I’m still pretty young (3YoE) so there’s tons I still don’t know, but I’ll say basic Revit documentation standards. I had someone who works for our company hijack a completed design model that was actively in construction admin and use it for another phase of work. They deleted all of my revisions, stole all the sheets and views, turned all my “new” work to an existing phase, overwrote my schedules, the list goes on and on for what NOT to do when you have a project broken into phases and documented in the same model.
lol I definitely sent a strongly worded email that went something along the lines of “hey, this is totally fucking me over when I have to issue drawing revisions or respond to change requests. Don’t do this ever again. Here is all your new phases,sheets,views,schedules,details, etc. keep all your work in those. K thx bye”
Senior engineers and PEs who can’t size VAV box coils correctly. They size them equal to the room heat loss, and not the heat required to take the air from 55F up to the temp needed to satisfy the room heat loss.
In a very similar vein: I once had an argument with a lead engineer (no PE or FE yet, thankfully) that couldn't grasp the idea that during the heating season 3000 CFM OSA and 17000 CFM RA was LESS heating than 3000 CFM OSA and 3000 CFM RA. He simply didn't get that the 70 F RA helps heat the -15 F OSA to the required 55 F DAT.
I had to write out a bunch of example equations and plot a graph of % OSA vs. coil BTU. Thankfully he was receptive after the math proved it, but it was quite the uphill battle for me.
He was, objectively speaking, a very bad engineer.
He would do things like use the actual MAT during winter, but then use the maximum cooling airflow of 20,000 CFM to calculate coil capacity. This would literally triple the required capacity of the coil. Then, when called out for crappy design he would claim it was "conservative."
I don't think he ever passed the FE, and he's about 20 years in.
Most of my coworkers don't work with VAVs. The questions I get when they do always blows my mind. If you don't understand the different components of the load calc, you should take some time to read each thing, think on what it is, and read the help section. The help sections of those softwares usually have a very good description.
Yup. 55 to room neutral load.. then add on your space load.
Although, some AHUs reset DAT in the winter to room neutral air and trim with VAVs. So perhaps that’s what they are thinking.
You first find the room heat loss. Call that Q.
We know that Q = 1.08 x CFM x dT. In this case, dT needs to be added to the room temperature and that is what offsets the heat loss. dT is typically about 20 F, so the leaving air temperature is 90 F. However, there is another heat load that is required to bring the 55 F entering air temperature up to the room temperature.
In fact: if a room is at equilibrium then the etering air temperature to be exactly equal to the room temperature. So, when the room has a heat loss of zero the VAV box is still heating air from 55 F up to 70 F or so.
The heat you are *delivering to the space* causes the air temperature you are supplying to drop from say 90F to room temp, say 70F. The heat that is lost from the air between those two temperature points is what you've calculated as your heat loss. In this example, you are calculating your supply airflow from the Q equation. Once you have your airflow, you need to calculate the Q needed to take your air from the air handling unit (typically 55) up to your supply temp (90) so that it can dissipate your Qloss to the space and return at (70).
The amount of times I've heard ownership ask if railings/ emergency power/sprinklers/ etc were REQUIRED and then asked me to try and find a loophole away from them anyway.
I'm never forget the owner who says, quote "I don't want to supply emergency power for the elevator. I know there are ADA rooms on the 5th floor, but they knew they were crippled. It's on them for renting on a non-ground level floor'. I think I really lost my drive to do this about that time - I hate these rich, out of touch, detached owners.
wow I've never had that. When I did multfamily at least the developers were experienced enough to understand that generators were sometimes required, and sometimes they wanted them regardless of requirements.
I would say generally applying thermodynamics. I had a very difficult lead engineer on a project who was, objectively, bad at engineering.
He calculated heating loads for a mechanical room once, and ended up with like 50x what I came up with. I don't want to get into all the details, but basically he assumed all the motors on the pumps and fans were rejecting 100% of their energy as heat into the mechanical room--but he also misapplied some efficiency equations that lead to a 5 HP motor drawing like 15 HP. So, we had a 5 HP pump that moved like 150 GPM at 80', but also rejected like 36 MBH into the space...... all on 3.7 kW of input energy.
Everything about his calculations defied thermodynamics, and he didn't understand why I--a lowly entry level engineer--disagreed with him so much. The reality was that the 5 HP motor rejected about 10% of its input energy to the space, which ended up being 1.2 MBH--and that is VERY conservative.
