Flair 2018 Newsletter


It's hard to believe that Flair will be starting their 51st year in business in 2018. During the past 50 years we have seen great changes in our industry including DOE minimum efficiency standards that keep increasing, new code developments and regulations, EPA required phase out of certain refrigerants, development of new refrigerants, and development of new more efficient cooling technology from the manufactures. We have been able to remain in business because of our customers, who have given us the opportunity to service their air conditioning, heating, and commercial refrigeration and ventilation needs, and we are very grateful to them. We sincerely thank you.

Mobile Dispatching

This past year Flair activated a mobile dispatching system that allows are technicians the ability to view customer information on their I-pads that is on our main computers.

They are able to determine if a customer has a maintenance agreement, the date of any new equipment installation, and see past service history. This enables them to verify status quicker and review what service calls have been done in the past. This tool enables them to perform their work more efficiently, and expeditiously. It also allows our dispatcher to see the status of a service call from arrival, completion of a call, and whether a part is needed. This coupled with our GPS are tools to make us more efficient.

As technology changes we have to adapt to keep up with our industry. Manufactures apps and web sites enable our technicians to perform their work quicker and more accurately. Staying abreast of changing technology is a never ending task, but as things evolve so will our methods.

2016 warmest year on record

2016 was rated by experts as the warmest year worldwide since modern record keeping began. NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration said that global land and sea surfaces were boosted by a powerful El Nino current in the Pacific and rising concentrations of heat trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The University of Alabama (who uses satellite data), and the UK's Met Office Hadley Centre Research Center reported 2016 was fractionally warmer than any other year. Records have been kept for over 137 years. , trustworthy, and reliable are what you are assured of when you contact us for a cooling or heating problem for your home of business.

Cooling by beaming heat into space

Physicists at Stanford University have achieved record levels of temperature reduction using the process of radiative cooling, by which heat is beamed from our earth surface into outer space.

Zen Chen and his colleagues lowered the temperature of a thermal emitter by 42.2 degrees C or 107.46 degrees F. A thermal emitter is a device designed to give out more heat than it takes in. Their special thermal emitter was designed to achieve thermal radiation wave lengths between 8 and 13 micrometers that are able to pass through our atmosphere directly into outer space. They used a vacuum chamber isolating it from the atmosphere and a special zinc selenide window which is a very transparent material.

This technology could possibly be used someday to refrigerate food and medicines in areas where ambient temperatures are high or in air conditioning units on top of roofs. To become cost efficient, they would need to find a less expensive material for transferring the heat verses zinc selenide.

Drinking water pulled out of the air

An Israeli company called Water-Geo has built a machine specifically designed to create and harvest as much condensation as possible. They use a set of plastic leaves to funnel air in various directions, extracting moisture from the air with minimum energy creating pure drinking water.

They have currently manufactured 3 different sizes. At 80 degrees F and 60 percent humidity the largest unit can produce 825 gallons a day and the smallest for home or office use produces almost 4 gallons a day.

Water-Geo estimates at current energy prices that water generated will cost less than 10 cents a gallon. Their products are designed for areas that don't have drinkable tap water, and where it is hot and humid. The company anticipates their products to be commercially available by the end of next year.

Air Conditioning the arctic

A research article published by the American Geophysical Union explored the possibility of increasing the thickness of ice in Arctic waters in an attempt to slow global warming.

The article suggests that a fleet of wind-powered pumps mounted on bouys deployed in the Arctic could pump water from beneath the ice, then spray it on the surface where it would quickly freeze. The article implies it could be possible to increase the Arctic ice by about a meter, more than enough to reverse the decline. It would be like building the world's largest air conditioner and using it to refreeze the Arctic.

Estimated cost of the project would be 500 billion, and would need to be implemented by multiple governments from around the world. This idea may seem extreme, but it could actually work to reduce the sea ice from disappearing. Wishing you a healthy and safe New Year. We sincerely appreciate your business.

Thomas P. McGuire, President