VO: You are listening to Cool Air Hot Takes.
Charles Jelen: Welcome, welcome to Cool Air Hot Takes. This is a podcast about everything and anything from the world of HVAC, energy in the Built environment. We're your hosts. I'm Charlie Gellan.
Dan Gentry: And I'm Dan Gentry. Every couple of weeks we get together and bring you the latest in HVAC headline. An expert interview in this week.
It's the man, the myth, the HVAC legend, the One and only Mick Schwer. We're gonna be talking about what a 43 year long career in this industry looks like. Wow. That's older than I am, so that's very exciting. The highlights, the challenges, and the biggest changes in the industry. Plus we're gonna have Mick stick around for hot or not eighties editions.
So I think that's gonna be pretty cool. And of course, your stat of the day. Also,
Charles Jelen: Mick is the number one pick in the first ever. In the Yes. Applications engineering fantasy draft.
Dan Gentry: Yes.
Charles Jelen: So we had to have him on the show. Yep. How? Ben? Ben. Great. Yeah. So for the listener, this comes out a couple weeks after Thanksgiving, but you were up in Michigan.
Dan Gentry: I was up in Michigan at the cabin, which you're very familiar with. I am, I am. I love the cabin Paradise. Paradise. We're glad you made it. That's the sign when they, when you get there. So you know, it's far away when the sign to the town says, we're glad you made it. That's what it says Under the Paradise Michigan sign.
Yes. But great Thanksgiving. Small little family gathering, amazing food. Yes. I was responsible for the Turkey and I nailed it. How'd you do it? How'd you do it? Uh, brined it for two days. Yeah. And then, uh, stuck a stick of butter underneath. It's a
Charles Jelen: lot of
Dan Gentry: butter. Breast and skin there and, uh, oiled it up and got a nice brown on it and took it out at about 162 degrees.
Ooh,
Charles Jelen: yeah.
Dan Gentry: And, uh, it was juicy and salty. Everybody loved it. But when we're leaving, I was going to go clean off, uh, my windshield 'cause it. Snowed nose leaning over the truck and I'm slipped and fell onto my truck and hit my ribs and took me down, man. Took me down to my knees, cut you down, and it's been like five days and it still hurts.
Incredibly bad.
Charles Jelen: Uh, I have a good Turkey story though too. So we went up to Minneapolis with Meg's family and they also do a Turkey every year,
Dan Gentry: and they love Turkey.
Charles Jelen: No they don't. They hate Turkey. There's two people that like Turkey and it's Aunt Lisa, uncle Tom, and we're sitting around and one of Meg's cousins, aj, he's like, ah, God, are we doing Turkey again?
And you know, Lisa was like, well, what, what should we do? And his response was great. It was just, how about anything that people actually like? That was it. Cut deep. But it was true.
Dan Gentry: I mean, I loved Rick. I think it's great, but this still is funny. So
Charles Jelen: where we settled was, uh, surf and Turf for next year.
Dan Gentry: Everybody likes surfing and turf. Yeah. Can't
Charles Jelen: go
Dan Gentry: wrong. Can't go wrong.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. Alright. Hot take time. Hot takes. I'll go first. This is a family related one. Just a little bit of a advice out there for everybody. Hockey started in the Northern states. Well, unless you're in Minnesota, it never ends in Minnesota, but in Wisconsin it's.
Started about two months ago and my hot take is that every family should put at least one kid through hockey. It will test you in all the ways as a parent, especially if you have multiple kids. It's like canoeing with a wife,
put
Dan Gentry: you through the test. Okay,
Charles Jelen: I won't ask, but there's a lot of gear. You gotta get 'em there. It's cold. Especially if they're little like three, four years old, getting 'em out there. They're, maybe they like it, probably they don't. We had two kids that really liked it. One kid that got on the ice and was like, nah, nope.
And some people will be like, well, skiing's similar. I disagree. Similar amount of gear. But when you go there, you can ski. Like you get to enjoy that as well. Hockey is, you're just hanging out and kids are grinding it out. That's a good one. There you go. What's your, what do you got?
Dan Gentry: So, mine, the Midwest.