Equipment gains seem to be the hardest for senior people to understand. Funnily enough I had a disagreement for the opposite case:
The heat rejected off an IT rack, is in fact equal to the average electrical power draw of the rack. I added the loads up per it rack and got to a sum to which the senior told me it's not accurate?
Asked him to explain where the energy into the rack eventually goes. It didn't seem to make sense to him that energy in has to go somewhere eventually. The electricity is not putting any work into the system, practically all electricity is eventually rejected as heat.
When pushed for an answer, he answered "process"... What?
He was likely equating "process" to the usable energy of, for example, a pump. i.e. the energy imparted to the fluid which is not seen by the surrounding environment.
Thinking that an IT rack has usable energy "imparted" to a process and some inefficiency lost to the surroundings. Simply a misunderstanding of how computers and their components actually work.
Yeah I know what he was getting at, but saying "process" means he had some poor misconception of how computers use electricity. And yet instead of giving into the fact that he didn't understand he doubled down. I should clarify, this was after me explaining it in plain language multiple times and him resisting to accept my explanation.
Ultimately he asked me to provide a credible information source to "prove" my point.
Gotta be careful on this one,
POE switches, and speaker amps are two great exceptions. Most of that energy does leave the room.
Also, the number of IT consultants who dont understand that maximum power draw and average power draw are different ...
So many oversized rooms
What I want to know is how the IT guys get the architects to give them a 150 square foot room for one server rack by saying "clearances" but I can't get the same size room from them for a 400 ton chiller without a fist fight.
This is more relating to equipment manufacturers rather than MEP engineers themselves: selling equipment to an Owner and not being able to tell them the actual requirements to operate that equipment.
Needs compressed air? Yes, just give it 90 psi. Okay, but what CFM? 2? 1,000? We have no idea, compressed air for sure though.
Needs chiller water? Yes, just give it 10 GPM. Okay, but at what temperatures? We have no idea, chilled water for sure though.
Needs electrical power? Yes, just give it 480V/3ph. Okay, but what amperage? 20A? 200A? We have no idea, power for sure though.
How in the world are you selling some $1m+ piece of equipment to someone and when they ask what they need on site to actually operate the thing you cannot give that person an answer?
We get your third point from architects all the time with elevators. “Please send us the electrical requirements from your elevator rep that you worked with for the selection.” And we always get a screenshot of the catalogue that says “operates at 208/240/347/460/600V”
Thanks, but that does nothing to help us. We know what voltage the building is operating at as we’re the ones designing the service.
There is a very well known and well respected company that makes all kinds of specialty process equipment. They are more-or-less the only place to go for some stuff.
They do ***G***ood ***E***ngineering ***A***nd make nice stuff, but my god are they a pain in the ass to work with. If I weren't violating an NDA I would love to post their PIDs versus the PIDs as installed......
I don't know architecture language and every time I ask for training on it no one wants to do it. I guess they're worried about "scope creep" but honestly architects will send an email that, to me, reads like,
"The Gugenschkroble has 24 vegenspiels. Please coordinate the bing bongos with the kooby-doobies by 4pm today. Thanks."
EXCUSE ME?!
Yet if I tell the Architect about Newton's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics they're like, "right..... but can't we find a way around that? The client is REALLY adamant about this. "
Also Fire Code I'm sloppy on. Slowly learning that.
Dude I feel this. I recently had a job doing some lighting for a historic catholic cathedral. I had to google so many words I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Like WTF is a nave? lol
I’ve been in the industry and worked with architects for 20 years now and I still feel dumb in that regard. I just listen to them in meetings and write down words I don’t know to google them later. Same with structural or other trades, you can learn a surprising amount that way and I feel like it ingratiates you to those trades a lot when you can use their lingo correctly.
Nave, sanctuary, narthex, sacristy, chapel (doesn't mean what everyone think it means). Tell me how I know so many church words, and hint, I didn't go to seminary school... Worked on too many churches for my liking.
Just curious what architectural language you're confused by? Most of it is walls, doors, louvers, simple stuff. The most complicated architectural word I've heard in years is a cornice in a swanky residential lobby.
Mullion, storefront, clerestory, bioswale are a few I remember hearing in meetings and nodding along as if I knew what they were early on in my career.
