Ever worked for an engineer?

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

They're nuts.

ChrisJ

I don't work for them, but I work with 5 of them. We had one that was an expert in thermodynamics but he left a while back.

I don't think they're nuts.

JStar

Making the system 50% more complicated to achieve 0.001% better efficiency. And what a waste of a perfectly good book.

jonny88

Let me tell you I am lost on a couple of threads lately through no fault of my own when you guys get into the advanced equation stuff.I was absent at school that day when they were teaching it.
Thread from ginahoy is an example.
Take care out there.

BobC

Engineering is taught by plastering you with math and physics till you all but fall over. When you get to an actual job your told to forget all that and deal with the real world where many parts have 10 or 20% tolerances; you can get parts with much tighter tolerances but nobody wants to pay for them. Over time you learn where you have to be precise and where you just have to be in the ballpark; you also learn to design in a safety factor that can tolerate some less than optimal part tolorances and thermal drift.

All I ever used was algebra and trig but I used those every day during my career, I never had to dip into calculus - thank God for small favors.

Bob

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes

I went to this house yesterday to go over the radiant system with the new owner. The previous owner was an engineer and I had been to his house in 2000 to rebuild some B & G Modu-Maid zone valves in the attic.

I meant "nuts" in a good way. The guy set up his house like a laboratory and eventually, only he knew how it worked. I was in admiration of his curiosity and inventiveness. It's just that now, I have to be the one to clean it up. : (

BobC

I still get calls about how to do somethings dealing with old power supply designs. A few of these will kill you dead if you don't do things right.

My notes made sense to me but not so much to others that might try understanding them.

Bob

hot_rod

I appreciate engineers that are hands on guys. and with a sense of humor.

ChrisJ

Hatterasguy said:

hot rod said:

I appreciate engineers that are hands on guys. and with a sense of humor.

Me too.

I don't.

remodel

No engineer, no install. No new devices etc.. You need that necessary evil. Every situation is hard to simulate and not cost effective. Without those equations that some genius mathematician developed and some crazy engineer applied we would never have the technology we have. Try designing something without ever actually installing it, understand it in your mind and the math that makes it work (which actually does work...Siggy). Now on the flip side take someones design and see if it works? Totally two different fields and neither to be stepped on.

alotlikeearl

I enjoy doing jobs for engineers but you do have to allow extra time for the work. A salesman once told me you need to double the price for an engineer and triple it for a retired engineer.

Harvey Ramer

I have quite a few engineer customers. Both active and retired. No dead ones though.

I enjoy them all. They normally can pick up what I throw down.

JUGHNE

I know that new hi-tech inventions have to start with an engineer, but before they get put into practice I believe they have to be field tested and refined by end users and this includes the blue collar workers who install/repair things and sometimes are left holding the bag so to speak. Some manufactures may listen to the issues that field tech people have with their new product and respond with modifications.
Others may not.

It has always been obvious that the people who design any equipment be it a furnace or car have never had to replace or repair anything in it. I have a pick-up truck that needed an air damper door replaced. The entire dash board assembly had to be removed and the steering column disconnected and dropped to the floor for this replacement.....$50 part.......$800 labor (and that was a bargain as you saw what had to be done).

Have anyone tried to tell a person at a mechanical engineering that they have specified a cooling system that is two times too large for the building?

nicholas bonham-carter

I suspect he was trying to compensate for some night time setback problems. As we know now, on a well balanced system, it is best to set it and forget it.
Modern wireless sensors can be put in several spots, and fire the boiler on an average temperature, or run the system on ODR, and use the thermostat as a high limit.--NBC

Jack

My contracting business was in the Napa Valley 30+ yrs ago. It was airline pilots who drove me nuts. Back then they had money and time. I'd do banks of sensors on solar systems and I get a call. "Jack, it seems my average temperatures are off by 1.5-2* this year to last..." The discussion could go on and on.
I got so I'd qualify my customers, asking "what do you know about these type systems and what do you want to know?" It kinda let me know where we were going.

JStar

I helped an engineer/friend on a total house remodel. He wanted to cool a 2,000ft2 house with no ductwork. I said fine, let's do radiant cooling and a small one-supply/one-return air handler for humidity control. No good, he wants to size the system to handle up to 30+ people when he has guests over. Oh, and he needs to compensate for the waterfall he planned to install in the living room. So, I would need like 3/4" tubing on 3" centers throughout walls and ceilings to make that happen. I must have spent 5 days just talking about the system. Never picked up a single tool to do any work.

Henry

Here, every piece of paper that an engineer signs, must have "Ing" (French short for engineer) after his name or as we say: Intelligence Not Garanteed!

JStar

Hatterasguy said:

JStar said:

I helped an engineer/friend on a total house remodel. He wanted to cool a 2,000ft2 house with no ductwork. I said fine, let's do radiant cooling and a small one-supply/one-return air handler for humidity control. No good, he wants to size the system to handle up to 30+ people when he has guests over. Oh, and he needs to compensate for the waterfall he planned to install in the living room. So, I would need like 3/4" tubing on 3" centers throughout walls and ceilings to make that happen. I must have spent 5 days just talking about the system. Never picked up a single tool to do any work.

Not all of them are that stupid.

BTW, have you done any radiant cooling (with reasonable expectations)? How did it work out? What controls did you use to prevent condensation?