Goodbye. Okay. Yeah. And I want to bring this up 'cause A, it's really funny and BI think it ties into pop culture as well, which has, uh, you know, popped in on the show.
Charles Jelen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dan Gentry: So like the Midwest goodbye is we take a long time to leave. Like, uh, you're hanging out with your buddies and how it starts is you have to announce that you're leaving.
Yep. So like, Hey guys, I'm gonna get going. I'm gonna hit the dusty trail. But you don't actually start doing it. You just make the announcement and you might make some little actions. You may get your cooler together or something, but you gotta. Evaluate how much beer you have left, you know, and if you have like less than half a beer, it's like, well, you know, I probably just stay for one more and then you get into a spiral.
'cause it's like, you know, if somebody else gets up to go get a beer, it's like, well, ah, you know, I'll have one more and then just, I've seen a goodbye turn into from goodbye to four hours and we're still like hanging out. And it can be a feature of a popin. Oh, for sure. A popin can turn into a longer thing if the Midwest goodbye takes a long time.
Yeah.
Charles Jelen: That's, that's what I got. I like it. Alright, up next HVAC. Headlines,
VO: HVAC. Headlines your news today.
Charles Jelen: All right, listener, it's 7:00 PM in Shenandoah. Here's your headlines. Headline number one. This one, I had to do this one because like right after Thanksgiving we started playing Christmas music. Mm-hmm. You know what my kid's favorite Christmas song is? Grandma Got Run Over By.
Yes, grandma got Run Over by Rain here. Hilarious song listener. If you haven't heard that song or you haven't heard in a while, go check it out. Grandma got run Over by a reindeer. Over by a reindeer. Anyways, so the, the headline number one here is the year HVAC got run over by a reindeer, so I had to check it out.
This is from HVAC news. It was a whole article about how HVAC, specifically the residential side of the business, got hit really hard this year. So I'll just walk through what they cited. But it had the arrival of a two L slightly flammable refrigerant. That was a tough transition. Mm-hmm. We had a shortage of 4 54 B, which is one of those A two L refrigerants that we tried to transition to, or did transition to, I should say.
We had shifting EPA rules, we were gonna bring refrigerants back. Maybe we weren't gonna, nobody really knew what was going on there. We had tariffs hit, and then on top of that, we had a sluggish replacement year. So all in all, it was a tough year, tough year for HVAC on the residential side.
Dan Gentry: I would say not much more to add there.
Yeah, it's just a, it's a pretty funny headline and it's, it's a good head. The headline, back it up.
Charles Jelen: Just click, click bait, headline number two, and this is, uh, a little home cooking here. Train Technologies to Buy Liquid to Chip Business. This is from cooling post. It's this train technologies as entered into a definitive agreement with Stellar Energy International to acquire its stellar energy, digital liquid to chip data center, cooling business.
So it's pretty cool. This is a. Packaged plant manufacturer. So listener out there, if you don't know what that means, think packaged plant is a chiller plant in a box. Yeah. So you've got your chiller, you've got pumps, valves, controls. You can build it in a manufacturing facility. This is what cellar does.
And then you ship that container to the facility, drop it in place, hook up the pipes, and you're ready to go.
Dan Gentry: It's just like Legos. You can just put a whole bunch of 'em together to build whatever you need.
Charles Jelen: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's growing trend inside the data center and mission critical space, uh, which is why Trane is getting into it.
They're also doing custom cooling distribution units, so CDUs, so these are the pumping and heat exchanger and control packages that actually distribute the heat to the, the servers and the racks. So pretty cool. This was a big announcement. Custom CDUs. That's pretty cool. Alright. Headline number three.
We're gonna hit you with a trifecta. The very, the, I think this might be the first trifecta of headlines. Little treat today, huh? Yeah. Or you know, so while I was going through headlines, there were a bunch of tips for getting your home ready for the winter. Okay. Number one. Replace your filter when you move into wintertime, especially if you're in a colder location, you're not opening your windows as much, you're not getting mm-hmm, as much outside air.
So you're gonna recirculate a lot of the air that's in your home. Replace your filter now. Filter out some of that stuff. Change those filters. Okay? Next one. Test your furnace if you haven't already. Uh, if you don't know how to test it for heating mode, just go to your thermostat, set it on high or, or heat, and then crank it up to like 80 degrees so that it absolutely runs.
