Am I a Designer or an Engineer........

joel_19

Why doesn't the customer think you did the right thing if it works?

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John Ruhnke

Am I a Designer or an Engineer?

Hi Everyone,

O.K. I just wrote that to capture your attention. I am done argueing that point. I lost the debate and got nailed on all sides. I will call myself a designer.

But you know what? It doesn't matter anyway. Those are just words. It is what you accomplish that is most important. Wether you are an Engineer or a Designer doesn't matter. What mattters most is the quality of the products you develop or the systems you design.

My Peers have recognized my work as successful in the last couple of years. That means a lot to me. Engineers and Contractors alike competed in the same contest that I did.

I have read three great books about some Designers and Inventors from the turn of the century. All of them were not formally educated and all of them were much more comfortable in a machine shop with a tool in there hands. They were hands on designers. The Wright Bros were bicycle builders and repairmen. Edison started by working in a telegragh office as a telegraph operator. He used to do experiments at night with the companies equipment. Henry Ford started out as a machinist building engines. Edison discovered Ford and paid him as head engineer. Yes that was his title Head Engineer of the place he worked at.

In the early 1900's the United States was the greatest industrial power in the world. No one argued with that. Hands on designers built this country and made it what it is today.

I want all of the Plumbing and Heating mechanics and Contractors here to all stand tall and proud. The world needs us. The paper pushing Engineers can't do it by themselves. They need our help. We have to advance this industry if we as a country ever want to get ahead again. It is our duty. We are the ones. We did it in the past and we are going to do it in the future too. Don't let anyone label you. Don't let anyone hold you back. You can do it.


John Ruhnke
Hydronic Designer
JR@ComfortableHeat.com

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Weezbo

this is just a belief...

i believe, "I" can be whatever God wants me to be.

Unknown

John, in science there are experimentalists and theorists. It takes both kinds to make the world go 'round. Don't get so hung up on "ivory tower" academics vs "hands on" tinkerers.

The universe is a big place with lots of interesting stuff in it. Play with it any way you like.

Joannie_11

NOW You're Talking!

Well put, John! And you're part of the solution.

Thank you!

Unknown

phd*

I proundly use the PhD* after my name for my business... Thanks to one of Dan's thought provoking article in PM magizine years ago...

Weezbo

rjphd...

i learned that many many years ago:)

here is my old call name on the cb...

Mr.Ski Phd from his mobile maserotti...

itsa Steam thing:)

Tim_33

Howard Hughes...

might interest you as well. No formal training, extremely intuitive, invented many of the greatest advances in the history of aviation, military electronics, weapons and aircraft controls. Many of which are still the state of the art today, 60 years later.

Brad White_87

And

he perfected the art of being an extremely wealthy, eccentric germophobe too! Quite a guy.

Rich W

You can thank his doctors for that...

Cosmo_3

Good Thread John!

Somehow I think that the success our country had starting with the Industrial revolution, and up until now is that we were a country with lots of raw materials, ambition, hard workers, and it was a time that the era's inventors were not held back by lawyers.

It was a simpler time. All the tycoons we read about now were simply the ones who were able to make a lot of mistakes, yet keep rebounding and eventually had some success. Lets not forget the thousands, maybe millions of inventors, entrepreneurs, and mechanically inclined tinkerers that spent the family's life savings, and never got anywhere. They are now unknown, we do not learn about them in school. But nevertheless, not every smart inventive guy back in the old days got anywhere, not by a long shot.

Today, all the true technological advancements we read about are done by guys with ginormous computers, and decades of research.

Yes, there are many inventions created every day by tinkerers. They are not hindered by profit forecasts, and review boards. These guys (and gals) can figure out a different way to do something, make a process more efficiently, work better, and last longer. I envy the guys I read about here on the wall that have time to invent things, and really appreciate this forum because we all benefit from their work.

Yes, many things are invented everyday but not to the scale of the 1900's. I also worry about our country's economical future. With a country like China, an economy booming much like the US in earlier times, will we suffer the same fate as Europe? Or is the fact that we are a service economy, and have all the best military technology going to keep us on top?

Then again, how much longer will we be here?

I am only in my mid thirties, yet I see the generation that is following me and I don't feel I can relate to them.

