Jesse Smith

@jessetayriver.bsky.social

HVAC, catastrophic/x-risks, EA

Over the course of both my carpentry and HVAC career probably 90% of my work has been renovation or repair of existing homes. People often don't fully grasp the level of difficulty these entail relative to new construction

Working on a fun little euro tilt/turn window installation this week. I'll try to remember to take pics and videos. A lot of people end up with replacement style windows which imo are complete garbage. It's not much more difficult to install quality windows with good water management

Furnace condensate generally has a slightly lower ph than sodas. Increasingly where furnace condensate is discharged to either a sump or sanitary sewer, inspectors require a ph neutralizer be installed, citing the plumbing code section below

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Diversitech minisplit drain connector instructions appears to have the pipe placement backwards. As shown, both connections rely on hose clamps for water tightness, which is a bad practice. Done correctly this is probably the best system for connecting minisplit drain lines

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This house was designed by the dean of architecture at Princeton. My guess is the design predates AC so they intended to open the damper on summer evenings. Anyway, here's a damper connected to a furnace fan that's been directly pulling outdoor air into the duct system for 60 years

One of the biggest changes to residential construction over my career is the decline is job site activity. The median construction site in my area has 0-2 workers present despite homes being larger. 25 years ago job site crowdedness was a huge problem. Today there's no activity

HVAC companies largely don't train receptionists to give technical guidance with one exception. During heat waves they are told to falsely claim that air conditioners can only make it 20f colder than outdoors, so this week expect to hear that 86f indoors is gtg

Last weekend I was fixing an AC electrical short for one of my wife's friends who also had a plumbing leak. I carry a few plumbing fittings and press tool jaws so something that would have been an hour for me to inexpertly solder took 10 minutes for a robust connection

We once had a carpenter give notice because he found "a better opportunity" but when we pressed him it was that he wanted to party at the shore for summer. Unfortunately he got caught up in the opioid epidemic and died of an overdose a few years later

Duct systems outside conditioned space are a significant driver of wasted energy and codes have become increasingly strict on sealing and insulating them in response. Research is mixed but it's likely that the penalty for unconditioned attic duct systems is 15%-35%

For air handlers over conditioned space I usually do 3 layers of flood protection. I pipe the pan under the unit to daylight with an inline float switch and valve labeled closed. If a clog occurs the unit stops. The arriving tech opens the valve, resolves the clog source and closes it again

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This week I input a 1960s built, 1600 sq ft house into my HVAC sizing spreadsheet, which takes about 5 minutes. It came back with crazy high (80kbtu/hr). For perspective, a 1942 built, 4000 sq ft house from earlier in the week was 65kbtu/hr.

The February 2026 Mustafa Suleyman interview excerpt that's been widely circulated as a prediction of mass white collar layoffs has been substantially taken out of context and misquoted. He was referring to the automation of tasks within jobs not job loss

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Someone sent me a podcast with a guest from a heat pump manufacturing and installation start-up. His (non)answers to system design questions refer to his company's sophisticated monitoring software, which ofc can only be used after the system is installed. Very little pushback from the hosts