Q. Hi All, The property manager suggested vinyl flooring in the kitchen of a 1 bedroom apartment instead of current old carpet. I understand it is easier to clean and might look better however will it not be less warm in the apartment as a result if I replace it with vinyl flooring instead fo a new carpet? Also, carpet is around $2/sq ft including everything. what is an average simple vinyl flooring price per sq ft? The structure is a little unique - the apartment in question is a ground level basement. I heard if floor is not lifted carpet is better for the reaosn mentioned above (heating) but not sure. how can I tell if it is lifted or not? (The unit will be rented out soon, it's a rental business) THANK YOU, Neil

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Q. So When installing ceramic tile, (ours is going to be porceline) is it best to put the heating system ounderneath? Do you really need it. I keep telling my parents to put it and they aren't sure we really need it. I told them how my friend had it in her sunroom and they ended up pulling it all out a few years after to re-do it with the heating system underneath. What do you guys think? Also who would be installing it? Do you get an electrition or does the ceramic floor installer do it? Thanks! I'm sorry I didnt word that correctly...my friend had ceramic in her sunroom without the heating system and they pulled all the ceramics out afew years after to re-do it with the heating system because they said it was too cold all the time..thats what im worried about..is it really cold all the time on the feet..I felt the ceramic tile we have piled ready to be installed and it doesn't feel too cold, what do you think?

A. I would think that in most climates it wouldn't be absolutely necessary to have floor heating if your house has an alternate source of heat. I don't have heat under my tile floors.They do stay cool but shoes or socks remedy that. Another thing to consider is the heating cost. We had marble floors in the home I grew up in and it was heated. The cost of heating the floor is very expensive. Like I said it just depends on the climate. If you live in a very cold climate you may want to go ahead and install it but otherwise it's really not necassary. God bless!!

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Q. My husband did the floor tiling using the correct adhesive, thickness etc, but some of the tiles keep lifting and the cement will not dry out evenly. After two attempts and lots of expense we are at a loss as to why this is happening. It occured to me that the person who installed the heating perhaps ought to have laid it with matting over the top of it. The installer says not, but what else could be the cause of the cement not drying on some of the tiles. Some have dried out perfectly well and are fixed others are not. The concrete floor has the correct screen and was not damp prior to laying the tiles. Does anyone have any ideas please? Before we both go loco.

A. I'm not sure if the cement is the problem. Perhaps he did not use enough to actually in-bed the tile into the floor. If the tiles keep popping up in some areas and not others, you know the cement is fine. Try to spread the cement on the tile and then lay it in place. I know from experience that not all tile pieces sit properly. Some are off even if they seem perfectly flat. I'm sorry I don't have a miracle answer. We did our bathroom tiles and not all accepted the same amount of cement. Some needed to be wiggled in, others didn't. Don't go crazy yet, you will find the answer. Good luck and Merry X-mas.

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Q. I am a service manager for a reputable heating and cooling company in akron ohio. We are a commercial only company and in need of service technicians and helpers. Experince or schooling is a must. We are willing to train someone with the right attitude and aproach as long as they are currently enrolled or recently graduated from hvac school. Feel free to send resume's to matt.heffernan@jfbinc.com

A. No i am not looking for a hvac job

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Q. This is kinda long so bear with me. Firstly, I have to confess I know absolutely nothing about the workings of my A/C. I am utterly challenged in the area of HVAC technology. I also grew up in countries that did not have AC so until I moved into my home, I never knew anything about maintenance or changing the filters (which I do religiously every 2-3 months). I moved into my condo two years ago and have been successfully using the heating and AC unit ever since until this Summer when weird things started happening. Back in March I had a technician come by and do a service. Then in April/May, when things normally start getting warm around here, the weather was cool and yucky so altho the thermostat was turned to cool it really wasn't needed. Oh, and ever since I moved in the FAN setting has been on Auto (the other option is On). Back in May one evening it turned really warm and when I got home the condo was a balmy 82º! Everything was turned on as usual, but there was no cold air coming from anywhere and the AC was totally silent. I tried adjusting the temperature settings, switching the thermostat off/on, going thro the entire program settings . . . the only thing that worked was switching the Fan from Auto to On. Switching it back only turned the AC off. After about 4 hours the temp finally fell below 80º at home and I was able to switch the Fan to Auto without it turning the AC off. Since then it has worked fine BUT this past week we again had very cool unseasonal weather and so it hasn't been working. Except for today when the temp outside rose and it's very humid too. Sure enough, the AC is only working right now in the On setting. So . . . all you HVAC experts, what is going on?! Is there a real problem I should have checked out ASAP or is it just doing this because the AC isn't being used several days at a time? Should I be concerned and calling the service technician out again?