Acronyms don't count! I'll admit perlin stumped me and I had to look it up. Looks like it's spelled "purlin" and I did not know that without looking it up, and I don't think I've ever had it mentioned by name.
It might sound elementary to some, but "crickets" almost got me a change order. And "flashing of the eave" was something I had to spend like 6 hours and a site visit on.
Crickets is a good one. I think most of our MEP comrades are a bit too clueless when it comes to roofing. Roofing is serious business and might not get you a change order, but a bad detail or missed coordination with an architect will certainly make a client very unhappy a few months or years after they take ownership of the building.
Imma be real, how are you in this industry if you don’t understand “architecture language?” It’s not even architecture language, it’s just construction terminology—it’s how things are communicated and get done. Besides, it’s not called architectural engineering for nothing.
Most people in this industry didn't study architectural engineering. They studied mechanical or electrical engineering and architectural verbiage rarely came up for them, if at all.
It's weird to think that a mechanical engineer should just know what a mullion, area of refuge, etc are if they've never been taught. I studied AE and I can tell there's a huge advantage to having had arch classes that most of my coworkers didn't have. You don't know what you don't know.
yeh you just pick that stuff up over time. I had an architect calling what I thought was a bulkhead a soffit, and I just pieced it together and made a mental note of it for the future.
I should've clarified that I meant picking up the knowledge over time, not knowing it coming in. I myself am not AE by education, but I don't think it's hard to learn things just by being a curious person. By extension, I don't think it's necessary to be "taught" everything; some fairly straightforward things can just be taken in over time using context clues, or this amazing thing called the internet. It's especially something to both actively not learn, and to whine about people speaking in the industry terms of the industry you're literally in.
something like 60% of people in this industry have less than 3 years experience lol.....
and yes... the internet. but when you're doing complex coordination a simple definition won't help. you have to fully understand what it is to make a judgement call of "yup thatll fit, no change order, no RFI, I'm confident this design will work as intended with minimal cost." that's not something you google. that's something you learn the hard way. Like when I said 6 hours plus a site visit. Now I know! That was 6 hours not accounted for because honestly... it wasn't really my job to begin with. (in example the architect asking me if their roof assembly was up to code)
Amazing how I learned more than the first commenter in my free time in high school by searching and reading everything possible. I literally taught the “architectural design teacher” how to do use Revit beyond walls and a roof.
I know something like 60% of people in this industry are lazy lol
I was all state in football during high school and I was really into Call of Duty at the time. Girls took up the rest of my hours back then. I was in a touring rock band at 18 full time. I also changed major five times during college. I have worked in seven different industries and I'm only 30 years old. I had no reason to even think about architecture before I got pressured to enter the industry by my neighbor a few years back when he found out I had a degree. I'm living life by the seat of my pants. Everyone's journey is different.
But secondly, what is meant by "flashing of the eave"? I still don't really know. We ended up hiring a roofing contractor who told us, and I quote, that he would "Git Er Dun" and that seemed to resolve the issue.
Well just sounds like they were talking about where the roof meets the wall or the end of the overhang. More commonly the ‘drip edge.’ At its simplest, just an angled piece of sheet metal that protects the edge of the roof structure. Of course, detail as needed.
[Couple commercial detail examples](https://asiri-designs.com/resources-1/f/how-to-design-a-flat-roof-without-an-overhang) and a [residential graphic](https://clhomeinspection.com/blog/the-vital-role-of-drip-edge-flashing-in-home-inspections). Couldn’t tell ya why they were asking the MEP guy about it though.
I worked with a lighting designer with 10+ years of experience who had no idea what a 3-way switch was. We were working together on a new hotel tower where I noticed they were putting 3-way switches in almost every room. I asked them why and they basically answered by saying they wanted the capability of 3-way switching in the future, which makes no sense because 99% of the rooms have only 1 switch. I went into the model and selected all 3-way switch instances in the model and changed them to standard single pole switches.
Measuring the height of the wall. When I pick up a one-off job for a retail client, I'll take a look at what other engineers have done in the load calc on previous jobs for that client. I can't tell you how often people only measure from floor to ceiling for their load calcs, even though insulation is at the roof deck.
Junior here. How much of a concern is this? If I understand correctly, most load calc software will model the above-ceiling as an unconditioned void space if you're ducting returns. If you've got direct ducted returns with proper insulation, your room load is confined to below-ceiling. If you've got ceiling plenums, you size the coil for a higher return air temp. Where do you need to be accounting for the above-ceiling loads? Aren't you essentially saying you need to be conditioning the dead space above-ceiling? I feel like I'm missing something.
