NCI Instructor, Paul Weibolt
On June 18-19, 2010 Hammond Services had on-site training conducted by NCI. The training course was titled “Air Diagnostics and Balancing”. Hammond Services had 14 employees attend this course, and employees from two other contractors also attended, one from Kentucky and the other from South Carolina. The purpose of the course was to train us all in new techniques to help our customers achieve greater energy efficiency and comfort.
When a typical heating and cooling contractor quotes the efficiency of the equipment (SEER or AFUE) and leads you to believe the new equipment will automatically deliver that efficiency, think again. Typical installed equipment only operates at 55% to 70% of rated capacity. In simple terms, 14 SEER air conditioning equipment could only operate like 7 SEER equipment. This is terrible, and it is an industry-wide problem. Now, with NCI’s approach to testing and measuring, we can identify and correct this problem.
While new high efficiency heating and cooling equipment may help, the number one factor in determining system efficiency is your duct system. Heating and cooling travels through ducts that are often too restrictive, damaged, poorly maintained, or improperly designed and installed from the beginning. A certified NCI contractor can fix many of these problems and increase your system’s delivered heating and cooling efficiency.
Measuring System Static Pressures
Hammond Services, now an NCI trained and certified contractor, will evaluate your existing duct design and look for deficiencies. Most duct systems have deficiencies, and these can be corrected while installing your new equipment. We will then measure the new system’s performance to prove te new system is functioning as designed. By taking this approach, we insure that you get the comfort and energy savings you’re paying for.
Hammond Services has always followed industry guidelines for duct design, and in most cases exceeded minimum design criteria. However, we are now discovering with the use of new test instruments and diagnostic techniques, that most systems are not performing as well as we originally thought. The average delivered cooling and heating efficiency of systems across the country is only 57%, according to NCI’s national database. This is shocking because it demonstrates that the focus on the equipment efficiencies alone is not working. That’s why Hammond Services is now implementing newly learned best practices to measure and deliver actual delivered efficiencies of 90% or better.
Now we can measure every customer’s system efficiency, and give it a SCORE. This will identify those opportunities for the greatest improvement. This will result in greater comfort and tremendous energy savings. We are very excited about this new technology and have invested heavily to make sure that our entire company is trained and certified accordingly.
Who are good candidates for this SCORE test? Actually we are doing it on every call. But those who stand the most to gain are those who have :
- Higher than expected utility bills
- Rooms that are hot or cold
- Lower than expected air flow from your ducts
- Systems that run all the time and seem to never cut off
Give us a call at 770-227-5325 to have your system SCORE tested. Call now and see how you can get your system tested at no cost.