Forced Air Hydronics

All right. So today’s topic is forced air and hydronics. And when we talk about forced air and hydronics there’s Hvac companies that are all in the hydronics camp. That’s the best force source of heat. And then there’s companies where force air is the best because of the customization feature to it. But really, the two systems don’t have to be separate, and they can be a great complement to one another.

So at Arzel, our commitment is to our contractors. We want to ensure that you’re getting the most reliable product on the market. We want to ensure that you’re getting the best support on the market. So our tech supports available seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. eastern time for professionals. And if they give us a call outside of normal office hours, there might be a little bit of a wait time as it’s forwarding through to our cell phones waiting for myself or Jason to pick up.

But we do pick up, and we provide support outside of the normal office hours. So that is available if your technicians ever have any questions. If they run into something after hours, any any questions they have, we are available for that seven days a week, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. eastern.

So we look at forced air and hydronics. There’s definitely pros to both systems. There’s cons to both systems, but we don’t have to offer one over the other. For a customer that wants the optimum comfort in their home, the two systems can really be combined. When we look at hydronics, we have probably the most comfortable form of heat with the in the floor radiant.

We wake up in the morning, touch our toes on the floor, and we got a nice warm floor. And the benefits to radiant is that it’s very quiet. It’s so long as the air’s out of the airlines. It’s a very quiet system. So efficiency wise, there’s a lot more heat packed into the water than there is in the air.

So that’s easier to deliver with smaller, smaller sources instead of large ductwork to carry the air. We’ve got small copper lines that can carry the same amount of heat and a much more compact. And then for people without allergies, with allergies, there is no air movement to it. But the negative to that is that even though there’s no air movement and the allergens can settle down, they’re not actively being removed from the air like you would have with the forced air.

But then we run into those horror stories with the boiler system. We got that rental home where the tenants moved out. The landlord didn’t pay attention to it in freezing weather, and then all of a sudden, boom, it’s frozen. There’s waterworks everywhere. It’s a big mess. So they are higher maintenance in that regard to where if something goes wrong, catastrophic failure can cause a lot more damage than it does with the forced air system.

And then some of the some of the drawbacks to radiant is that it takes longer to heat up because it takes longer to heat up. We can’t really use the night setback with it. I mean, studies typically show that we sleep more comfortably when it’s 65 to 68 degrees, but if we set a boiler system back at night, we can wake up in the morning and it’s going to be that 65, 68 degrees and take probably an hour or so before it actually reaches temperature and provides us with that warm air that we’re looking for, waking up the piping can be difficult to access sometimes.

So, like we saw in the previous picture, with the nightmare, some people put those into locations where you have absolutely no access unless you cut the floor up from the area above it to get to those fittings, which makes it very difficult to access and that can make for costly repairs as well. It can be more expensive and upfront costs.

There’s no cooling with it, so require a separate source of air conditioning if we’re going to be comfortable in the summer months and there is a lack of air filtration. So while the allergens aren’t disturbed, they’re not removed. And for people with allergies like myself, I’ve got kids running through the home and they would disturb those allergens, which would then set up my congestion.

It would make my eyes itchy. It would just be a bother to me. So for myself, my preference is for the air because there’s active air filtration. But I know I’d be quite happy if I had warm floors in the morning, because when you step out onto a cold floor, that’s just uncomfortable. And then with boiler systems, because there’s no air movement, you require specialized humidification equipment above and beyond what you would typically have with the forced air system.

So it’s a dry heat, and without that extra humidification, you can run into issues with damaging your woodwork, drying it out, shrinking and cracking.

It was always fun as a kid, though, because when you shuffle your carpet or your feet across the carpet or something like that and build up that static charge with the dry air, you can just go zap your sister. And that can be a lot of fun.