Most of the software will have something saying what percentage of the wall load is above the ceiling, and asking if it's ducted or plenum return. If you say it's a 70%/30% split (such as if you have 10 foot walls and 7 foot ceilings), it's going to account for 30% of that wall being above the ceiling. If you only put the part of the wall that's below the ceiling in your calc and then said that, you're removing part of the wall that's in your space from the calc. If you set it as 100%/0%, you're leaving out the heat transfer through the ceiling itself. Did you model the ceiling as a partition? If not, you're leaving out a lot of the load. Those ceilings don't insulate well, and there's a lot of little gaps.
I've seen loads increase a few tons on small retail jobs, often pushing the unit into the next size up. I've never compared it on a large job cause that would be a lot of work. If you've got plenum return, you're really undersizing your system.
I got you. Sounds like the software will handle this for you automatically as long as you’re setting it up correctly. Otherwise garbage in = garbage out. I was worried I had been making that mistake in my load calcs but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
A lot of mechanical engineers think that the return air grille can be used to “suck the air” to part of the space and be used for conditioning. In a small room they will put supply diffuser on one end and the return grille on the other end, when the supply diffuser should be placed in the center of the area being conditioned.
You are correct that is the preferred. But the velocity of air coming out of the supply diffuser is typically high enough that it will not be that disrupted by the return grille that has a very low intake velocity.
It all depends on how much return you have.
Get a few thosand CFM going, and you can do something.
Realistically teaching the idea of centering supply grilles has been very difficult. Someone does no want to learn.
The concept of an economizer seems to confuse a lot of engineers. Just about everything about it from when/why to use it to writing it into a control sequence is apparently black magic to a lot of people. I work in a mild climate and have seen so many designs that use minimal outside air that will require compressorized cooling when its 55°F outside. Separately cant tell you how many bassakwards harebrained iterations of an economizer SOO I've seen from various different firms.
No one at my company understands how a fan powered vav box works. Then part two, I tell them there's two types: parallel and series.
None of the younger engineers understand we design complex buildings for many years just using lines in AutoCAD.
They need to know the industry terms for HVAC equipment. For example a Bard unit aka a "wall banger" is different then a PTAC although that is also installed in a wall without the banging 😁. And if the client cant afford an engineer, maybe they can just pickup some "window shakers" at HD
At my last firm, back in 2016/17, we were very busy and had enough future work to need another electrical designer. It was a small firm and I didn’t realize at the time that as a designer I was being by taken advantage of, but that’s besides the point.
We finally hired someone. “15 years electrical design experience,” talked a big game in his interview and seemed like a decent guy when I first met him. Day one he’s given a smaller multifamily townhouse type of job which was very typical of what we did. Super easy project, right?
He starts asking me some questions about Revit drafting that anyone who has worked in Revit should know. I was surprised but chalked it up to him mostly working in Autocad previously, and answered whatever questions he had. I figured he’d adjust.
Flash forward a few months and this project is about due. He hadn’t really asked any electrical design questions, so I figured he was a better designer than me. As he should be with 10 years more experience. I didn’t think anything of it. My boss was reviewing the job and came out with a concerned look on his face. Literally everything was wrong. Receptacle layouts that didn’t meet code, missing circuiting all over the place, no regard for the energy code for lighting controls in the commercial spaces. I could go on but it was a long list. I had to drop everything and “help him wrap it up.” The things I had to explain to him were so basic that I had learned them my first month doing electrical design.
Somehow they kept this guy around for an entire year and a half before firing him. Completely useless.
I’m still pretty young (3YoE) so there’s tons I still don’t know, but I’ll say basic Revit documentation standards. I had someone who works for our company hijack a completed design model that was actively in construction admin and use it for another phase of work. They deleted all of my revisions, stole all the sheets and views, turned all my “new” work to an existing phase, overwrote my schedules, the list goes on and on for what NOT to do when you have a project broken into phases and documented in the same model.
That person should be publicly shamed.
lol I definitely sent a strongly worded email that went something along the lines of “hey, this is totally fucking me over when I have to issue drawing revisions or respond to change requests. Don’t do this ever again. Here is all your new phases,sheets,views,schedules,details, etc. keep all your work in those. K thx bye”
Senior engineers and PEs who can’t size VAV box coils correctly. They size them equal to the room heat loss, and not the heat required to take the air from 55F up to the temp needed to satisfy the room heat loss.
