It’s never a good time to go to training. Those lost billable hours make it difficult to justify losing out on the potential work. And then, to make matters worse, when someone thinks they are participating in some type of technical training, it turns out to be a glorified sales pitch.
The training sessions held at Taco Comfort Solutions’ headquarters in Cranston, Rhode Island, from Oct. 17-18, contained information that is applicable to most products in the market rather than simply proprietary.
Every chair in the training room was full, with most hailing from Canada. A smaller delegation of contractors and wholesalers were from the U.S. John Barba, director of training at Taco, made the joke that, “If a fight breaks out, I am Canadian.”
The training class was led by Taco’s trio of technical training legends: Dave Holdorf, residential trainer for the Eastern region, Barba, and Rick Mayo, Western product and application instructor; each with their own style of leading technical training sessions. The one element that linked each trainer together was their ability to take a topic that wasn’t the most “thrilling” in nature and make it engaging and fun. To encourage participation, attendees were given Taco bucks for asking questions or making comments. At the end of the two days, a prize was given to one lucky attendee.
When the group was going through a lull in their attention span, Barba came up with a fun little chant to get the group’s attention back and energy levels up. The little game started with an “ooh” and “ahh” followed by an “eh” to appease the Canadians in the room. Once everyone chanted along together, it finished off with an aggressive “hoi” that felt like the room was accepting the teachings from some type of sensei, which I guess isn’t too far off what was going on in that training room.
Do the freaking math!
To kick off the technical training, the sessions started by looking at heat loss calculations, proper pipe sizing, and proper circulator selection. “Hydronics is a science, and science is based on math.”
The group took a step-by-step approach with the calculations to showcase exactly how each figure was reached based on infiltrations, windows/doors, ceilings/floors, and walls. After the heat loss was determined for the mock house, the group calculated the heat gain.
A good portion of the afternoon of the first day focused on the calculations important for reading pump/circulator curves and determining the correct size for a pump/circulator. We learned that the two elements of the relationship that are key to determining are the flow rate (GPM) and length of the head. Once both have been determined, the Y (header) and X (flow) axis meets at a single point that will help figure out which pump is best for that specific application based on the pump’s curve.
One of the attendees mentioned that based on what was learned during the training, they had previously always been oversizing their pumps.
We learned that it is immensely important to make sure that the pumps are sized correctly. “Now that you know, you can’t not know. You can not care, but you can never now know again.” This knowledge will help anyone in the industry, it is vital to be able to simply and eloquently talk to your customers about the best way to approach the task and help them understand what they need to know. “A pump has a pretty simple function, but you have to size it correctly.”
Pump modes
One of the areas of pump knowledge that has always been a bit elusive is determining the proper mode — constant pressure vs. proportional pressure vs. fixed speed. “Just getting the mode right is important,” shares Mayo. Constant pressure is ideal when the pressure doesn’t change; proportional pressure is great when the valves or pumps are out somewhere in the building.
I have only touched briefly on everything that was taught over the two days of lessons. Training sessions lasted 8 hours each day and went into depth on many important calculations.
To get the group moving around, everyone was split into groups where we were able to walk the manufacturing floor. We got to see the manufacturing process of even the smallest of components that make up a Taco product.
Wrapping up the two-day event, the entire group of Canadians made its way to a local go-karting course, where the group competed for bragging rights. Things got a little competitive and there was plenty of smack talk before the gas was even on the floor, much of which might have come directly from the editor writing this article.
Following the race, people gathered in a party room where they enjoyed food and beverages. To end the festivities, an axe throwing competition was held, where again there was plenty of fun competition.
I was invited to exclusively visit Taco’s Fall River, Massachusetts, a newly expanded plant. The project will allow the manufacturer to build larger buffer tanks, heat exchangers, and other products. Groundbreaking began in early September 2023 and the project is expected to complete around March 2025.
The previous footprint was 60,000 sq. ft., and with the expansion, Taco will be adding 52,000 sq. ft.