appliances, an optimal pump design must be installed into the system to make sure that the heat is distributed evenly to each part of site. Within central heating there is also heat pump system which works as two-way air conditioner (direct and reverse). During the hotter season, heat pumps work to moving heat from indoor (cooler) to outdoor (higher temperature), and vice versa during the colder months. Heat pumps generally use electricity to move heat from one place to another.
Humid climates commonly come with the challenge of moisture standards. When HVAC (heating, ventilations, and air-conditioning) systems do not maintain proper moisture conditions/humidity control, it causes damages and defects to the building.
When asked about problems rising in the HVAC industry, people typically point to the availability of trained workers or labor force. The growth of the HVAC industry brings more open jobs into the market. According to a report by U.S Department of Labor, by 2020, this particular market should bring about 90,000 new jobs in the industry. With that being said, the spike in work doesn’t necessarily align with quantities of qualified workers. Even with strong job security and above average pay, HVAC doesn’t seem to attract too much young potential. In the past year, the HVAC industry has lost thousands of workers, not only from the lagging economy, but also due to the work force available. Currently, the average age of the entire 7.5 million HVAC workforce is around 55 years old, which is much older than the normal workforce.