A. Many people think they know what is going on with an AC unit but are totally wrong so don't slit your wrists. From the sounds of it, you need some straight up advice so here it is. Bear with me as I tend to run off at the mouth. Since the AC worked well the past 2 years I would tend to think something changed when the technician did the service on it. It may be that he did something or it may be that something has failed since. Be that as it may, let me explain a couple things for you. Your AC unit is made up of 2 seperate parts, the outdoor condensing unit and the indoor air handler. The thermostat receives its power (24 volts) from a control board in the indoor unit. The power is provided from the transformer near the control board. The control board may have an led light on it. Built into the control board are some chips and resistors and capacitors and most important some relays. One of the relays is the indoor fan motor relay. That relay controls which speed winding is energized in the fan motor. Indoor blowers usually have 2 speeds they need to operate at. For the cooling cycle, the high speed winding is needed. For the heating cycle, the low speed winding is needed. Most AC units come from the factory with indoor blower motors with up to 4 speed windings. They should already be set up so your proper windings are connected and since you have a couple years of good operation its reasonable to assume that they are still connected correctly. Let's talk about the thermostat for a minute. The thermostat has 2 switches on it. One switch is used to choose either HEAT or COOL. That switch often has a setting for AUTO to let the thermostat choose the needed cycle. It should also have an OFF setting. The FAN switch has ON and AUTO settings. When the ON setting is used the indoor blower motor is energized by the board on its high speed winding. In the AUTO position the correct speed is selected for cool or heat automatically. When the control board "sees" a call for cooling, the indoor blower is energized on its high speed winding from the board. When the control board "sees" a call for heating, the blower is energized on its low speed winding. The control board also sends power to the outdoor condensing unit to run for cooling or to the furnace to run for heat. Usually, all of this is taken care of for you by the thermostat set points. It sounds like you may have a problem with either your thermostat or with the control board. I would recommend that you have a qualified service technician come and check it out. It should take no more than about 30 to 45 minutes to have a good handle on it. The technician should be able to tell you just what is going on and what if any repairs might be needed. Most service companies now have fixed prices for whatever you may need and they should be able to tell you the total cost of that work including labor before they do any work. There will likely be a service charge for the diagnostics but that will usually be included in the actual repair if you elect to have it done by them. I hope this helps.

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Q. I work for a heating, air conditioning, electrical, plumbing, and roofing company, and I dispatch about ten people on seven calls a day, and it is exhausting. I take the call (or whoever is in the office does) and gather the customer information. This includes name, address, phone number, city, zip code, how they heard about us (commercial, radio, referral, repeat, etc.), what type of problem they are having (heating, electrical, plumbing, or roofing), what exactly is going wrong, if it is an estimate on a new unit, a service failure, what time the customer called, what date the customer called, when the customer would like the technician to come out (we try to always book them between twelve and four, and save the early times for customers with no other option). The salesman then takes the inbound call sheet over to the dispatch log. I probably should have mentioned that each call sheet has a preassigned number (e.g. 20090001, 20090002, etc.). They match the invoice number on the inbound call sheet to the number on the call log which contains the invoice number, then a place for the sales rep to fill out the rest of the customer information, including customer name, technician assigned to customer's zip code, type of call (hvac, electrical, plumbing), date of call, date scheduled, time of call, time scheduled (am or pm), time completed, revenue collected, and if it was entered into quickbooks, and then if the invoice was given to the technician. This is all if the customer wants the work done on a future date. If the customer wants the work done that day, the sales rep goes ahead and calls the technician assigned to the customer's zip code. He then fills out the call log like normal. Once they have done all that, they give the call sheets to me. I then enter all the information into quickbooks and print out two work orders. I put the call sheets into a plastic sleeve and put those in a binder starting from the lowest work order number to the greatest. Then I put the work order in Steve's folder who gives them to the correct technician. The technician's go out and do the call and collect the money unless it is a credit card. Then I call the customer, get their credit card information, and call the credit card company and charge their card (I am honest enough to be trusted to do this). The checks are deposited every day at the bank after they have been entered into quickbooks. Most of the technicians are paid by salary. I broke my windshield the other day (coincidentally trying to deal with stress from this job), and a company with similar problems came out to fix it, and I was very interested in how they overcame them. The people on the phone took my phone number, name, car type, and schedule me for 12 to 4 pm. the technician who gets paid by the job came out, fixed my windshield, entered some information into his blackberry and connected it to the safegear thing and printed out his receipt and was on his merry way. I called the company (safelite), and tole them all this, and they said to call the corporate office between eight and five, which I will do tomorrow. but fellow workers, will you please help a struggling business and let me know how you dispatch people or how we could improve? Is there any company that has software for this??? PLEASE!