I may do it for my own house at some point. I have a ranch, which makes it incredibly easy to install tubing in my ceilings. I'll then use my existing A/C air handler with a water-coil for dehumidification, and a reheat coil off the compressor. I never got around to finalizing the control scheme but it would most certainly rely on humidity/dewpoint sensors throughout the house.

Paul48

I have worked with some great engineers. I have also worked with more terrible engineers. From what I am told, the process by which a person becomes an engineer across the pond, is radically different than here. They do not graduate as an engineer. They must serve an apprenticeship, first.

JStar

Hatterasguy said:

Hard to justify such an installation (unless you're possessed) if you already have the forced air ductwork.

I'm thinking about it for some new construction but the costs are a bit high and it's not without a bit of risk. Looking for additional insight.

It's less of a justifiable project and more experimental.

JStar

Hatterasguy said:

JStar said:

Hatterasguy said:

Hard to justify such an installation (unless you're possessed) if you already have the forced air ductwork.

I'm thinking about it for some new construction but the costs are a bit high and it's not without a bit of risk. Looking for additional insight.

It's less of a justifiable project and more experimental.

You would fall in the "possessed" category.

I would rather receive a painful answer than no answer at all. In that way, I'll gladly pursue any possessed thought experiment that I please. At least in my own home, I can make those mistakes first, learn the right way, and then later boast that I knew the correct methods all along. Right now, there is more myth than method to residential radiant cooling and I would like to see it in action firsthand.

ChrisJ

Hatterasguy said:

JStar said:

I would rather receive a painful answer than no answer at all. In that way, I'll gladly pursue any possessed thought experiment that I please. At least in my own home, I can make those mistakes first, learn the right way, and then later boast that I knew the correct methods all along. Right now, there is more myth than method to residential radiant cooling and I would like to see it in action firsthand.

I can fully agree with that. I'm running an "experiment" right now that nobody in the profession would agree with. We'll see how it goes.

Regarding residential radiant cooling, you're absolutely right. There is precious little information available as to the ultimate success or failure for such an approach. We are in a climate, however, that could be quite successful as the design day summer temperature is not excessive. The entire approach hinges on removal of the latent with a system that doesn't make too much noise and doesn't consume any space.

Yeah,
Kinda like undersizing your boiler and almost everyone telling you it won't work. Dave Brunnell, I salute you.

MarkS

JStar said:

I'll gladly pursue any possessed thought experiment that I please. At least in my own home, I can make those mistakes first, learn the right way, and then later boast that I knew the correct methods all along.

JStar also likes to help others pursue their own possessed thought experiments. Just look in my basement.

ChrisJ

MarkS said:

JStar said:

I'll gladly pursue any possessed thought experiment that I please. At least in my own home, I can make those mistakes first, learn the right way, and then later boast that I knew the correct methods all along.

JStar also likes to help others pursue their own possessed thought experiments. Just look in my basement.

Yeah,
Except you run too high of a pressure.

MarkS

ChrisJ said:

Yeah, Except you run too high of a pressure.

Only if you consider 1/2 to 7/10ths of an inch of water column "high".

ChrisJ

MarkS said:

ChrisJ said:

Yeah, Except you run too high of a pressure.

Only if you consider 1/2 to 7/10ths of an inch of water column "high".

On an ice cold startup in a cold house I see 0.25 - 0.50" W.C.

Your system is splitting at the seams!

JStar

Let it be known that I will happily endorse any idea worth having, if only for the sake of having that idea. We are fire-tamers. We are the ageless magi seeking to control the elements. Who could oppose that?

ChrisJ

JStar said:

Let it be known that I will happily endorse any idea worth having, if only for the sake of having that idea. We are fire-tamers. We are the ageless magi seeking to control the elements. Who could oppose that?

I still keep pondering ditching the drafthood for a barometric damper if I ever have any money. I can dream, can't I?

JStar

ChrisJ said:

JStar said:

Let it be known that I will happily endorse any idea worth having, if only for the sake of having that idea. We are fire-tamers. We are the ageless magi seeking to control the elements. Who could oppose that?

I still keep pondering ditching the drafthood for a barometric damper if I ever have any money. I can dream, can't I?

I might know somebody who is closing his business and looking to get rid of a lot of parts, including a handful of draft controls. I just can't remember his name...................

ChrisJ

Hatterasguy said:

JStar said:

ChrisJ said:

JStar said:

Let it be known that I will happily endorse any idea worth having, if only for the sake of having that idea. We are fire-tamers. We are the ageless magi seeking to control the elements. Who could oppose that?

I still keep pondering ditching the drafthood for a barometric damper if I ever have any money. I can dream, can't I?

I might know somebody who is closing his business and looking to get rid of a lot of parts, including a handful of draft controls. I just can't remember his name...................

He'll be there tomorrow......................

Friday, actually.

Awesome! Goodbye drafthood!

Charlie from wmass

I work for engineers regularly. They are the easiest for me to work for as they appreciate accurate mathematics.

RobG

Charlie from wmass said:

I work for engineers regularly. They are the easiest for me to work for as they appreciate accurate mathematics.

I don't mind helping them because they are so overworked that if you give them a CAD drawing they will just cut and paste my design into the drawings, pretty much locking me into the job. It works out for both of us, and he gets to buy ME lunch.

Bob Bona_4

My beef with engineer clients is that often they critique and trash talk components and methods because they don't conform to thier sometimes unrealistic and impractical standards. Not all, but enough to want to give them a wide berth!