Dan Gentry: And I think the key for this one is to not do it when it's zero degrees outside.
Charles Jelen: Yep. You gotta test it when
Dan Gentry: it's a little warmer. Probably do it before because when it's zero, it's not gonna work.
Charles Jelen: Uh, another one, clear the area around your furnace and around your return vents. So if you see like a grill in your living room, not all of them should have air coming out of them.
Half of them should have air coming out of them. The other half should have air going into them, going back to the furnace and
Dan Gentry: don't block 'em.
Charles Jelen: All right, the last couple here sealed drafts around doors and windows. They make those, uh, like kits at Home Depot or Menards that you can get. Those are pretty easy to put on there.
If you've got some leaky windows and doors, set your thermostat back a few degrees to save some energy. I like 67, 68. That's usually where I go. Where are you at?
Dan Gentry: So we're like 69 to 70. A pretty warm house. I A little warmer. A little warmer. Okay. Yeah, it's probably unnecessary. 'cause when we have the fireplace on, that furnace doesn't run.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've been turning down, like this week I turned down to like 65 when I leave. Oh. Because I'd like to come home and it's like little cool. Then get the heat up, you know, the 69 for a little bit. It's, I like it.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. Alright. Lastly, open your blinds or shades during the day and let the sun heat up your house.
That is free heating. I am a big
Dan Gentry: proponent of this.
Charles Jelen: I
Dan Gentry: blast those shades open in the morning and the kitchen and get that. 'cause they're like heavy ones, so it's like dark. Yeah. Open those up and get that sun in and free heat.
Charles Jelen: Free heat. All right, listener. Up next HVAC legend, Mr. Mick Schueler. Don't go anywhere.
Dan Gentry: A higher building IQ is a no-brainer, right? You betcha. Train autonomous control. Powered by Brainbox AI uses artificial intelligence to make AI work for your building 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you can focus less on the little things and more on the most critical bingo. Go to trane.com/autonomous control to find out more about trane's latest AI offering.
Charles Jelen: All right, listener, we have with us Al Goma. Wisconsin's finest, a 43 year engineer at Trane was the global ASHRAE President, tenured commissioner of the Trane Official Fantasy Football League. He's a mentor to many. He's a friend to all, and of course, he was the number one pick in the first ever trained application engineering fantasy draft.
Welcome to Cool Air. Hot Takes Mr. Mick Schwer.
Mick Schwedler: Thank you. It's so good to be with you guys again. Um, not on hot takes, but just in general. You're, you do fantastic work.
Charles Jelen: Well, thank you very much. As, as do you and Dan and I and Mick have known each other for a very long time, listener, so this is gonna be a, a little bit of a retrospective of Mick's career.
Part of which I was privileged to be part of as you progressed. But before we get into all that, the name of the show is Cool Air Hot Takes. We ask all our guests to come on with a hot take. It could be from your personal life, your professional life, anything in between. Mick, what'd you bring for us today?
Mick Schwedler: I've never been a hot take, guys, so this wasn't easy. Okay. When building owners give engineers and designers a little bit more money and a little bit more time, they reap amazing benefits.
Charles Jelen: All right. Let's double click on that. As the consultants like to say, where do you see that show up?
Mick Schwedler: Well, today, engineers and designers, time is so limited.
Mm-hmm. In order to do things that a lot of times the building owner might have different needs, different wants, different desires, but there just isn't time to do it. So they. What's been done in the past or, or similar to it, the copy
Dan Gentry: paste.
Mick Schwedler: Copy. I was just saying copy paste. And I don't like to say that engineers do that, but certainly that's how consultants improve their profit margins.
Charles Jelen: Mm-hmm.
Mick Schwedler: But the issue is that doesn't allow for the creativity for the. Uh, doing things special for that particular building, that particular owner of that particular application.
Charles Jelen: Absolutely.
Mick Schwedler: When you have that little bit more time, it isn't that much more
Charles Jelen: right. And that's where the innovation happens.
Right. I think a lot of people look at innovation as product based innovation, but the engineering community, the consulting engineering community has just as much innovation if, to your point, given the time to actually innovate.