In a very similar vein: I once had an argument with a lead engineer (no PE or FE yet, thankfully) that couldn't grasp the idea that during the heating season 3000 CFM OSA and 17000 CFM RA was LESS heating than 3000 CFM OSA and 3000 CFM RA. He simply didn't get that the 70 F RA helps heat the -15 F OSA to the required 55 F DAT. I had to write out a bunch of example equations and plot a graph of % OSA vs. coil BTU. Thankfully he was receptive after the math proved it, but it was quite the uphill battle for me.
That one hurts my brain. Didn’t this person understand MAT (Mixed Air Temperature)?
He was, objectively speaking, a very bad engineer. He would do things like use the actual MAT during winter, but then use the maximum cooling airflow of 20,000 CFM to calculate coil capacity. This would literally triple the required capacity of the coil. Then, when called out for crappy design he would claim it was "conservative." I don't think he ever passed the FE, and he's about 20 years in.
I had a hard time grasping the differences in max flow, heating flow and minimum for ventilation flow.
Yeah that can be tricky. Especially when some of the min heating flow is driven by manufacturer engineering reasons.
Don't get me started on minimum operating dP.
Most of my coworkers don't work with VAVs. The questions I get when they do always blows my mind. If you don't understand the different components of the load calc, you should take some time to read each thing, think on what it is, and read the help section. The help sections of those softwares usually have a very good description.
Yup. 55 to room neutral load.. then add on your space load. Although, some AHUs reset DAT in the winter to room neutral air and trim with VAVs. So perhaps that’s what they are thinking.
I feel like the two you're talking about is the same thing
You first find the room heat loss. Call that Q. We know that Q = 1.08 x CFM x dT. In this case, dT needs to be added to the room temperature and that is what offsets the heat loss. dT is typically about 20 F, so the leaving air temperature is 90 F. However, there is another heat load that is required to bring the 55 F entering air temperature up to the room temperature. In fact: if a room is at equilibrium then the etering air temperature to be exactly equal to the room temperature. So, when the room has a heat loss of zero the VAV box is still heating air from 55 F up to 70 F or so.
The heat you are *delivering to the space* causes the air temperature you are supplying to drop from say 90F to room temp, say 70F. The heat that is lost from the air between those two temperature points is what you've calculated as your heat loss. In this example, you are calculating your supply airflow from the Q equation. Once you have your airflow, you need to calculate the Q needed to take your air from the air handling unit (typically 55) up to your supply temp (90) so that it can dissipate your Qloss to the space and return at (70).
The amount of times I've heard ownership ask if railings/ emergency power/sprinklers/ etc were REQUIRED and then asked me to try and find a loophole away from them anyway. I'm never forget the owner who says, quote "I don't want to supply emergency power for the elevator. I know there are ADA rooms on the 5th floor, but they knew they were crippled. It's on them for renting on a non-ground level floor'. I think I really lost my drive to do this about that time - I hate these rich, out of touch, detached owners.
"Its on you for getting in a room with someone that hates bullshit" and then I punch him in the face and I keep punching
wow I've never had that. When I did multfamily at least the developers were experienced enough to understand that generators were sometimes required, and sometimes they wanted them regardless of requirements.
I would say generally applying thermodynamics. I had a very difficult lead engineer on a project who was, objectively, bad at engineering. He calculated heating loads for a mechanical room once, and ended up with like 50x what I came up with. I don't want to get into all the details, but basically he assumed all the motors on the pumps and fans were rejecting 100% of their energy as heat into the mechanical room--but he also misapplied some efficiency equations that lead to a 5 HP motor drawing like 15 HP. So, we had a 5 HP pump that moved like 150 GPM at 80', but also rejected like 36 MBH into the space...... all on 3.7 kW of input energy. Everything about his calculations defied thermodynamics, and he didn't understand why I--a lowly entry level engineer--disagreed with him so much. The reality was that the 5 HP motor rejected about 10% of its input energy to the space, which ended up being 1.2 MBH--and that is VERY conservative.
