Customer Reviews

Audel HVAC Fundamentals, Heating System Components, Gas and Oil Burners and Automatic Controls

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I am a journeyman plumber. I'm 24 years old and have not read the entire book yet. I probably haven't even read half of it. But I love this book! I probably would have paid a hundred dollars for it.It's not a book for the home owner to reference to without any knowledge of what he is doing! If your a homeowner and don't mind getting your hands dirty and will read the book, you will probably know more than the service man if you would have called one.It's very detailed and covers a range of things and makes and models. So it's very hard to just open the book and learn just about your own model. You have to learn them all and the principles of it all. Which makes it great for someone in the field of repair/service.

The main reason I got this book was to help me size a furnace for the house and calculate the size of the duct system. I only partially got what I needed. The examples for duct sizing started well, but fizzled out as it did not show how to include the effects elbows and other attachments in the calculation and is also missing other pertinent information. Interestingly enough, the discussion of Duct Sizing started in Volume 1 which I got from the library, but the juicy stuff was postponed to Volume 2 which I purchased, and perhaps the end of that discussion appears in Volume 3, which I am not going to purchase. This seems to be a business driven decision which I found quite distasteful. A well written book should self containing as much as it can be helped. Also lacking is a good discussion on more modern two stage furnaces and thermostats. Pages dedicated to Mercury thermostats are a bit outdated, maybe by 50 years. For a free duct calculation site try: [...]

If like me you're a homeowner looking for advice how to tune up your oil burner, don't waste your time with this book. It's some sort of study guide for tradesmen and did not answer my questions.

Book covers much more than I anticipated. Should answer all questions a do it yourselfer might have to work on various HVAC systems and workings. Worth the money for sure!