On 9/24/2010 4:18 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Steve wrote:

"The Daring wrote in message
...
On 9/23/2010 9:36 AM, David wrote:


wrote in message
...



My work is aboard the International Space Station, while yours is
rusting in moldy basements, and your industry has a reputation worse
that TV repairmen used to.

I am not a rocket surgen, but my company has been working for
excellence for many years. I am *not* "billy-joe-jim-bob". Yes there
are a lot of hacks out there, but there are some true professionals
out there too. I keep trying to help change the rep that HVAC industry
has, and raise the bar in my area. FWIW, my company has all but
stopped advertising in the yellow pages, it doesn't need to. 90% of
our new customers are all from word of mouth referals.

Hello Steve,
It is fortunate for the HVAC industry that the general public does not
read the alt.hvac newsgroup. The regulars there seem to know more about
their reproductive organs and lower digestive tract than anything about
HVAC. I remember a reply from a homeowner asking a question and the slew
of BS that came back was amazing. One memorable reply came from a
regular poster (pjm) that said this was group for "professionals only"
and homemoaners (sic) were not welcome here. Well my sampling of
"professionals" on that group does not speak well of their competence
and people skills. They do not seem to realize that basic refrigeration
and heating is quite simple. The complexity comes from the newer
electronic controls and they know nothing about that other than swap
things until it works. A case in point was a neighbor that called a
professional because the blower motor in the furnace had stopped
working. The "pro" said the motor controller was bad, the board was no
longer available, so both the motor and controller needed replacing for
$800. The neighbor is a bit of a handyman so I asked him to bring the
control board to my house and I would look it over. One look and it was
obvious that there was a bad solder joint on the line input common mode
choke coil and a bit of solder restored it completely. I will bet not
one in a hundred of these "pros" even know what a common mode choke is.

David


The majority of HVAC techs have no idea how to do board level repairs.

Some of us do, but its not cost effective to do so.

I find cold solder joints all the time and am able to get a system up
and running without having to replace an expensive circuit board. The
catch is, how much time will it take to repair a one hundred dollar
circuit board vs $85.00 per hour.---- it's a simplified example.
Don't yap about how expensive most control boards are. Ask an HVAC
tech what wave soldering is and he/she/it smile and wave at you.

No, control boards are not free, and yes, some of us *DO* know what wave
soldering is.


Reflow soldering is a lot more common these days. With so much
surface mount, wave solder has lost a lot of market share.



I don't see that much surface mount on the majority of HVAC control
boards. I haven't seen the latest supercalafragilistic uber-efficient
HVAC system control boards but the simple ones are mostly single or
dual layer with components having leads soldered through holes. I
don't have customers who can afford that really high end stuff for
their homes.

TDD