Mick Schwedler: Yep. That's pointed out with what they've done with the electrification of heating.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: Where they get the heat from. Yeah. And the, the brilliance and creativity, which leads to the innovation Exactly.
Charles Jelen: I love it. Mm-hmm. Alright. 43 years at Trane, is that right? 43 plus. Yep. Oh, man. Alright, so I, I've heard you say this before and I think it's true, but did you really only have two roles at Trane?
Yeah, that whole time. Two,
Mick Schwedler: I'm a really slow learner,
Charles Jelen: so give us the rundown, you know, what you like. When did you start and where did you start?
Mick Schwedler: I started in 1982 and I was hired into the. Trace department. Mm-hmm. Basically it was, had a different name. Now it's called our Customer Direct Service group to write Trace Train, air Conditioning Economics Program, building Analysis and Economic comparisons.
Yeah. And my job was to be on the development side.
Charles Jelen: So CDS or OR Trace is an energy modeling, full building, energy modeling load and energy software. So that's what we're talking about here. What were you on at the time in terms of like platform? Because there wasn't, it was nothing was cloud-based.
Mick Schwedler: Trace was on the mainframe at the time.
Charles Jelen: Okay.
Mick Schwedler: People would, they could do Trace Direct where they could actually enter it. They could actually mail in booklets that they filled out. They would get typed in by typists, basically, and then the runs would be done. But when we started to port our selection programs
Charles Jelen: mm-hmm.
Mick Schwedler: And the inputs for trace from that booklet to electronically, we had Apple two Es.
IBM, I think 3 86 came out. TRSA Radio Shack computers
Charles Jelen: didn't know that was a thing.
Mick Schwedler: Yep. I, I'm been a quarter inch drives or there were eight inch drives on some of them and, but our primary tool to begin with was an Apple two E. It had 40 4K of ram.
Dan Gentry: Okay.
Mick Schwedler: I'm even measuring that anymore. Yeah. Oh no. I asked someone the other day, do you know what K is?
And we could store 128 K of data. So when you're doing selections, you would actually have to swap your data disc with the disc that had the program on it. So that's where we started and we were the only ones in the company who had them. And people would come by and they'd say things like, what kind of toys do you have today?
Charles Jelen: Look at these young whippersnappers with computers.
Mick Schwedler: Um, but the people who were, were visionary and said, this is where we need to do one of our competitors had done it.
Charles Jelen: Yeah,
Mick Schwedler: it was time for us to, to leapfrog them and move ahead of them.
Charles Jelen: That's pretty cool. Yeah. Mick, we interviewed Ian Malloy from Autodesk, and we had a conversation about the integration with mm-hmm.
Trace 3D now and, and Autodesk thinking about where that has come from, like the information management of how you design a building. Model a building and then turn it into a digital twin downstream. Coming from a quarter inch thick booklet that you would run through punch cards to, to where we're at today is, is kind of crazy.
It's amazing.
Mick Schwedler: Well, uh, just going back in 1984, we had a CDS users convention. And we talked about how that was going to be done because we already did it in our selection software between the Vera Boxes,
Charles Jelen: Uhhuh,
Mick Schwedler: yep. VAD boxes and the duct design that was already there and we just saw this is the way it's going to happen.
It just took a little bit longer than we thought.
Charles Jelen: Yeah, sure. Sure. Okay. So you were in CDS was your first spot. How long were you there for?
Mick Schwedler: It was about seven or eight years, and then it was time for me to move to a different group. Um. It was hard to get into applications engineering. I knew that's where I wanted to be because you get to help customers, you get to learn things.
It's never the same. Yeah. Each day as, as you both know,
Charles Jelen: give our listener an idea of what applications is.
Mick Schwedler: Our group's job is to think of us as consultants to consulting engineers, technical building owners, and from a system standpoint. Mm-hmm. So our, our field, they answer product things and we have product groups for that, but we, uh, only concentrate on systems.
So how do you put the system together? How do you do the controls? What are different options? And then the, the analysis tools like Trace, like my PLV and things like that mm-hmm. Allow us to look at things from an economic standpoint. So we're primarily engineers. Mm-hmm. And so we, we solve the puzzles along with the engineers.