Forced air, though. Forced air has plenty of benefits to it as well because it provides both the heating and cooling. We have the advanced air treatment. So for people with allergies like myself, I can add Merv filters on. I can add UV lights ionization to destroy the, mold and bacteria in the air. So allergies to mold, dust, pet dander, things like that that’s no longer resting in the home.

It’s actually being removed from the air as it passes through my filter. And that allows for cleaner air that’s easier on my allergies themselves. There’s make up air integration because I can add a pipe going outside, draw that air from outside into the home. So if I have a tight home, I’m not looking for an external set up to provide fresh air to the home.

I don’t have to keep my windows open all the time. Letting in that unfiltered air. I can draw that air through my furnace, through the filtration system, clean it up and get that fresh air from outside into my home. Then the air circulation. Some people don’t like the drafty feeling that you might get with air circulation. Some people do prefer that drafty feeling when you’ve got a boiler system and you’re closing down part of your home with the zoning and you’re not using it, those doors remain closed.

That air in those rooms can get stale, they can get musty, and it can be become a health problem later on. With forced air, though, you’re constantly circulating air throughout the entire home, so you can keep that stale air from building up in the air or unused or less frequently used rooms. And that creates for a healthier home overall.

And when it comes to all electric, there’s a lot more options that are energy efficient when it comes to a forced air system than it is with the boiler system. I’ve installed some of those electric boilers in the past, but my preference and my customers preference usually turns out to be if they have the ability for a forced air system because a heat pump cost less to operate than an all electric boiler.

In a lot of cases. Now, when you start getting into propane and natural gas, the boiler is going to be less expensive to operate, but it’s going to be more expensive to install. And then because forced air is actively circulating the air, it’s pulling it through, running it over a heat exchanger, and then back into areas that control or the zones, we can use those night setbacks and wake up to warm air in the house, so we can use a night set back.

We can sleep more comfortably at that 65 to 68 degrees, and then we can expect to wake up to a warm room in the morning because at night, set back is more effective with forced air in that area can warm up more quickly to create a comfortable room.

But then you got some forced air that’s done wrong.

I kind of like some of these pictures. You got your crack in there on the one side. On the other side, you get what looks to be 120,000 BTU five ton furnace in a greenhouse, and they shrunk it down to that almost looks like a ten by 22 inch duct running underneath the tables in the center.

That’s going to have some issues later on. So forced air can be done wrong, and it’s done wrong often times. So it really needs to be evaluated and done correctly. When forced air is done wrong it can be very noisy. It can cause drafty uneven air distribution because when we don’t have an appropriate sized furnace, it causes short cycling. That short cycling creates uneven temperatures throughout those rooms.

And then as the cold pockets of air in that room move into the hot pockets of air in that room, that creates a drafty feeling. And that’s uncomfortable for the homeowners, or it’s uncomfortable for the occupants. Air leakage reduces efficiency. So if you got old ductwork that’s not sealed up, you’re pushing air into unoccupied areas where that he doesn’t necessarily need to be, or where that cooler doesn’t necessarily need to be, then air can’t hold as much heat as water.

The water can hold about 4.2 or 3 times more heat capacity than air can. So when it comes to water, we can transport that heat in a much smaller package. With air, we require a larger package, larger ductwork, to transfer an equivalent amount of heat with that air. And then a lot of contractors go to those one two inch filters.

They’re really not very effective. They’re not good for people with allergies, but it’s a basic filter. It’s a place to start. So while advanced air filtration is a definite pro and can be added on to forced air systems, it’s not often there. It’s not often something that people are adding on.

But we do have lots of options when it comes to the force air system for improving the indoor air quality. So we’ve got Merv filters, we’ve got UV lights, we’ve got ionizer, we got humidifiers, things that can add a lot of comfort and value to our customers home. A Merv ten filter, for instance, can remove about 85% of particles 3 to 10 microns, while Merv 13 can remove 90% of those, Merv 13 filter.