A. Whew, your employer owes you big time for some mental health counseling. The really big firms around here in the midwest use a system that is identical to law enforcement. They carry a small walkie talkie and have radios in their big box trucks. I had a young man check out my heat pump just last week and I could hear the dispatcher talking talking talking. It was a woman and she'd been doing it a long time that was obvious from my first contact. Except she gave him the wrong address and he was driving around for a while until I called her back, she then radioed him right away and I had a delay of maybe ten minutes. We have quite a few one man operations around here and they are Good. The one husband of a friend that I know just gets by with a cell phone, but you don't want to face something like that you have way too many people running in and out. Here's a suggestion: check out temporary employment agencies and ask them what kind of system they use? You might even find a better job who knows? Community colleges have wonderful courses on Business Communication, check them out if you have time and if your employer will pay for all or part of it. This is tax deductible as it's to improve your performance on your job. Then, get online and check out different software companies, there are tons out there who really need the business. A local Nerd would also jump at the chance to get a system customized just for your firm. You really have a situation and I sincerely hope you get some kind of help and soon. Oh, I also know of what you call service plumbing firms in the Miami/Tampa/Cape Coral/Fort Myers areas. These people are really with it but they're in trouble now because the hotels are sitting there empty especially this time of year. Maybe you could check with some hotels or housekeeping managers as to what kind of system they use, but it would depend on how big and busy your area of the country is. Okay, there's lots more but this will keep you busy thinking and maybe alleviate some of your stress. Good Luck!

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Q. I have a Trane heat pump about 5 yrs old. It is an average sized system you typically find in an average size home. I suspect it has a problem and I am hoping someone can tell me more. I have already had plenty of input from the backyard handyman, so now I am hoping to hear from professionals. First of all, I will start by telling you a problem that it had back in the summer. I have no idea whether or not it is related to the problem I am having now. In the spring, when it was first getting warm enough to use air conditioning, The fan in the outside unit would not run. The unit was making a buzzing sound like it was trying to run, but it rarely would do so. The air conditioning would not cool. It just blew out warm air. I had it repaired by my local heating and cooling shop, the same one that installed the unit when it was new. I had no more problem until recently. Now, it has the same symptoms again. The outside unit just makes a buzzing noise, but the fan hardly ever runs. If I go out and check 10 times, the fan might be running 1 out of the 10. I have stayed outside and waited 30 minutes to see if the fan would start running, and it never does. Since this problem started, I have seen the fan run a couple of times, and when it does, it seems normal. It does not seem to be seizing up or anything. It does not make an unusual sound when it runs. The system is still heating normally without having to switch to emergency heat. If I never went out and looked at the outside unit, I would not have known anything was wrong. We have had quite a bit of cold weather, some nights have been in the single digits, and the unit seems to behave the same whether it is 5 degrees or 35 degrees. The unit is in use every day (at least at night). Once or twice a week when we are home all day, we use a wood burning stove and do not use the heat pump, sometimes in the evenings, we burn wood and the unit is off for 4-5 hrs, but other than that, the thermostat is set to 65-70 all the time.

