Frequently Asked Questions
We have put together questions and answers to the questions we are asked the most. We also have to keep them as brief as possible to get more questions in. Remember even if you dont see the question you have, you can still e-mail us for an answer.
Where can I buy QuickLoads Pro at?
QuickLoads Pro is no longer available and was discontinued in 2022.
Where can I buy "The Refrigerant Management Book"?
It to can be ordered by any qualified wholesaler in your area that wants to.
Or thru our largest book purchaser HD Supply, one of the largest industrial distributors in North America. The company provides a broad range of products and value-add services to approximately 500,000 customers with leadership positions in maintenance, repair and operations, infrastructure and power and specialty construction sectors. Through approximately 650 locations across 48 states and seven Canadian provinces, To order use HD Supply p/n# 140153
I'm out of book forms or need one not listed.
Replacement forms for "The Refrigerant Management Book"? Has been discontinued
What does custom poor normal or best mean?
Custom –if a builder uses you as his main hvac mechanic, you would put him under custom always using his values and conditions
Poor- for example ,single pane window, low insulation values , basically everything poorly used in construction or already constructed old house
Normal-what you usually would use, example double pane window Normal setting is what will be the default settings every time you start a new customer normal will be chose, unless you pick one of the others at customer info screen.
Best-example –triple pane windows , best conditions for building
Do you also figure and measure the rooms in the finished basement and calculate that into the program? I have always been told not to count a basement in load calculations?
Depends, a lot of utilities don't want beneficial gains from basements added to load, but only losses.
So it depends on your local utility. Set up a basement as two rooms, one below ground and one above ground. If the basement room is 8 ft high & 3 ft is below ground use that as the height for one room called say "Basement Below" use the balance of 5 ft for a room "Basement Above" I always figured basements as I didn't want to miss anything. Reason you may have been told not to count basements is they can help cool in summer & warm in winter thus being beneficial to a load.
Changing people changes winter load, why?
"Why is the heating BTUH dropping when you change the people load from 500 to 12, as it has nothing to do with heating BTUH."
The answer is; "Directly no it does not. And the program for heating does not count people BTUH as a heating add, since it cannot be counted on as a permanent source of heat.
The program for ventilation heating losses uses the sensible summer ventilation and infiltration gains multiplied by the ratio of winter humidity difference over summer temperature different to determine winter sensible ventilation and infiltration gains.
And the latent summer ventilation and infiltration gains, as determined by multiplying the ratio of winter humidity difference over summer humidity difference"
As you can imagine, the summer latent & sensible ARE effected by people loads, and the complex relationship between summer & winter loads is changed by changing these ratios, hence the difference in loads you observed.
U-Factors & Foam?
Our program uses U-factors not R-values to calculate gains & loses thru various house structures like walls. The type of insulation used does not matter, just its corresponding U-Factor does.
A U-factor is a single number that defines the insulation value for a component in the structure. It combines the R-factors for the various items that make up that component. Manual “J” uses u-factors to calculate a HTM (heat transfer multiplier) which is the number you might be used to entering on their form. Rather than pick that number from a table our program actually calculates the HTM from information you have entered as design conditions, making it much more versatile than a single table. To make changes, click on the desired text window, backspace over the U-factor currently displayed, and replace it with one that accurately reflects the construction types you deal with. Listings on the right side the screen display the U-factor numbers for most common structural components.
The R-values you are accustomed to dealing with are listed on the left side of the table. If you need a value not listed here, consult the appropriate ASHRAE guidelines, Manual “J” Tables 2, 3 and 4. The U-factor we use to calculate the HTM is the far right number in each table. If you just can’t find what you want on one of the lists, total up all the R values of the component you want (wall, floor, door, etc), and divide it into one (1). That will give you the components corresponding U-Factor. For example 1 divided by R50 = .02 Or the foam manufacturer should be able to give you the correct U-factor.
Changing Values once the job is entered (Custom, Poor, Normal, or Best)?
The short answer is no, there is no one button change. But the good news is you can change one to all values if you want, either on a room by room basis, or all at once.