So for example, 3 to 10 microns would typically be something like pollen hair, household dust, 1 to 3 microns would be bacteria, mold, dust mites and dust mite feces. And then tobacco smoke would be at the point 3 to 1 micron. So when we look at the Merv filters and we go to like a Merv 13 filter that’s capable of filtering out up to 50% of the particles at 0.3 to 1 micron.

And that’s that’s smoke, that’s tobacco smoke. So if there’s a smoker in the home that helps to reduce some of that smoke that’s staying in the air, but that home, but it helps to remove up to 90% of the particles that would typically carry bacteria, mold, dust mites, and 90% of the particles that contain pollen, hair and other household contaminants.

So we have those options to add premium filter on there. And that’s going to vary. That’s going to be very helpful to someone with allergies, humidity percentage or typically more comfortable. EPA recommends 30 to 50% comfort for most people is going to be somewhere around 40 to 45%, but we need to reduce that during the winter months to prevent condensation on the windows.

So the EPA for Healthy Air recommends 30 to 50%. And I’ve seen some homes without humidifiers being as dry as 15 to 20%. And that’s horrible for woodwork. It’s horrible for your skin. Causes that dry cracking, very uncomfortable, itchy.

But then for people that are sensitive to mold, people that are sensitive to well, let’s let’s look at today’s situation with Covid 19. EPA finally released a statement show saying that Covid 19 is transferred in the air. I mean, we’ve known that for a while, but they’re finally now admitting it. And that air we’re finding that UV air treatment systems are effective at sanitizing that air.

So when we have years like we have today with the Covid 19 across the board, if we’re constantly circulating air in that building and we’re running it through a UV air treatment or an ionizing air treatment type of system, we’re killing off the mold virus and bacteria in the air. We’re improving the health of it. And with the winter months upon us, that’s that’s hugely beneficial.

We walk down a hospital hallway and they have these little Half Dome lights hanging with the blue glow from the top of them. Those are passive UV sanitizers that kill off mold, virus and bacteria in that area through high intensity UV. So UV or treatment, it’s been used for a while. It’s been used in passive ways, but it’s a lot more effective when you’re actively circulating that air through UV air treatment.

And you can’t do that with the boiler. So a recirculating fan that you have with the forced air system provides you with cleaner air. And that’s going to be more attractive to people who are sensitive to allergens, but also who are sensitive or concerned with things like Covid 19.

But we can have the best of both worlds. We don’t have to have either or we can combine that boiler. We can have those warm floors in the morning. We can have that warm air in the morning with the forced air system heating it up more rapidly than we’re going to get, waiting for convection, waiting for that radiation of the hot air from the floor from a connector or radiator on the wall baseboard so the two systems can be combined.

And while we can do air handlers, that maybe are Force air, all electric, we can also combine those air handlers with a hydronic coil that uses the boiler. So now the boiler could be a stage of heat with the forced air as a complement to it providing both heating and air conditioning. That allows us to have a comfortable warm floor that allows us to wake up, put our toes on the floor and not instantly look for our slippers.

But it also allows us to sleep more comfortably at night to have that 65 to 68 degrees. And then in the morning we’re circulating the air in large quantities over a hot coil to put the heat into it, rather than wait on our convection, wait on our radiation with the boiler system so we can have our warm floors, we can have our night set back.

We can circulate the air through the less used rooms, preventing the stale air from building up in places within our home that we don’t use as often as we do other areas. We have the allergen removal, we have the. We take care of that concern for people who want to have something that kills off the mold, virus and bacteria in the air with UV air treatment or ionization.

When it comes to electric boilers, we can have a forced air heat pump with an electric boiler for keeping floors warm and our bathrooms and our master bedroom. We don’t have to do it for the entire home, and that will save us money. But then we have that heat pump as our primary source of heat, which is going to reduce our energy usage versus having your primary source of heat as an electric boiler.

