Art: I work for the International Olympic Committee and the last Olympics in China. We were not allowed to use ammonia at all, but luckily we got CO2 and half the venues in 449 in the other half of the venues. So knowing the regulations is very, very important because they change depending on where you are working at
Trevor: So excited that you're here again. Really appreciate you taking the time to listen. As always, we're always trying to uplift the industry, have guests here who has been there, done that, what we do day in, day out.
In the field for many, many years as technicians, business owners, designers, manufacturers, and today I have art Sutherland art I've really learned about you years ago. I've heard your name. Cause I work with lots of people in Western Canada. And then you're, you've been like a pioneer in the ice rink.
Industry for a long time, because I think that's your bread and butter and the industrial side. And we'll get into your history. Cause I want to learn more. But I know when I was looking up your profile, you started in the mid seventies and and then you start your own business and I think around 1990, my first question is going to be is like, what what made you decide to go from a technician?
Cause you were in there working in the field, doing the stuff, install service and maintenance. What made you decide to start your own business?
Art: Well, I think from very early on, I was quite entrepreneurial even when I was in trade school in the 70s, I was able to go get work on the side and kind of learned on the way but why I really wanted to open my own business is I love to travel and I didn't want to have any company.
Restrictions upon me and where I got work and I just kind of brute force and ignorance just stumbled along and picked up one job after the other that our location is southern Vancouver Island actually where we are south of the America U. S. border or the Canadian U. S. border, so very close to the U. S.,
and a couple of our first jobs were just south of the border into Washington state, and they kind of went well, and Oregon wasn't far away, and then California was below that, and one thing kind of led to another, and we started doing. Probably 60 percent of our work in the U S traveling all around.
And as I mentioned, I love travel. I have four daughters at home and I didn't want to abandon my daughters. So one at a time, I would take them out of school and they would come traveling with me while we were doing work as well. And I've had my four daughters and my wife on every continent working with me and even helping with installs Kind of a really cool story, years ago in 2005 we got a job through the Canadian Embassy to refrigerate a castle in, in Italy.
And it was going to be used as a palette for a art exhibition in ice, where they were doing abstract artwork in ice. And for my kids, it was like being on a Harry Potter movie set where we walk across a drawbridge and open a castle door and we refrigerated this monastery in this castle. And it was just so much fun for them.
And they said, can you take us to more jobs? So we basically, by the end of it ended up working on every continent doing lots and lots of projects. So the love of travel is why I opened my own business. As far as good planning, getting into refrigeration, it wasn't a well thought out plan. It's just, I had a friend of mine who said he thought this really cool course he was going to, I might like.
And through school I existed through high school, but it wasn't a passion, anything that was happening there. But when I got into technical school I think having great teachers just makes a huge difference in people's lives. And this guy just inspired me, Kenny Leadham, and, and had so many great stories of the places he's worked and stuff like that.
And I thought, gosh, this is perfect for what I do. So I fell in love with the course and put everything into it, more into it than I ever did through my school years and did quite well in it and ended up getting hired right out of trade schools. That was 45 years ago.
Trevor: No, I love that. And, and what's cool about it too, is like your first gen, it sounds like, you know what I mean?
Nobody, nobody knew, nobody talked about refrigeration around you, except this one person that introduced you to refrigeration, same as me. The, the cool thing is, is that I, it sounds like it continued to grow on you. And then. As you developed and you, you got more knowledge and then you start your own business and you include your family and you traveled around refrigeration really took care of you.
And this is what I talked about with technicians that are coming up. That's one of the reasons why I got into two things is that I can make good money. I had somebody told me, cause I had no clue about refrigeration. And the second thing that. I learned I could travel the world because I wanted to go and live in Australia and because of refrigeration, I went and lived and worked in Australia because of refrigeration.
So, you know what, and this is what I keep telling, whatever you want to do, if you get into a refrigeration, you can do it, it will help guide you. I do have a couple of questions cause I have a lot of Technicians who reach out to me from around the world. And they ask questions like, I want to work in another place.