My feeling is the next big thing that will change every-body's life will come from a lab, or a runaway scientist that escapes an oppressive employer. Like what I don't know, I am just a Plumbing/heating/cooling designer/installer trying to make a buck.

All I can say John is that you have to keep plugging away, and with some help from friends you make here maybe one day we will all look back and think how primitive our heating technology was before Designer John Ruhnke came to town.....

Cosmo

John Ruhnke

You won't beleive some of this but.......

Cosmo,

I read three other great Books.

Bill Gates, He and Paul Allen programed the Harvard computer to think like a personal computer. Then they wrote a program to run on it. Bill then dropped out of college and drove out west with Paul. They sold the software to a small computer company. The owner asked Bill what there company name of there company was. He said Microsoft.

Steve Jobs, He and Steve Wozniak started Apple Computers right out of there parents home garage.

The following is a true story:

Dean Kayman built medical devices out of his parents basament. One day Dean received a rather large order. He needed to double his operating space to handle the extra production. He thought for a few days then came up with a plan. He gave his parents two airfair tickets to a two month vacation out of town. When they came back they noticed a rather huge new padio in the back yard. They naturally thanked Dean for it looked very beautiful. Later then went down into the basement when Dean went to the store. They noticed that the basement was full of machines and about twice as big as before. They were puzzled so when Dean came home they quized him on what happened. He said "Mom and Dad while you were away I hired a team of contractors. They dug out the back yard doubling the size of the basement. Poured a slab over the top and planted the padio pavers to cover it. I'm sorry I didn't warn you. I hope you aren't mad but they are paying me a lot of money for my medical inventions. I had to expand or I might have lost the order."

A year later Dean moved out and up to New Hampshire where he bought a huge industrial building. He needed to expand even further. Remeber the Segway Scooter? That is one of Deans inventions.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are college drop outs. Dean was way to busy making medical inventions to even think about college. All three have business's and are very successful today. All three are investing heavily in other promising inventors projects.

O.K. I know these story's are incredible. These guys are the Michael Jordans of inventing. They exist. There are also plenty of happy and successful little guys to. Some of them are in my Inventors club. Some do well, some struggle. This is still America!!

Anything can happen if you set your mind to it!!

John Ruhnke
JR@ComfortableHeat.com

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Tony_23

John

I'm glad to see you've had an epiphany.

Sometimes people don't see what everyone else sees for a while.

Be happy with who YOU are, and make the most of it.

Now, I suspect that your new mindset will allow you to go to the next level. Obsessions work both ways, they can rob you of the ability to move forward as well as give you drive.

A Henry Ford quote, "Obstacles are those scary things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

What "inventor's club" are you mentioning ?

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John Ruhnke

Inventors Assoc of CT

Tony,
The name of our club is the Inventors Assoc of Connecticut. We have been meeting in Fairfield on the last Thursday of the month since 1982. I have been a member since 1994. I am the current President. I am one of the struggling Inventors. The website is www.inventus.org. If you live close stop by. We have a meeting this Thursday. Details are on the website.

Mary Ellroy who is in our club has licensed a lot of inventions. Joe Blake has over 60 patents to his name. Thomas Edison Sloan is the great grandson of Thomas Edison himself and one of our past presidents.


I haven't had success yet. Ford always wanted to manufacture automobiles. He had two oportunities when he was in his thirties. He had investors and everything. He failed both times. After he turned Forty he received annother oportunity. That became Ford Motor Company. I'm 41 so it is good to know that it can still happen for me. 9 out of 10 business's fail. So as an entrepreneur it is very important to accept failer. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes. Every time you try you are that much smarter. I have been very lucky with my Plumbing & Heating business. I started that in 1990 and it is going very strong today. I think one problem with inventing for me is that it has always been a hobby for me. I have never gone all out on anything. I always hold back money or funds so that I can keep the house up or go on vacation or maintane my P & H business. When the right project comes along maybe I will go all out. I keep thinking and trying. I try and learn something new everyday. I keep getting smarter every day. I am a few steps closer to success.

The most important thing is that I enjoy it a lot. I don't care if I make money. It is like a hobby building custom cars. Inventing is fun!!! I'll always be tinkering with something that is my nature.