So we can see lower energy bills. With boiler system, zoning is really easy. Zone valves you can block off an area without much trouble with forced air. Zoning is a little bit trickier because if we block off too much, we can damage our equipment. We can cause short cycling. But when zoning is done right, the enhancement, the comfort in the home is greatly increased.

So we can have a zoning easily with the boiler. Zoning with forced air is easy as well. It just needs to be designed correctly and we have other classes that go more into the design aspect of it, but the two systems can be effectively combined and work together to provide the best of both worlds.

Some of the nightmares that we might run into with boilers is the wiring. You walk into a boiler job and you see a giant spaghetti monster wires. You’re not really sure where to start, but they have a problem. And now you’re tracing everything back, trying to figure out what’s doing what. And it starts to become tedious, time consuming, and expensive.

But with Arzel, we can take the mess out of it for you. We do custom controls. It’s not just forced air that we have a control for. We have a ZVI, which we call a zone valve interface that can also be used as a hydronic control. But then we have a wiring diagram for you, so you can trace terminal to the terminal instead of trying to look at that spaghetti mess of wires and see where it’s going and all that can be neat and up, that can look nice, professional, and it can make sense to a technician that’s looking at it for on for just a hydronic control or ZVI or zone valve interface.

You got your thermostat, got your transformer, your Aquastat and your zone valves and all that can easily be neat and up in a simple four zone panel. The Aquastat and the boiler pump terminals are dry contacts, so you don’t have to worry about isolating the Aquastats transformer from another transformer that’s powering your zone valves. Your zone valves and your thermostats can all be powered by the transformer that’s hooked up to the ZVI controller.

So it simplifies it, and it makes it into, a neater package that can look professional instead of the Spaghetti Monster mess that we run into frequently when we’re working on hydronic systems. In Floor Radiant, it really feels nice on the toes. Ductwork run properly, can look great, and look professional, and it’s an effective air delivery source. As far as custom panels, when we look to combine both force air and hydronic, Arzel does those custom panels in this application we have our HeatPumPro, we have our ZVI, our ZVI provide the first stage heat, but the Thermostat’s calling for the radiant floor.

Then if we use that night setback, they need additional capacity to warm that air up quickly. The thermostat can call for a W2, which will then start the forced air system. And with our HeatPumPro that provides you with up to four stages of heat. If you have an all electric application. So if you have a heat pump system with electric backup, two stage heat pump, two stage electric backup, the HeatPumPro with just a W input to it, or a W1 input to it will give you all four stages of heat on those outputs, so you don’t have to worry about complicated controls.

For this example of a custom panel, there’s five stages of heat. The thermostats call for W1, it starts the boiler keeps the floors warm. But then if we’re using that night, set back and the thermostats call for a W2 because they need that extra capacity to to bring the temperature up quickly, then they energize the forced air system through the HeatPumPro on top of that, you can just use your fan to circulate air through the building, which is going to provide you with that air filtration. It’s going to remove those allergens. It’s going to improve the health of the air in that home, rather than have the allergens settle and stay stagnant, waiting for somebody to go through with the dusting cloths to remove them.

The force air system actively removes them and helps to prevent some of that buildup. We also do fresh air controls if you want to introduce fresh air to the building, which we should be with the tight homes that we have today, a lot of builders with new construction today are relying on a passive sort of infiltration. They have the exhaust fan in the kitchen, they have the exhaust fan in the bedrooms.

Her bathroom is creating a negative pressure in the building. And then through infiltration with the windows and doors, they’re bringing that fresh air into the building. That’s not necessarily the best way to do it, because that does create traps that negative pressure. I’ve I’ve been in homes where that negative pressure is great. And if you try to open the door and it near rips it out of your hand so tight homes need some sort of controlled.

Fresh air system that’s not relying on infiltration. And Arzel has our fact control. Fresh air control technology. It’s also it’s it’s our old slave board, but it’s we use it today as a fresh air control device. And then based on some field provided switches like, outdoor temperature, timer enthalpy, things like that, you can now pull that in in a controlled manner, run it through your furnaces filtration system and have the control of the Arzel dampers with the lifetime warranty, lifetime warranty on the fact for the zoning panel, you can have the reliability of Arzel, bring that fresh air in a controlled manner, and provide healthier air in that house for your

customer, in that building, for your customer.

