Systems Help Center

Our comprehensive HVAC Systems Help Center covers a wide range of HVAC-related topics, including air conditioning and heat pumps, geothermal, hot-water heating, thermostats and controls, solar, steam heating, and warm air. We also have a section of informative and entertaining articles to help you sharpen your HVAC business skills. And our Heating Museum is a captivating journey through the evolution of HVAC technologies. 

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Recent Articles

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Essential Differences

Last February, The Lovely Marianne and I spent three days driving from The Isle of Long to Naples, Florida, where our friends, Bob and Loreen, were expecting us. I knew t...

Published on 09/18/2018 10:05 AM by Dan Holohan
Posted in The HVAC Business
Avoiding Scale in Heating Systems

Having scale on heating surfaces is like having all the traffic lights in your town turn red at the same time, and stay red. Most movement stops. In the case of a boiler,...

Published on 09/17/2018 11:03 AM
Posted in Steam Heating
taking order
Excellent Choice!

The Lovely Marianne and I were out to dinner with our daughter, Erin, who bought our business when we retired a few years ago. We were in a nice Italian restaurant and th...

Published on 08/26/2018 4:28 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in The HVAC Business
hvac hero 5
How to Save a Boiler's Life

It's a given these days that all boilers have low-water cutoffs and that makes me very happy because I've seen hot-water boilers explode. One involved a sand hole in a ca...

Published on 08/09/2018 7:25 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in Steam Heating
in hammock
25,000 Days

On July 8, my body’s odometer went over 25,000 days. When life’s dial flipped to that number, I woke with wonder and thought, once again, that I probably should have chan...

Published on 07/24/2018 7:42 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in The HVAC Business
baseboard
Baseboard: How Much Is Too Much?

So this hefty gent comes up to me after a hot-water seminar and tells me about a problem he's having with this copper-fintube baseboard loop he installed in this big hall...

Published on 07/07/2018 2:35 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in Hot-Water Heating
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The Leaky Bucket

The question was in the Manchester Evening News, a British newspaper, and it caught my eye when I was going through my daily Google Alerts on things that have to do with ...

Published on 06/26/2018 1:48 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in The HVAC Business
right wrong
Never Wrong

So I’ve known this guy (let’s call him Jerry) for a very long time. We came up in the business together, and I like him. He’s a good guy, and if he lived next door he wou...

Published on 06/26/2018 1:46 PM by Dan Holohan
Posted in The HVAC Business