We learn from them, and then we can take the lessons we've learned.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: And say, well, here's three different options that sound like they're real good for your project. And then talk about. A lot of times all they hear about are what are the positives? Mm-hmm. Well, they're negatives too, to any decision.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: And really you need to know the good and the bad in order to make the best design for the particular application and customer.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. This is where, uh, when I came into the company, I, I came into CDS as well. That was my first spot. And you were already in applications, I'm sure you were very established at the time.
And one of the first times I ever got to actually work with you was in a customer visit. And it was about chilled water systems and, and the best way to optimize and design them. And I remember sitting down because you had a whiteboard and you were just starting to draw out the system, and it was an hour and a half discussion, felt like it was 10 minutes.
It filled up a whiteboard. And I just remember thinking like this. What kind of wizard are we working with here and, and how do I get to this point? Like, I thought it would take forever to understand, you know, where you were at and how you laid out these systems. And so that's, it's very true though that that system level aspect is, is differentiated in a lot of OEMs because we end up getting so product focused when you manufacture a product and, and why my little widget is better than that little widget over there.
Taking a, a step up from that is, is where applications has always excelled and I'm glad we've, we've continued to resource that. Moving forward, if you think back through your time in applications, is there a project that stands out in your mind that this was kind of the peak of, of some of the work that I did?
Mick Schwedler: I'm gonna share one that really helped me understand the importance of our industry. So we were working with Bu Benet, who's now the leader for Canada. Oh yeah. He was our auto sales office. Fantastic guy has all the tools. Great with people. And he had a customer, MDS, Nord, ion, uh, John and Eve. And they were having problems with their chilled water system.
And they had a process that it was taken care of primarily. And they came to La Crosse for a customer visit. We went to the freight house. We had a, the nice. Steak dinner at the freight house. Mm-hmm. Then afterwards we went into the bar area and laid the plans out on the table. Nice. Nice. You know, you can check with key, but, uh, he, he still talks about this.
I then had a chance, so then we had the customer visit. We went through things. I had the chance to go up to the plant to make sure that the renovations that, uh, we were working with the engineer to recommend actually could be done, could make sense. Mm-hmm. And then we talked about how it helped them. And how important it was, and they were so impressed.
But what MDS Nordion does, they manufacture radioactive pellets that go in and spot treat the cancer rather than poisoning the whole body with the chemicals and therefore help cure people without making them sick.
Dan Gentry: Yeah. Whoa. So that's like a nuclear medicine.
Mick Schwedler: Yeah. E exactly. And I'm going, no, no. What what we do is pittance compared to the impact.
However, as an industry, we have that we, we impact health, we impact safety, and sometimes we forget the reasons we're doing things. And all we do, we focus on, you know, here's the impact that we have.
Dan Gentry: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: So that one really helped me, changed how I looked at things.
Dan Gentry: Yeah. It's not just comfort cooling.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
You think about that in like during the pandemic. No one thinks about air conditioning or HVAC or the stuff that, that we did during that, but that was also a critical component to keeping the vaccines at a temperature that could be useful around the world.
Mick Schwedler: Mm-hmm. We certainly think about indoor environmental quality.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: Mm-hmm.
Charles Jelen: Yeah.
Mick Schwedler: So y Yeah, Charlie, people ask me, you know, when I was Ashbury president, what? What really changed? And I would say the big, I'd been in the industry almost 39 years. I was asked to go talk to the students from the University of Miami and ask the local ashry people, what do you want me to do?
And they said, inspire them. Oh yeah, I'm getting, oh yeah.
Charles Jelen: Oh, that's it. Just go inspire
Mick Schwedler: I up there inspiring. And then I said some bad words. Oh boy. Uh oh. I said HVAC and I said, BTUs. And to a person there eyes went down and the impact I just had was no thanks. I don't wanna be part of an industry that does that.
Charles Jelen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.
Mick Schwedler: Yeah, and I, I said, how will I rescue them from what I just did to them? And the words have been refined since then. But here's kind of what came out. We reduced the energy usage and emissions from buildings. We also make them sustainable and resilient. 40% of the world's food spoils between the field and our forks, we reduce that.
