HVAC

My folks will be spending $2500 this weekend on a new furnace. The high energy prices finally has them facing up to the fact that the expensive new furnace they bought a few years back was incompetently installed. It was sad. The last furnace was a top of the line energy efficient furnace as well. We knew something had to be wrong because the expensive new energy efficient furnace was less efficient than the old paleolithic furnace it replaced.

One of the most difficult aspects of living in Utah is the incompetent work force. Utahns tend to be so wrapped up in ward politics that they lapse on the things that they do for a living.

Anyway, I've been having flashbacks to the vast amount of potential I've seen wasted by shoddy Utah workmanship. Turns out that my car I owned had been in a major accident and has problems...lying to a gentile about such things is just fine. I worked for an aerospace firm that was able to trace planes falling out of the sky to records falsified by a local bishop in charge of quality control. I have a tooth that snapped in two recently from the incompetent work of a Utah Dentist.

In Way to Be Gordon B. Hinkley tells the world that the way you appear is far more important than the substance of what you do. Your first step in life is simply to appear righteous. Once you appear righteous, then the world is at your finger tips. Unfortunately, the counter culture plays much the same game ... the dominant theme being one's appearance over one's substance.

I am a substance type of guy myself. It seems to me that what you do is more important than simply the way you appear.

Getting quotes for yet another expensive new furnace, we find ourselves wondering how to separate appearance from substance. Unfortunately, when you get down to the brass tacks, the only way to deal with a low quality work force is to buy the top of the line material and hope the installer isn't pulling any typical Utah tricks like selling a refurbished model as new or doesn't break the thing during the installation process.

I worked with HVAC crew at the University of Santa Clara for several years. It was a scrubby crew that took great pride in their work. The things they did generally worked. They had tough questions like designing buildings so that you could cost effectively regulate the temperature of a tiny office next to a big classroom. And how to deal with the intense body heat of throngs of hormone laden students moving from classroom to classroom.

I know for a fact that there are substantive people in this world who very seriously study thermodynamics, air flow, material science and what not specifically to answer the question of how one can regulate the climate of human dwellings. Unfortunately, this community where I live seems to be dominated by those who focus on politics and appearance.