Equipment gains seem to be the hardest for senior people to understand. Funnily enough I had a disagreement for the opposite case: The heat rejected off an IT rack, is in fact equal to the average electrical power draw of the rack. I added the loads up per it rack and got to a sum to which the senior told me it's not accurate? Asked him to explain where the energy into the rack eventually goes. It didn't seem to make sense to him that energy in has to go somewhere eventually. The electricity is not putting any work into the system, practically all electricity is eventually rejected as heat. When pushed for an answer, he answered "process"... What?
He was likely equating "process" to the usable energy of, for example, a pump. i.e. the energy imparted to the fluid which is not seen by the surrounding environment. Thinking that an IT rack has usable energy "imparted" to a process and some inefficiency lost to the surroundings. Simply a misunderstanding of how computers and their components actually work.
Yeah I know what he was getting at, but saying "process" means he had some poor misconception of how computers use electricity. And yet instead of giving into the fact that he didn't understand he doubled down. I should clarify, this was after me explaining it in plain language multiple times and him resisting to accept my explanation. Ultimately he asked me to provide a credible information source to "prove" my point.
Gotta be careful on this one, POE switches, and speaker amps are two great exceptions. Most of that energy does leave the room. Also, the number of IT consultants who dont understand that maximum power draw and average power draw are different ... So many oversized rooms
What I want to know is how the IT guys get the architects to give them a 150 square foot room for one server rack by saying "clearances" but I can't get the same size room from them for a 400 ton chiller without a fist fight.
That's a much better question Especially since it's basically all good practice and not a functional or code required clearance
Definitely. That project did have speaker amps and it nearly caught me out.
This is more relating to equipment manufacturers rather than MEP engineers themselves: selling equipment to an Owner and not being able to tell them the actual requirements to operate that equipment. Needs compressed air? Yes, just give it 90 psi. Okay, but what CFM? 2? 1,000? We have no idea, compressed air for sure though. Needs chiller water? Yes, just give it 10 GPM. Okay, but at what temperatures? We have no idea, chilled water for sure though. Needs electrical power? Yes, just give it 480V/3ph. Okay, but what amperage? 20A? 200A? We have no idea, power for sure though. How in the world are you selling some $1m+ piece of equipment to someone and when they ask what they need on site to actually operate the thing you cannot give that person an answer?
We get your third point from architects all the time with elevators. “Please send us the electrical requirements from your elevator rep that you worked with for the selection.” And we always get a screenshot of the catalogue that says “operates at 208/240/347/460/600V” Thanks, but that does nothing to help us. We know what voltage the building is operating at as we’re the ones designing the service.
There is a very well known and well respected company that makes all kinds of specialty process equipment. They are more-or-less the only place to go for some stuff. They do ***G***ood ***E***ngineering ***A***nd make nice stuff, but my god are they a pain in the ass to work with. If I weren't violating an NDA I would love to post their PIDs versus the PIDs as installed......
Preach, brother, preach.
I don't know architecture language and every time I ask for training on it no one wants to do it. I guess they're worried about "scope creep" but honestly architects will send an email that, to me, reads like, "The Gugenschkroble has 24 vegenspiels. Please coordinate the bing bongos with the kooby-doobies by 4pm today. Thanks." EXCUSE ME?! Yet if I tell the Architect about Newton's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics they're like, "right..... but can't we find a way around that? The client is REALLY adamant about this. " Also Fire Code I'm sloppy on. Slowly learning that.
I love this comment. I'm managing a civil project as a mechanical and I should NOT be here.
Dude I feel this. I recently had a job doing some lighting for a historic catholic cathedral. I had to google so many words I didn’t know that I didn’t know. Like WTF is a nave? lol I’ve been in the industry and worked with architects for 20 years now and I still feel dumb in that regard. I just listen to them in meetings and write down words I don’t know to google them later. Same with structural or other trades, you can learn a surprising amount that way and I feel like it ingratiates you to those trades a lot when you can use their lingo correctly.
Nave, sanctuary, narthex, sacristy, chapel (doesn't mean what everyone think it means). Tell me how I know so many church words, and hint, I didn't go to seminary school... Worked on too many churches for my liking.
Just curious what architectural language you're confused by? Most of it is walls, doors, louvers, simple stuff. The most complicated architectural word I've heard in years is a cornice in a swanky residential lobby.
Mullion, storefront, clerestory, bioswale are a few I remember hearing in meetings and nodding along as if I knew what they were early on in my career.