A. Check all wires for connections If capacitor was not replace when new motor was installed or is mismatch with what the fan motor calls for that may very well be the issue Check contactor for signs of pitting Possible the defrost control board may be faulty and the unit is going into defrost mode when it should not be and hence it turning the fan off. The other thing that comes to mind is there is a pre-timed delay for defrost operation of the heat pump by default it should be set on the control board via the jumper at 30. There are 3 settings 30,60 and 90.. It possible the unit is set on a 90 min defrost cycle and that why you never or hardly ever see the fan spinning. It needs to be set on 30. Quick note for you when heat pump goes into defrost mode, fan shuts off, compressor is running, and there is a change in pitch from compressor. When unit comes out of defrost mode, fan should turn back on. Also, if you thermostat is digital it should bring on Aux heat to maintain comfort levels while unit is in defrost mode. In addition when heat pump cant keep up heat wise, the stat may bring on the aux heat as well to keep temps up. To test the board on the unit, there is a test terminal 2 pins that have to be jumped. If the unit will not go into defrost mode the board is bad and needs to be replaced. Your getting ample power to the unit from what it sounds like or the compressor would not run. So you need to look at the things I mentioned. If the did not replace the dual run capacitor that would be my first check that A the original motor may have not been bad and B the slapped a motor in and now it hit or miss when it runs.

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Q. Climate researcher Anthony Watts reports: Global warming is one of the most serious issues of our times. Some experts claim the rise in temperature during the past century was “unprecedented” and proof that immediate action to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions must begin. Other experts say the warming was very modest and the case for action has yet to be made. The reliability of data used to document temperature trends is of great importance in this debate. We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data. The official record of temperatures in the continental United States comes from a network of 1,221 climate-monitoring stations overseen by the National Weather Service, a department of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Until now, no one had ever conducted a comprehensive review of the quality of the measurement environment of those stations. During the past few years I recruited a team of more than 650 volunteers to visually inspect and photographically document more than 860 of these temperature stations. We were shocked by what we found. We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas. In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited. It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend. We found major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found that adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher. The conclusion is inescapable: The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. * * * http://climatesci.org/2009/05/04/is-the-us-surface-temperature-record-reliable-by-anthony-watts/ * * * How can we say if there is global warming or cooling if the accuracy of data is not there?

A. China had it's coldest winter on record in 2007...COLDEST WINTER ON RECORD (which goes back almost two hundred years). The science of proving global warming is a junk science at best...far less practical and peer reviewed than even "intelligent design" a conglomerate of over 200 scientists has met every year in down town New York to protest the logic, plausibility, and data that Al Gore and his host of pet scientists are using to promote their Global Warming legislation. Al Gore is the Chairman of the Board of GENERATION INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT which is the primary sales point for all carbon offset credits. Now if you own the company that stands to make billions of dollars on carbon offset credits....you are lobbying Washington DC to impose cap and trade policy on the manufacturing industry to buy carbon credits from you....and you made a movie promoting a catastrophe if this problem was not addressed...doesn't it seem that your actions are less than pure? I am all for sustainability....I am all for limiting growth so that we don't destroy our natural resources and damage the eco system...I am all for using recycled goods in construction, and manufacturing if these products are of a good quality and are fiscally plausible....who wouldn't want to protect the environment if it is reasonable? But Al Gore created a hysteria with a movie that was created in Hollywood....he made the move with little scientific evidence to support his claims and yet he is using his Washington resources to pass legislation that treats his "theory" as though it is absolute fact. This will end up taking millions of dollars from companies that produce in this country...further crippling our economy in a world market..and further driving up prices of energy....all while these same millions of dollars are funneled straight to the man who created the hysteria! It stinks to me...and I wonder how long this house of card will stand...like I said...I believe in protecting our environment...but Al Gore is violating the public trust in a way that is absolutely unimaginable....The President of the Weather Channel...stated that Al Gore is a sham...that he is a snakeoil salesman. It should be interesting to watch it play out.

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