Not having third-party validations is why many contractors don’t consider doing duct renovations in the first place. Plus, technicians are worried they will make a bad decision. Predictive tools like this help you overcome the fear of making bad decisions and instill confidence to make the right decisions.

Getting Creative

With such airflow measurement technology, companies will need to be creative. If they want to install a heat pump and the ductwork isn’t big enough, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t install a heat pump. The contractor will have many options to provide the comfort their customer needs, include using supplemental electric resistance heat, an existing gas-fired furnace, and more. Technicians and designers need to keep this thought process in mind.

They don’t necessarily have to completely size the heat pump for the heating load.

The good news for the South and other regions that are predominantly a cooling climate is that when switching over to a heat pump, chances are that the ductwork is already adequately sized. In predominantly heating climates, that is where techs will see undersized ductwork and have some decisions to make.

This is the direction the industry is going. Think of all the opportunities and bad duct systems avoided from being able to predict how a duct system will perform before changing out equipment or upgrading to a heat pump. Such a tool can guide the contractor’s design decisions BEFORE they touch the existing system.

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David Richardson serves the HVAC industry as Vice President of Training for the National Comfort Institute, Inc. (NCI). If you have questions, reach out to David at ncilink.com/ContactMe

Chris Hughes is the Business Development Manager at TEC and has over 18 years of HVAC experience in both residential and commercial applications. He also co-founded Hughes Mechanical and is an HVAC education advocate. You can reach him at ncilink.com/ContactMe..