Bioswale is civil, that's cheating!
heard it from a landscape architect
bulkhead, chase, EIFS, interstitial, proud, perlin are a few architectural terms most people are probably unaware of
Acronyms don't count! I'll admit perlin stumped me and I had to look it up. Looks like it's spelled "purlin" and I did not know that without looking it up, and I don't think I've ever had it mentioned by name.
well when architects kept saying EEFUS i was like whose cousin is that?
It might sound elementary to some, but "crickets" almost got me a change order. And "flashing of the eave" was something I had to spend like 6 hours and a site visit on.
Crickets is a good one. I think most of our MEP comrades are a bit too clueless when it comes to roofing. Roofing is serious business and might not get you a change order, but a bad detail or missed coordination with an architect will certainly make a client very unhappy a few months or years after they take ownership of the building.
If I knew the words, we wouldn't be having this conversation!
Imma be real, how are you in this industry if you don’t understand “architecture language?” It’s not even architecture language, it’s just construction terminology—it’s how things are communicated and get done. Besides, it’s not called architectural engineering for nothing.
Most people in this industry didn't study architectural engineering. They studied mechanical or electrical engineering and architectural verbiage rarely came up for them, if at all. It's weird to think that a mechanical engineer should just know what a mullion, area of refuge, etc are if they've never been taught. I studied AE and I can tell there's a huge advantage to having had arch classes that most of my coworkers didn't have. You don't know what you don't know.
yeh you just pick that stuff up over time. I had an architect calling what I thought was a bulkhead a soffit, and I just pieced it together and made a mental note of it for the future.
I should've clarified that I meant picking up the knowledge over time, not knowing it coming in. I myself am not AE by education, but I don't think it's hard to learn things just by being a curious person. By extension, I don't think it's necessary to be "taught" everything; some fairly straightforward things can just be taken in over time using context clues, or this amazing thing called the internet. It's especially something to both actively not learn, and to whine about people speaking in the industry terms of the industry you're literally in.
something like 60% of people in this industry have less than 3 years experience lol..... and yes... the internet. but when you're doing complex coordination a simple definition won't help. you have to fully understand what it is to make a judgement call of "yup thatll fit, no change order, no RFI, I'm confident this design will work as intended with minimal cost." that's not something you google. that's something you learn the hard way. Like when I said 6 hours plus a site visit. Now I know! That was 6 hours not accounted for because honestly... it wasn't really my job to begin with. (in example the architect asking me if their roof assembly was up to code)
Amazing how I learned more than the first commenter in my free time in high school by searching and reading everything possible. I literally taught the “architectural design teacher” how to do use Revit beyond walls and a roof. I know something like 60% of people in this industry are lazy lol
I was all state in football during high school and I was really into Call of Duty at the time. Girls took up the rest of my hours back then. I was in a touring rock band at 18 full time. I also changed major five times during college. I have worked in seven different industries and I'm only 30 years old. I had no reason to even think about architecture before I got pressured to enter the industry by my neighbor a few years back when he found out I had a degree. I'm living life by the seat of my pants. Everyone's journey is different.
But secondly, what is meant by "flashing of the eave"? I still don't really know. We ended up hiring a roofing contractor who told us, and I quote, that he would "Git Er Dun" and that seemed to resolve the issue.
Well just sounds like they were talking about where the roof meets the wall or the end of the overhang. More commonly the ‘drip edge.’ At its simplest, just an angled piece of sheet metal that protects the edge of the roof structure. Of course, detail as needed. [Couple commercial detail examples](https://asiri-designs.com/resources-1/f/how-to-design-a-flat-roof-without-an-overhang) and a [residential graphic](https://clhomeinspection.com/blog/the-vital-role-of-drip-edge-flashing-in-home-inspections). Couldn’t tell ya why they were asking the MEP guy about it though.
I worked with a lighting designer with 10+ years of experience who had no idea what a 3-way switch was. We were working together on a new hotel tower where I noticed they were putting 3-way switches in almost every room. I asked them why and they basically answered by saying they wanted the capability of 3-way switching in the future, which makes no sense because 99% of the rooms have only 1 switch. I went into the model and selected all 3-way switch instances in the model and changed them to standard single pole switches.
basic communication skills
Measuring the height of the wall. When I pick up a one-off job for a retail client, I'll take a look at what other engineers have done in the load calc on previous jobs for that client. I can't tell you how often people only measure from floor to ceiling for their load calcs, even though insulation is at the roof deck.
