Certificate in Heat, Ventilation and Air Conditioning System

Calculate cooling loads, select a techno-economic system, and design air and water distribution, considering space, ambient conditions, occupancy, lighting, sun exposure, and utility availability.

Explore common hvac equipment including cooling towers, dehumidifiers, centrifugal fans, and hepa filters; compare horizontal floor-mounted, vertical, and ceiling-suspended units; learn about insulation materials and humidifier basics.

Explore the basic components of air conditioning, focusing on throttling devices and their operation within the simple system, and discuss the overall expense involved.

Explore the diverse air conditioning systems available, including window, split, and central plant setups. Understand mounting options—floor, wall, ceiling—and observe airflow patterns and system types.

Explore the three categories of mechanical ventilation systems—mechanical expected energy supply, mechanical supply or natural supply, and combined—focusing on design for commercial kitchens and acoustic ventilation.

Explore ductwork and fan design methods—equal velocity, velocity index, and equal friction—using ventilation design calculus and a design chart to compute flow rate from room volume and change per hour.

Apply the equal velocity method to HVAC system design, determine grid velocity and duct diameter, and perform pressure calculations using Pascal-based totals for design accuracy.

Apply the velocity reduction method by selecting air velocities of six and three meters per second, and compute the resulting flow and pressure values for a 420 mm diameter setup.

Apply the equal friction method to determine air flow, velocity, and diameter from frictional data and table values, and compute losses and hourly changes in volume flow.

Explore duct and accessories fabrication, including rectangular, round, and linear diffusers, bypass chambers, and compare axial and duplex flow types for kitchen, toilets, basement, chemical industry, and farm.

Learn load estimation basics for hvac systems, covering heat transfer concepts like convection and sensible heat, factors affecting thermal comfort (temperature, humidity, movement), and cooling components with equipment integration.

Identify how cooling load represents the rate of removing thermal energy to maintain design conditions, and examine load estimation, peak load, and heat gains.

Analyze the cooling load arising from sensible and latent heat gains, including external and internal sources, and methods to size cooling coils and refrigeration systems.

Master the psychrometric chart and its parameters—temperature, humidity, saturation temperature, enthalpy per pound of dry air, wet-bulb temperature, and specific volume—to determine properties from temperature and relative humidity.

Apply energy balance to compute cooling load from external and internal sensible gains and solar gains, using u-value and window area to determine required cooling capacity.

Case one shows a design mistake: maximum and minimum CFM values for each Vav terminal unit were not listed on drawings, causing incorrect minimums and comfort and humidity problems.

Linear diffusers in a wave system cause comfort problems; use deflection plates and adjust blades during balancing, and require multiple duct connections for four-foot sections to ensure even air distribution.

Design duct layouts to avoid large pressure differentials between branches, creating near-symmetrical branches with equal pressure drops for easy balancing of loads, airflows, and valve systems under partial load.

Interconnecting duct branches in case five reduces large pressure differences by equalizing pressure drops; ends are looped to balance differentials, avoiding case four.

Case five analyzes a ceiling return plenum system, showing evenly distributed return inlets above ceilings and limiting to 4000 cfm per location to prevent air quality and comfort issues.

Examine how diffusers perform poorly at low airflow, causing dumping and comfort problems as discharge velocity and capacity fall; perforated diffusers differ from others, affecting terminal velocity around 50 fpm.

Understand the meaning of hvac as heating, ventilation and air conditioning, and learn the basic elements of hvac, mep, and plumbing systems while introducing quantity takeoff.

Explore types of hvac systems, including window and split air conditioning, plus centralized and district cooling concepts, and configurations like single room, wall or floor mounted, cassette, and multi-head setups.

Explore centralized air conditioning systems, including duct take-offs and return ducts, fresh air handling units, and district cooling concepts, with emphasis on central chiller plants, distribution networks, and water treatment.

Identify the duct types—rectangular, circular, and oval—and how curved and flexible ducts, liners, insulation, and vapor barriers affect performance, including supply, return, exhaust, and makeup air functions.

Examine duct fittings, including flanges, bends (45 and 90 degrees), reducing bends, tees, and branch junctions, plus reducers and test holes, with ancillaries like end caps and takeoffs.

Explore duct ancillaries including volume control dampers for varying air volume, backdraft dampers for one-way airflow, fire dampers for fire separation, and flexible connectors to reduce vibration and noise.

Identify common ductwork ancillaries such as supply and return diffusers, access panels, volume control dampers, and motorized smoke dampers, and understand their roles in air distribution and safety.

Explore hvac ducting materials, rigid and flexible ducts in galvanised steel or aluminium, and insulation methods like duct wrap, liner, board, and blanket insulation to reduce heat loss and noise.

Discover ancillaries for hvac systems, from flexible connectors and sound attenuators to sand traps, intakes, dampers, diffusers, grills, bellmouths, and exhaust and toilet extractors, plus fan coil and split systems.

Learn how motorized valves control water flow in central heating. Explore strainers, isolation walls, double regulating valves, self actuated valves, temperature gauges, condensate drains, thermostats, and support hangers.

Explore the POMI standard method of measurement for ductwork, including rectangular ductwork measured by weight from length along the centerline and fittings, with no deductions for intersections or openings.

Master quantity take-off using plan shift with manual scaling, reading legends, and measuring duct cross-sections, areas, lengths, and counts for hvac installations.

Calculate the weight of rectangular ductwork and prepare a BOQ (bill of quantities) by deriving cross-sectional area and perimeter, using Smacna gauge data and insulation area.

Explore the chilled water supply and return elements, including chillers, pumps, air handling units, cooling towers, dampers, filters, coils, FCUs, and related valves.

Learn to perform chilled water system quantity take-off by reading drawings, identifying legends and schedules, and measuring pipe diameters, lengths, wall packages, and isolation walls.

Prepare a BOQ for a chilled water system by calculating pipe lengths, applying 18% allowances, selecting polyurethane insulation, and listing valves, meters, and strainers, with emphasis on duct work.