JR



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Rich W

John, I know how you feel. A few years ago, I removed my 2.5-ton AC. Based on calcs and not sq. ft. it should have been a 1.2 ton. I hacked a used 10K btu window unit and dumped the heat into my insulated tempering tank. The furnace blower runs at low speed. A twenty dollar micro-controller monitors temps of the tank, evap outlet, compressor outlet, sub cooling and water temp rise across the homemade desuperheater. Based on a look-up table, the controller adjusts a 3-speed circ for best delta-t of storage water and sub cooling of the AC. One of these days, I'll get around to making a VFD- but it cools just fine now. Since this set-up uses much less power than the 2.5ton AND I'm dumping the heat into the water, I'm happy. On a warm day, I can raise the temp of the 50gal tank 80 degrees. That's a fair amount of gas savings that would have gone out the window. 50gal x 8.3btu/gal x 80deg = 33200 at 75% eff. = 44266 btus of gas saved per day. When the storage reaches 130 deg at the top of the tank, the circ is turned off and the condenser fan is turned on. I should get more storage and drop the cut off temp from 130 to 100 deg. Before the questions start, just go outside with your gauges and the garden hose. The condenser is A LOT more efficient with just a little bit of water on it...I'm guesstimating a 30% increase in AC eff. That puts the over-all eff. something below 50%. Until you consider it's all "free" heat. So, are there any J.P. Morgans left in the world? No? What about anyone from Honeywell??? My engineer boss could not begin to design, build, program or conceive of such a thing. HE is a paper tiger. A great deal of what I have learned was written by "old school" engineers (such as this whole idea-they just didn't have the electronics then). I collect books. From there I say- what if...

I just removed the logger from a customers AC yesterday. For three days, the longest runtime was 12 minutes- the average was 8 minutes. The house is 3200sq ft with 3 zones and many shade trees. I bid a two-speed, 3-ton unit. My boss (a licensed engineer) said it should be a 5-ton single speed bottom of the line unit to win the bid. The customer had questioned the small AC I had recommended. Two years later we are still trying to make the customer think we did the right thing- all free of charge. This house sits on an exclusive lake with a big Lexus SUV and a Caddy STS in the driveway - I think they could have paid the "extra" $600 for my design. Seems to me Dan wrote a story about my boss...

To some customers the title means everything. Thankfully, most just want results at a fair price. Forget the title John. I'd like to drop in on your meetings. It's a bit far from Michigan though

Rich W

8 minute run-time does not seem right to me. I was always taught that it was more eff. for a longer run-time. Eight on and six off is a lot of cycling...The complaint is freezing in mild weather...There is no provision for 5 tons of cooling on one zone that only needs 1ton...I'm not allowed to discuss details with the customer. The boss takes care of that. It did not freeze during this datalog.

Tony_23

I wonder

How much has the boss made on call-backs ?

Maybe a TXV would help ?

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Rich W

Tony

Good call. I did that first thing this spring -no charge to the customer. We went all last year with the boss blaming our install crew. Myself and one other service tech have eaten alot of crow for the boss- the guys who did the install did just what the boss wanted...We were not allowed to tell the customer we were installing the TXV- that would mean the boss made a mistake on his design.The whole thing was kinda goofy- Another contractor did everything except the AC. Each of the three zones needs about 1 ton of cooling. The TXV has made things better. 5 tons is still too much though. Customer is worried about wearing out the equipment. Since we do all the work for free, why should the customer not complain?

Tony_23

I can't blame them for complaining

They paid to have it done right the FIRST time, presumably. All this "free" work is bleeding the company's pocket as well as it's reputation. The inconvenience of an inoperable system is one thing, when it could've been done correctly to begin with and wasn't just to keep the price down is shameful.

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Rich W

Amen Tony

You're preachin' to the choir brother Tony My boss is one of those guys who would NEVER admit to any mistake. This is not the only job we have like this. On Friday, he just gave us all a long speech on keeping costs down...Some people. I think admitting and correcting a mistake is a far better policy- not him.This one job has eaten the profits from many service calls. We have done atleast $1500 of free work- it's an hour drive beyond our normal service area!Had we said no to the customer in the beginning, we would be far better off. I have a feeling they are not saying kind things about us to their friends- even with all the free work. Of course I'm sure they don't tell their friends that they demanded the 5 ton in the first place. As the pros, we should have said no to their demand...