The (Custom, Poor, Normal, or Best) choices were meant as starting points for your jobs, not the one button fits all kind of thing. We designed them so you can pre-define 4 sets of starting points. The point was to pre-define as many common points as possible thereby limiting any changes you might make to just a few items.
When you perform your calculations for a specified room, the values include temperatures, conditions, and U-factors specified in the default values selected (Custom, Poor, Normal, or Best) when you started the job. Those values may or may not be exactly what you want for the current room or job. To review and changes the values as needed, click on the Temperatures, U-factors, and Conditions tabs on the Room Details Screen. YOU CAN CHANGE AS MANY VALUES AS YOU LIKE.
When you make a change and return to the load calculation Screen, you will be asked if you want the change to apply to the current room only, or to all rooms in the structure. Applying the change to all rooms eliminates the need to make the same change each time you do another room and provides a convenient way of performing “What if” scenarios. What, for instance, would be the effect if storm windows were installed or extra insulation was added?
After completing the first room, click on the New/Next Room Button and enter and calculate the values for that room. Repeat the process until all rooms have been completed.
Use the Save Button to save your work. When you arrive at the load calculation Screen after starting a new job, the Save Button will be yellow, indicating that you have information to save (your customer information). You can save your information at any time. If you do not save it before returning to the Main Menu, it will be lost. If you are working on a large, complex job, it is a good idea to save your data at regular intervals to prevent it from being lost due to an unexpected event such as a power outage.
Heat Loss Lower Than Expected, Why?
You wanted to know why the heating load the programmed calculated is much lower than you expected. You just pulled out a 100,000 btuh furnace and the heat loss says 45,000 btuh, less than ½ of what you were expecting’
Could it be wrong? Sure if you gave it the wrong information to do the calculations with. Say you feed in square foot rather than linear feet as asked, or you mistyped a decimal place, or just put in the wrong data. But if everything was setup and inputted correctly the calculated heat loss for the space will be correct.
Please notice there is a difference between calculated heat loss and equipment sizing, they are rarely the same. Our program calculates the loss of the structure, proper sizing based on loss is up to the contractor.
Allow me to explain further. Let’s use an older home with an existing 100,000 btu gas furnace as an example. First off the 100,000 furnace did not put out 100,000 btus of heat even when new. Twenty years ago when the furnace was put in new a 100,000 btuh furnace was only 65% efficient new. The rating is on the label, input btuh’s 100,000, output btuh’s 65,000. Now if you question the home owner as to how well it worked you would likely hear that even on the coldest day of the year the furnace cycled on and off all day, meaning it was oversized! A perfectly sized system will come on and output just as much heat as the structure is losing, neither increasing or decreasing its current space temperature. But again perfectly sized systems just don’t happen much, and most people want the furnace to catch up and cycle off, which it can only do if it generates more heat than the structure is losing. Please remember our program is telling you how much the structure is losing, not what size to install. Now let’s carry our sample 100,000 btuh heater example a bit further. Since the customer has already told us it cycled off and on all day we know its oversized, but not by how much. It would not be much of a stretch to conclude that age and over sizing could account for as much as 20 percent over sizing and that number could be conservative. That being the case our 65,000 btuh output times 20% = 13,000 btuh addition loss bring our actual furnace output to 52,000 btuh. Now we are only 7,000 btuh from our calculated design loss, but since we know it has to be a bit bigger to catch up, we are actually very close.
There are three other factors to consider. The first is gas furnaces are not rated in small increments but rather 25,000 btuh jumps. Typical furnaces are rated around 50,000 btuh, 75,000 btuh is the next size, then 100,000 btuh or a scale similar to that, so you pick your furnace size in 25,000 btuh increments. So to pick a furnace you can in some cases use one 25,000 btuh higher than the actual loss!
The next factor in sizing is picking a furnace that will deliver the correct airflow for the air conditioning side of the equation and that is typically 400 cfm per ton for cooling and about 450 cfm per ton for heat pumps.
And last but likely a bigger factor is the contractor perception that bigger is always better. Better to have the customer with an oversized system that cycles too much, will fail sooner and costs more than to take a chance getting it too small.