Hmm. And Charlie, we literally, as an industry, led the world out of a global pandemic by keeping the vaccines cold. And most importantly, we keep people safe and healthy in buildings.
Charles Jelen: Mm-hmm.
Mick Schwedler: And their eyes came back up. And the industry I worked in after 39 years changed at that point in time. We need to concentrate and talk about the impacts we have.
We, we use all these technical tools, but it's the impacts that matter. It's the impacts that affect people and humanity and it's the impacts that draw the, the young ready to, to work, ready to innovate professionals. And yeah, we're privileged and we're honored to work in this industry.
Dan Gentry: Absolutely. Yeah, and I think that's a great point.
Like personally, I, I agree with you. What I found is very. Interesting and maybe rewarding about this job is when you have customers come in and we understand the impact that we have on on their operations, and we also get to learn how our equipment is used in other things than say, comfort heating or comfort cooling.
I just find that fascinating
Mick Schwedler: and you get to then take it to other projects and say, you know. This is what we did over here. We might have to change the way we did it a little bit. Mm-hmm. But it sure looks like this would be something that could give you those efficiency, those reduced environmental emissions, whatever you're look, resilience, things like that.
Charles Jelen: Alright, Mick, I gotta read you something that you put into your bio for the global ASHRAE presidency.
Okay?
All right. Sure. Gomo Wisconsin's a city of 4,000 people right on the shores of Lake Michigan. And my folks, Jim and Mary Schwer raised one daughter and four sons in that small town. They were both degreed chemists and very sharp.
They moved back to their hometown taking different jobs. My mom worked at the housing authority and my dad was a partner with my grandfather in a TV appliance repair business. We didn't have a lot of money, but we always had love. We always had a roof over our heads. They made sure that we strove for excellence and they wanted to make sure that we had high character.
I, I can tell you with confidence, they would absolutely say that you have achieved excellence in what you did, what you're doing, and you have always had high character. And I can tell you from a firsthand experience that you have passed that down to the generations around you. So thank you.
Mick Schwedler: Yes, thank you.
Thank you so much. It's been wonderful to be with you.
Charles Jelen: All right. Well, Mick, do you have a little bit more time? Can can you stick around for a little game?
Mick Schwedler: Oh yeah, I heard about this. I'll do my best.
Charles Jelen: Alright, here we go. Hopefully we'll be hot or not right? Hot or not. We're gonna come back hot or not.
Eighties edition with Mick Schueler. Don't go anywhere.
Dan Gentry: Oh, that's
Charles Jelen: fun.
Hey Charlie, where do you get all your information? Well, uh, mostly Grandma Diane's 1984 hardcover encyclopedias. Oh, and, uh, engineers newsletters.
Dan Gentry: Ah, yes, that's what we're talking about. Engineers, newsletters. Listeners, let me introduce you to the ultimate resource for HVAC. Engineers, engineers, newsletters offer self-paced learning on topics like acoustics, water piping, ashray standards, and sustainable systems.
You
Charles Jelen: got it. They also have in-depth 60 minute engineers newsletter live videos, which are available on demand. And the best part of all this, it's all free. Sounds awesome. How do I get in on this? Just join the over 40,000 professionals who already rely on engineers newsletters. Subscribe now at trane.com/en, and now back to the show.
Dan Gentry: All right, listener. We're bringing it back hot or not? It's gonna be a fun one this time. It's the eighties edition with our pal Mick joining us and I am gonna hand it over to Elena to start, uh, the topics.
Producer Elena: Yes. Okay. Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Mick, for joining us today, our esteemed guest on today's special edition of Hot or Not.
If you haven't listened to this before, it's very simple. We give a number of statements about a particular topic, and today we are doing HPAC trends from the eighties. I'm gonna throw them out to you guys and you guys are gonna have to tell me whether you are still hot or not on these trends. Hot being 100%.
This is happening or it happened. We're still hot on it. Not being, no, this was a terrible trend. This is a terrible idea. It never got off the ground. We're not into this anymore. Makes sense.
Mick Schwedler: Love it. Let's do it. Let's go.