And Arzel’s. Really easy. If you need application assistance, give us a call. Any troubleshooting help? You have some ideas on something where you want to see if it’s going to be working. Give us a call 806 118312 or call Techsupport@arzelzoning.com more than happy to talk to you about your custom applications. Any troubleshooting questions?

You have some ideas, things that you think would be neat. We probably already got a solution for it. Just give us a call. More than happy to help you out.

So are there any questions on boilers and air? We’re going to go over warranty process here shortly. But any questions that you have any anything I can address or any suggestions. Things like that.

I don’t think I have any questions.

All right. But if there’s any anything that you would find beneficial to yourself, maybe you want to touch on the HeatPumPro, then more about how the settings go. Feel free to reach out to us. More than happy to to talk to you about that in a custom webinar for you, for your other technicians to really give you a more hands on overview of it.

If you use what brand of equipment you install.

Typically for a furnace, what brand would you normally use? We normally use a lot of train furnaces. Okay. So yeah, with their with their two stage equipment ourselves a great match for what they’re communicating equipment. If you’re doing a lot of the high end stuff you have to use their proprietary zoning. But when it comes to their two stage equipment, we have a really effective control for it.

And our Heat pump Pro allows for what? What’s a true zone weighting in that? You can assign a specific percentage to a zone, and then until that percentage is met with an air hand with our air handler stage threshold, your W2 light you outputs are disabled. So you can have let’s say you had a four zone panel and you’re you’re first zone is large enough.

It can use two stages of capacity, but your second zone is not. Your second zone is kind of more of a medium size zone to where it could use it. If any of the other zones were to call with it. But then zones three and four are small zones, and even if they called together, you still wouldn’t want to run a second stage.

You can set it up to where zones three and four would require a third zone to call. Zone two would require a second zone to call in zone one could utilize it on its own because it it has enough ductwork for that capacity. So it’s it’s not a minimum calling zone feature. It’s a true zone weighting it it allows for a lot of flexibility and customization.

So if that’s something that you guys ever want to dig into, we do have training available for that specifically. And we can go through HeatPumPro settings and show you how that can optimize comfort and match the system to your customers home. So when it comes to Arzel warranty, we have lifetime parts. So limited lifetime parts, as long as that system is registered within 90 days of installation, it’s covered by lifetime parts.

Take to take advantage of the lifetime warranty, your technicians have to call us while they’re on site. They reach out to us 800-611-8312, and then we’ll talk to them. Run through a little bit of quick diagnostic just to verify the failures on the RTL side. And if it is, it’s been registered. We send the part directly to you as a contractor.

So you don’t have any anything to do with the supply house waiting for them to give you a credit. We send parts directly to you. April 1st, 2005 to December 31st, 2012. We are five year panel ten year dampers, so some of the dampers will still be covered under warranty from that period up until 2022. All the panels will be outside of warranty.

But January 1st, 2013 we went to the limited lifetime parts as long as it’s registered within 90 days of installation. Warranty to the original homeowner, it’s covered by lifetime parts. You just go to our website, there’s a registration link there, Register the panel and that’s all you really need to do. And for that registration, we need the panel serial number, not the board serial number, but the panel serial number.

Then if your technicians do have a warranty situation, make sure they give us a call (800)611-8312. We run through a little bit of diagnostic with some verify that the failure is on the Arzel side and that something is not being missed, and then we give them an arm over the phone. We ship the part correctly to you, and then you can get it taken care of.

The technician doesn’t give us a call. That kind of complicates the process and there is a processing fee for that. If it goes directly back to the distributor. However, if they just call us while they’re on site, verify the diagnosis in advance. There’s no processing fee. Warranty process is very simple. We send the part directly to you and everybody’s happy.