Too sum up start with our calculated loss, insure the data you input and design conditions are correct. Realize most original systems are oversized and allow for that in your thinking. Size to the closest available furnace size higher than the calculated loss allowing for catch-up. Ensure the furnace size picked will deliver the designed cooling cfm. And learn to size properly to load, not just added btuh to insure you have way more than needed and you will do yourself and your customer a great service.
What does the text (Thermostat Setting) mean on Printouts?
The listings above Applicable Temperatures are the temperature settings available for the job.
The thermostat setting comes up on the printout if you use conditioned space as above ceiling or below floor telling you that is the temperature it is using (Inside Design, or Thermostat Setting).
Applicable Temperatures simply specifies which temperatures were selected for the room. In cases where the Above Ceiling or Below Floor specification is a conditioned space, the applicable temperature would be the thermostat setting (the temperature of that space).
Rooms on a pure South exposure will not show any Solar Gain, just transmission gains. WHY?
Great question, a real South exposure with normal overhangs has no solar gains at this latitude in the United States in the summer. That may seem a bit odd at first, but think about it. During the summer the sun is at its highest in the sky, sunlight does not strike the window. The same is true of the northern exposure. If you feel you need to account for some solar gain put the windows in the SE or SW exposures, as you will have solar gain there. To see how this could be, just take your coffee cup & put a note pad of paper on it so it overhangs. Take your fist and play like it is the sun, hold it at the angle at 12 noon that it is where you are at and look at a line from it to the side of your cup (our windows). You can easily see that when the sun is at its peak and even going from East to West the South exposure gets no Solar Gain. All Eastern and Western exposures do of course, with the Eastern exposures getting Solar gain early in the day till midday and losing solar gain entirely in the afternoon. Then of course the Westerly exposures will start to increase in gain and go back down to zero at sunset.
During the Winter when you could get a Solar gain in the South exposure because the sun is now lower in the sky, we do not count Solar Gain at all, it is a bonus for the heating system, not a minus.
If you still feel your particular job is getting some solar gain, just enter the appropriate square footage in either Southeast or Southwest exposures and the program will calculate a Solar Gain.
Do you have to plug in factors for appliances?
No, Normal usage for a kitchen is accounted for in program.
But if you have an unusual load you can still add that while to the load for each room on the worksheet as sensible or latent heat under appliance load.
Doe you have to go to Manufacturer for that info?
The Man.J book has some, manufacturer of the appliances also have that info. If its an electrical load like lighting, enter as watts, which is volts x amps.
Do you have any information on geothermal cost and calculations?
In the QuickLoads Pro program just go to "Heating Operating Costs" on the Main Menu after you run your Load, open the job in question enter the COP of the geo-thermal heating under "Heat Pump" and insure your utility costs are correct & the program will calculate Heating Operating Costs for you as compared to the other methods listed.
For Cooling costs just enter SEER or EER under "Cooling Operating Costs" & the program will calculate Cooling Operating Costs for you.
In regards to loads, a load is a load is a load. It is the same no matter what equipment or efficiency you use.
How do you Calculate COP?
First do not use measured amps, instead use nameplate data off of the unit. The unit could be overcharged, undercharged, not working correctly, etc. when checked.
If you measure the amps, they will decrease with temperature and lower the COP based on whatever temperature you took the readings at. 47 deg.F was the standard outside heat pump temp for determining COP
Using the following info as our data;
Volts 220
Amps 15
Unit btuh 36,000
So to determine watts its volts times amps. Using our dummy data that is 220 x 15=3,300 watts.
Watts times the constant is 3,300 x 3.413=11,262.90
Unit rated btuh is 36,000 btuh which is now divided by the bottom number calculated of 11,262.9 to = 3.196
Your calculated COP is 3.196 or 3.20, very close to our default value of 3.25 for the COP.
Should I enter Lighting Loads?
No, not on residential loads as normal on off usage is factored in the program. But there are some exceptions.
Say you are doing a custom home and at the entrance there is a 30’ ceiling with a 5,000 watt chandelier hanging in it. The home owner insist it will be on most of the time, in a case like that I would enter that light load. Only enter light loads on residential loads if they are an exception to normal light loads and wattages that you can justify to your utilities.
Now on light commercial loads, lighting can be a bid deal, so be sure to enter it there.
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