Best Of

First of all Thanks to everyone. I have been fighting with this as each topic could be 8 hours or more. The customer was thinking of a quick thing about what to look for on each type system. For example, what's the system pressure, delta t on a hydronic system Near boiler piping and boiler pressure on a steam I guess they were hoping I could do the matrix thing and just upload knowledge. Back to the drawing board. You guys are awesome Thanks

Ray, I agree with the comments above.

I am being brutally honest here, not trying to be disrespectful.

Do you want to listen to yourself talk, or do you want to teach. What I am trying to say is, let it sink in. Give the students time to respond. Reduce the amount of information you are trying to fit into a few hours.

Ask the class for responses to your questions to judge if they are picking up what you are putting down.

For example, you are gong to cover sizing a circulator pump in what, about four minutes? I am amazed at the amount of people in the trade that have no idea how to size a circulator. This includes service techs, installers, supply house "designers", and even some reps. I think you could spend an hour easily just on on sizing and identifying pumps.

With regard to electrical troubleshooting, keep it simple. Think of the hundreds or thousands of no heat calls you have been on. Only focus on the the common problems, not the obscure with such a short time frame. Start with simple hand drawn line diagrams, show the people how a simple circuit works. Use water, valves and pipes as examples. Then work your way up to more complicated examples based on the response you get.

I am thinking back to Dan Holohan's early seminar days. He made it simple, fun, had props, and spoke in a language that most of us understood. Everyone I spoke to after one of Dan's seminars learned something, most learned a lot. For me, I learned plenty and I gained confidence in what I was unsure of.

Hopefully your students will learn something and ask plenty of questions.

Wow That looks pretty comprehensive. Are you going to be able to squeeze all that into one hour each? You man need to look at some of the importance of each item and be prepared to glaze over some of them as you watch the clock in order to cover the important points.

When I did my one day seminars on Hydronics, I had a 4 minute blurb on steam boilers where I used one power point slide to touch on important basics, then told the mechanics in the class to put their hands in their pockets and step back and call someone that knows about steam.

I also stopped my presentation in the middle of discussing safety devices like high limits, flame safety controls, and relief valves. I had three slides to go over the importance of "Operating" the relief valve. I had a blow up of the yellow tor green tag that is usually torn off, that states: "YOU MUST OPERATE THE RELIEF VALVE ANNUALLY" and highlighted those words and zoomed in on them. Dan H taught me that one. Then I asked about what does a maintenance visit include?, and why the mechanics don't operate PR valves as part of the maintenance? If the valve fails, you have a sale for a new valve if you present it properly, and doesn't your boss like it when you sell stuff over and above the loss leader maintenance  price?  Aren’t we in the business to replace defective parts?