Producer Elena: Okay. And I should say as well, again, like last time, the podcast will be getting a kind of best bits highlights of this.
And if you wanna catch the full video, make sure you head over to YouTube, search for call, our Hot Takes, and you'll find the, the full version of the video there. Okay, so here we go. Statement number one. In the eighties we said thermal storage will be designed on every large chilled water system. Are we hot or not on the idea?
Charles Jelen: Much to the chagrin of one Mr. Mark Kraken. I'm cold on this one. I could see the potential from, you know, the eighties. Looking forward, we've got the capability, we can shift load around, we can save money, potentially save energy. But this one, uh, you know, it's still around obviously, but it didn't turn into every large project.
I'm gonna say not. I think I would agree with
Dan Gentry: that just because it's not being de it, it happens a lot. Like I get involved with a lot of like district energy Yeah. Style projects and a ton of those do it. But, uh, you know, the, every section in there, it's, it's not
Mick Schwedler: young, young Padawan is, this is hot. Okay.
What he talked about, he talked about thermal energy storage and talked about chilled water systems. It didn't say the thermal energy storage had to be in the chilled water systems. Okay. Look at what people are doing with the building mass, and that's from millennia ago. People use building mass in order to make sure things were going on.
Okay? We can say that batteries perhaps are thermal energy storage. They're electrons, okay? But the idea of storage. It's hotter today than I think it has been. For what I know, I didn't know millennia go. Whether or not you, you think I was alive then?
Charles Jelen: No, I agree with you. I think the concept, the topic of it is very front and center.
Yeah. It's the deployment side is, is a hard one.
Producer Elena: Charlie and Dan, you are not hot on this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Mick is hot. We've got some
Charles Jelen: debate dissension. Yeah. I've got a bit
Producer Elena: of a debate Dissension in the ranks. Hi, Louis.
Dan Gentry: We're good.
Producer Elena: Absolutely not. The listeners
Dan Gentry: all win.
Producer Elena: Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's the taking part that counts.
Statement number two, CHP or Combined Heat and Power will be applied at the majority of new, large construction projects. For example, hospitals, large offices, and industrials. Are we hot or not on this idea?
Charles Jelen: This is the concept of basically putting in power generation at the building and using the waste heat to do heating to do potentially cooling.
If you put into absorber, I'm assuming in the eighties, absorbers, were still kind of front and center as a potential option, and so it would be like a, a full energy center. For a hospital where you have onsite generation heating, cooling, kind of all in one package. I love the concept. I'm gonna say not in terms of the applicability today.
I don't know if
Dan Gentry: I know enough to actually even answer this. 'cause I was gonna say I was just at a. Big hospital project. Yeah. Doing a little tour thing and they showed us their generator. Yeah. And was like, Hey, look it, we can use this, we can offload whenever we have to and demand's high and that kind of stuff.
And I feel like this is done quite a bit, but it's, I, I don't know this one, I'm gonna let Mick weigh in.
Mick Schwedler: I would say not also. And the reason isn't that it can't make sense because, you know, look at the people building data centers. What are they building next to them? Power plants.
Charles Jelen: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Mick Schwedler: Hospitals, by law, they have to have some resilience with respect to being able to go through an outage.
The issue is the systems are complicated and they probably don't have the people to run them, to maintain them.
Charles Jelen: Mm-hmm.
Mick Schwedler: So the majority know. But there certainly are very large jobs using them today. A combined heat and power is excellent, particularly when you have a, a use for that heat. So the use of it, but I'm with Dan and Charles because Charles
Producer Elena: Nice.
Are unanimous. Not, I like the resoluteness. Thank you so much, Mick, for joining us on a special edition of Hot or Not Today, eighties edition. Remember, if you are listening to this on the podcast, this is the best bits highlight, so make sure you head to YouTube where you can catch the full video and up next start of the day.
Dan Gentry: Here comes Joe the day. The day
Charles Jelen: the day.
All right, listener. Stat of the day is brought to you by the stressful time starting around Thanksgiving and stretching through the end of the year. Uh, I don't know why, but there's things going on, family stuff, events, travel, work, there's just a lot happening, a lot going on. And for a lot of people it's, it's a stressful time.