The reason we want technicians to call us is because a lot of in the past, we had a lot of issues with warranty parts coming back that weren’t actually bad, and then the contractor would replace a component only to call us up after the second or third time saying, I’ve replaced this multiple times and it’s still doing the same problem.

And it turned out that the problem itself was something completely outside of the original system. So in order to offer that lifetime warranty and maintain is the most reliable zoning product on the market, we ask that the technicians call us. So if it is a failure on the side, we can make record of it and we know what’s wrong.

We can then correct our product line to ensure it doesn’t continue happening. But if it’s not a failure on the Arzel side, we’re experienced field technicians here. We want to help your technician narrow down where the problems are so that they can focus their time and their effort on the actual problem. Instead of hopscotching around trying to wrap your head around everything that’s going on at once.

So we want to help them narrow down where the problems that help them focus their efforts on the actual problem. Instead of looking at this huge picture that they don’t necessarily understand. So when they call us, we break it down for them. We help them figure out where they need to focus their attention, and that that helps with you contractors save time and money, because now the technician knows where they need to look for their problem.

But it also helps to save us unnecessary warranty claims because in those applications, the failure is not on the Arzel side. It’s outside of that, and that allows us to maintain the highest standards that we do and continue offering that lifetime warranty. Because we’re not just warranting things out for the sake of warranty, we’re actually warranting things out that are verified, failed.

And if it is a verified failure, it allows us to keep a much tighter track of those failures so we can correct our product line to provide the most reliable zoning product on the market.

The panel serial number is required for any warranty claims. It’s also required for registration. There’s a big sticker on the outside of the box that has the panel serial number. It’s also on the inside of every single panel. It’s that big white sticker on the lower left inside corner, four letters, a dash, and then 7 or 8 numbers.

We’ll need that to look it up to see if it was registered. You’ll need that to actually register it for your customers. There’s lots of contractor resources available, I can’t stress enough. Make sure you sign up for our contractor portal. It’s not just for us to build a marketing database. You can opt out of receiving any any emails that you don’t want.

It’s a database that has all of our installation manuals available. It has our Webinar Wednesdays available for you to review at a later time when it’s convenient for you. It’s going to have our OCILB Fridays that we’re doing today, available at a later time for you to view as a prerecorded event. You have access to all of our installation manuals, some custom wiring diagrams.

If you can’t find it there, reach out to us. But a lot of it is already there. There are some very helpful troubleshooting videos for your technicians to view while they’re on site. So as a contractor, you can have your you can have a company wide account, or you can encourage technicians to register on an individual basis, and they can just log in from their smartphone tablet and have access to all that information while they’re out in the field.

If they need assistance past that, if they want to check out a warranty, then they give us a call (800)611-8312.

Webinars are available, so if you want to focus on any specific topic, you want to really dig into one of the panels instead of a more generalized hey, this is being offered, let me tune into it. But you actually want to focus on something that you’ll find at most value to yourself. Let us know and we’ll put together a custom webinar for you.

We’ll schedule that at your convenience, typically Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. eastern time. But if you have something outside of that, we are we do offer some flexibility and we can work with you for that. Our comfort college we haven’t been able to offer because of Covid 19, which is why we’ve started the OCILBFridays, where you can get state credits in Ohio, but also to the offering some sort of online training that’s going to go past the normal sales presentation and dig more into technical topics that contractors have find more beneficial.

And then if you need any literature, reach out to our marketing department, marketing@arzelzoning.com. They’re more than happy to send you out. Literature, trifles, pamphlets, things like that. You can leave with your customers or informational brochure that you can have on hand for your technicians.

So do you guys have any questions? Anything I can address for you at all?

Even if it’s not directly related to this presentation itself, any anything at all?

Yeah.

All right. Well, if you guys don’t have any questions I thank you for.