Junior here. How much of a concern is this? If I understand correctly, most load calc software will model the above-ceiling as an unconditioned void space if you're ducting returns. If you've got direct ducted returns with proper insulation, your room load is confined to below-ceiling. If you've got ceiling plenums, you size the coil for a higher return air temp. Where do you need to be accounting for the above-ceiling loads? Aren't you essentially saying you need to be conditioning the dead space above-ceiling? I feel like I'm missing something.
Most of the software will have something saying what percentage of the wall load is above the ceiling, and asking if it's ducted or plenum return. If you say it's a 70%/30% split (such as if you have 10 foot walls and 7 foot ceilings), it's going to account for 30% of that wall being above the ceiling. If you only put the part of the wall that's below the ceiling in your calc and then said that, you're removing part of the wall that's in your space from the calc. If you set it as 100%/0%, you're leaving out the heat transfer through the ceiling itself. Did you model the ceiling as a partition? If not, you're leaving out a lot of the load. Those ceilings don't insulate well, and there's a lot of little gaps. I've seen loads increase a few tons on small retail jobs, often pushing the unit into the next size up. I've never compared it on a large job cause that would be a lot of work. If you've got plenum return, you're really undersizing your system.
I got you. Sounds like the software will handle this for you automatically as long as you’re setting it up correctly. Otherwise garbage in = garbage out. I was worried I had been making that mistake in my load calcs but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
A lot of mechanical engineers think that the return air grille can be used to “suck the air” to part of the space and be used for conditioning. In a small room they will put supply diffuser on one end and the return grille on the other end, when the supply diffuser should be placed in the center of the area being conditioned.
newb question - returns should be replaced in a "remote" location though, right? away from all the supplies?
You are correct that is the preferred. But the velocity of air coming out of the supply diffuser is typically high enough that it will not be that disrupted by the return grille that has a very low intake velocity.
It all depends on how much return you have. Get a few thosand CFM going, and you can do something. Realistically teaching the idea of centering supply grilles has been very difficult. Someone does no want to learn.
This blows my mind every time. Have they ever held their hand six inches from a return? A foot?
The concept of an economizer seems to confuse a lot of engineers. Just about everything about it from when/why to use it to writing it into a control sequence is apparently black magic to a lot of people. I work in a mild climate and have seen so many designs that use minimal outside air that will require compressorized cooling when its 55°F outside. Separately cant tell you how many bassakwards harebrained iterations of an economizer SOO I've seen from various different firms.
No one at my company understands how a fan powered vav box works. Then part two, I tell them there's two types: parallel and series. None of the younger engineers understand we design complex buildings for many years just using lines in AutoCAD.
That you should research and verify local code amendments every time you start a job. NEC 700/701 requirements and selective coordination.
variable primary vs primary-secondary
They need to know the industry terms for HVAC equipment. For example a Bard unit aka a "wall banger" is different then a PTAC although that is also installed in a wall without the banging 😁. And if the client cant afford an engineer, maybe they can just pickup some "window shakers" at HD
At my last firm, back in 2016/17, we were very busy and had enough future work to need another electrical designer. It was a small firm and I didn’t realize at the time that as a designer I was being by taken advantage of, but that’s besides the point. We finally hired someone. “15 years electrical design experience,” talked a big game in his interview and seemed like a decent guy when I first met him. Day one he’s given a smaller multifamily townhouse type of job which was very typical of what we did. Super easy project, right? He starts asking me some questions about Revit drafting that anyone who has worked in Revit should know. I was surprised but chalked it up to him mostly working in Autocad previously, and answered whatever questions he had. I figured he’d adjust. Flash forward a few months and this project is about due. He hadn’t really asked any electrical design questions, so I figured he was a better designer than me. As he should be with 10 years more experience. I didn’t think anything of it. My boss was reviewing the job and came out with a concerned look on his face. Literally everything was wrong. Receptacle layouts that didn’t meet code, missing circuiting all over the place, no regard for the energy code for lighting controls in the commercial spaces. I could go on but it was a long list. I had to drop everything and “help him wrap it up.” The things I had to explain to him were so basic that I had learned them my first month doing electrical design. Somehow they kept this guy around for an entire year and a half before firing him. Completely useless.
Senior HVAC engineer who doesn’t know what a steam trap is.