ASHRAE spring online courses

A full slate of online courses touching on a range of built environment topics is being offered by ASHRAE this spring.

Eleven ASHRAE Learning Institute courses provide professional development through in-depth information that is timely and practical. The courses are targeted to provide engineers in consulting practices, facility management or supplier support with instructions on applying ASRHAE standards and employing new technologies essential for advanced building performance. The online courses allow attendees to learn from anywhere with an Internet connection. Course participants earn continuing education credits and qualify for Professional Development Hours for each course completed. Courses are instructor-led, drawing upon professional knowledge of leading practitioners.

October 22: Fundamental Requirements of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2010, Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality.
October 24: Energy Management in New and Existing Buildings.

For registration costs and to register, visit www.ashrae.org/onlinecourses. Site licenses are available to organisations with five or more course participants. For more information, e-mail edu@ashrae.org or call 678-539-1146

Green building boosts HVAC&R

Recent attention to the efficiency of HVAC&R equipment has boosted the industry. Air-conditioning in big buildings can accumulate to more 20% of the total power usage of the building.

Johnson Controls and many other companies now offer units that work together with the building Automation Systems (BAS), to reduce power usage. The system monitors the temperature inside and alters the cooling/ heating accordingly.

HVAC and Chicken Wings

Through my HVAC research today, I came across a keyword phrase “HVAC and Chicken Wings.” As you can gather, I couldn’t very well ignore it, so off I navigated to Joe Pulizzi’s article on SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) tactics for HVAC contractors:

http://contractingbusiness.com/news/SEO_results0525/

While the article included little about HVAC and Chicken Wings, it was pretty interesting. I know quite a bit about SEO, but there are so many out there who don’t and who fall for the SEO scams claiming guaranteed Google rankings.

What I’d like to add to Joe’s points, is that Google hates scams. It hates scams so much that it re-shuffled its entire strategy in January, to ensure that the current scammers will go bust. What I’m trying, but probably failing, to say is that Google now doesn’t trust keywords at all – jam packing your website with keywords that are irrelevant or copious will not lead you to higher rankings, in fact, Google will penalise you for this.

On that small note, I want to know how you use online to further your HVAC business. How do you use your website; what social networking (if any) do you use; do you have blogs and forums for clients to peruse; or does your HVAC website sit there stagnant, waiting for that illusive customer to stumble upon it?

Historic Refrigeration

According to Federsair Online, Albert Einstein co-invented the refrigerator with his former student Leo Szilard in 1930. Einstein came up with the idea for a single pressure absorption refrigerator when he read about a family killed in their sleep by a leaking refrigerator coolant.

However, the very first household refrigerator was produced by General Electric in 1911 based on French monk and physics teacher Marcel Audiffren’s design. The refrigerator, named the Audiffren, was made out of wood and worked on a sulfur dioxide refrigerating process. It cost twice as much as any car on the market.