And so this stat caught my eye. It's the quality of life index.
Dan Gentry: Okay.
Charles Jelen: As accounted for by the citizens of countries. So this is looking at the best quality of life at a country level.
Dan Gentry: And so this is just people saying, I have a high quality of life.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. So mBio, the people that put on this survey, we're gonna look at a, at the change from 2015 to 2025.
It measures the overall living conditions in countries, combining data on costs, safety, healthcare, pollution, and more.
Okay.
Okay, so we're gonna do the top 10 in 2025, and then we'll talk about some of the biggest movers and shakers. So number one, you wanna try to guess some of the top 10?
Dan Gentry: Um, I've heard these studies before and I feel like it's always like Norway, Finland.
Sweden.
Charles Jelen: Some people call that Scandinavia,
Dan Gentry: Scandinavia, Scandinavian countries. I feel like they're always up there.
Charles Jelen: All right, well, you absolutely nailed it. Yeah. All of the Scandinavian countries are in the top 10 ish, but back in 2015, the US was number four. Oh, okay. All right. But let's talk 2025. So 2025.
Number one, Luxembourg. Have you ever been?
Dan Gentry: Uh, never been,
Charles Jelen: never been, never been there either. So not a lot I could talk about, but apparently they're, they're, they're doing something right. It's like a super small country. They were small country. They not even on the list in 2015.
Dan Gentry: Oh, wow.
Charles Jelen: Yeah. It's a
Dan Gentry: super tiny country, isn't it?
I think.
Charles Jelen: Yes.
Dan Gentry: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Charles Jelen: Elena, you ever been there?
VO: No, but I can confirm it's tiny.
Charles Jelen: Thank you. Number two. That's
Producer Elena: my life fact check there. Sorry. Okay.
Charles Jelen: Uh, number two is the Netherlands. This is the biggest mover up 12 spots. Oh. Netherlands from 2015 to 2025. Number three. Denmark up. Three spots. Okay. Number four.
New to the list. Oman.
Dan Gentry: Oh, okay. What are they doing in Oman?
Charles Jelen: They're doing something right? Yeah, check it out. Uh, number five, Switzerland. Down four places. They were number one in 2015. Okay. Number six, Finland down one spot. Number seven, Norway up four spots. Number eight, Iceland. You ever been to Iceland? Uh, no.
I'd love to though. Yeah, my parents went, they took a trip to Iceland. It was great. Oh, pictures looked awesome. Best part, they brought me back a bottle of whiskey and every time they go on a trip, they bring me back a bottle of booze. It's kind of like the present I get, which is great. Good. That's a great present.
Right? But they always try to buy something local.
Dan Gentry: I didn't know whiskey was a Icelandic thing.
Charles Jelen: Well, there's kind of a reason. Okay. So they were talking to the people there and they're like, they gotta get this, it's called Floy.
Dan Gentry: Okay.
Charles Jelen: It is sheep dung whiskey.
Dan Gentry: You said dung
Charles Jelen: sheep dung.
Dan Gentry: Okay. Like poop. Poop.
Okay. Is it delicious? No. Oh
no.
Charles Jelen: Which is probably why you don't know Iceland
Dan Gentry: as a W Ski nation, I would expect it to be like. In par with like fermented horse milk, it was not
Charles Jelen: good. Yes, so that, that was number eight, Iceland, number nine, Austria down two places, and number 10 Germany down eight places. They were number two in 2015.
The US is in 2025, number 14 down 10 places.
Dan Gentry: Geez. Come on guys. Which is a big
Charles Jelen: drop, but not the biggest drop. The biggest drop was actually 18 places. Which is down from number nine to number 27 Canada.
Dan Gentry: Oh, what's
Charles Jelen: Canadians doing up there? Geez. Yeah. What's going on up Canadian Way. Well, so quality of life index 2025.
There you go. Listener. That's your stat of the day. Interesting.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Cool Air Hot Takes. Thanks so much for Mick for joining us today. Send us questions in your hot takes. Leave us a comment on Spotify or YouTube, believer of you on Apple, or drop us a message@coolair.hot takes@train.com. Remember, we could be sending you some merch if you have some good hot takes and we share 'em on air.
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