So maybe it's them as a technician, it could be as a business owner. Do you have any advice for technicians? Just say if they're. In Australia, I want to come to Canada or near in UK. They want to go to South Africa, wherever it is. You know what I mean? Do you have any advice? Because you worked in all these continents, you worked in Asia, you worked in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, all of them, right?
What are some advice you could give them to, to try to make that move?
Art: The safest method, especially contracting, is to find a good local contractor and partner with them. This from the business perspective. Yep. That they already have the licensing. They have the certification in that country.
And very often in a lot of these places like Saudi Arabia, there's not many ice rink mechanics over there in Saudi Arabia. So you're bringing them an opportunity and you can teach them when you get in there. So for them, it's a win. They're learning from you a whole new sector of the business. They might not have been exposed to.
So just as you're doing with the education, if you can bring education to people they love it. It just makes them a better company. So we never want to try to eat out of another. person's rice bowl, like take work from people that they could have had themselves, but if you can bring the opportunity to them and show them how you can make their project better by partnering with you, that works really, really good.
Trevor: I love that. And I think that, thank you for sharing that because that is so, so important. You want to build good relationships. You want to build good partnerships and it's really. Bringing that expertise and that knowledge to other places that don't really have it. Cause I've had a lot of people right now, a lot of people in the Philippines taking my courses because there's a lot of big changes happening around the world.
They're coming in, taking the courses because they see natural refrigerants moving in there. And then this has happened in other countries as well. Right now, we know the U S really moved with the aims act just started back in January 1st. Right? So these are new regulations where. Manufacturers are you know, on that curve or they're understanding them, but a lot of the contractors, some of them, a lot of them ready or don't know about it where you have to be invested.
So different countries around different worlds, like say in Asia or in Africa, different places where we can, or you can take that expertise there. I love
Art: that. Yeah, that's a good thing.
Trevor: Some of the things that so that's for on the business aspect as a contractor. Any thoughts on, as a technician some of the things that they could do, because I'm sure you've, you've hired people, you you got a team, you know, you got, you work with you got technicians on your team and stuff.
Any tips that you would know or that you could share for a technician's point of view or would you know?
Art: Yes. I think they can help themself get work a lot easier if they've got really good. Handcraft trade skills, and there's a lot of courses available today that are entry level courses where they learn to use all the power tools.
They learn how to braze copper here in parts of Canada. Now you actually have to have a ticket for brazing copper. So getting a ticket for brazing copper being able to put pipe in place and have it look really neat, having all those trade skills. So when they get into a van, They're actually helping the journeyman right from the get go.
That is really, really important. But being enthusiastic showing up in the morning not standing still when there's nothing to do, grab a broom and clean up just do anything you can to make the job easier for the people who are around you. Being organized setting out all the materials, by sizes. So when the journeyman is asking for a park, he can go find it right away. Just simple things like that really make a person marketable.
Trevor: Yeah, no, I agree with you for sure on that. And we could dive into that a little bit more, but one of the things is let's dive into a bit about how your organization evolved.
Because once again, you were a technician in the field for over 20 years and then you started your business. So let's talk about that because you made that transition. You want to travel the world. So congratulations on that. But I know for sure over the 35 years you've been in business, you evolved because that's why you're still in business, you continue to change and evolve because back in 1990 refrigeration, you know, the fundamentals is the same rules, regulations, laws, things have changed 35 years.
What are some of the things that you've seen since you, either been in the industry or since you started your business evolve and what are you looking forward to in the next coming years?
Art: I think some of the biggest drivers that we've had in our industry are the climate. That's a really big one that we didn't know what the ozone layer was back in the seventies.
Had no idea of the problem. So the ozone layer and then global warming was the next one. Now we're hearing T F A s being a problem. So being aware of what refrigerants are going to be around in the future is really important. Energy costs is another one. That has a really big impact on the industry, especially in the ice rink industry.
They're not a high profit venue. So trying to keep the energy costs down and have using your any you. Very efficient refrigerant and that's only half the equation. The second half in in venues is heating them using heat for demodification, using heat for snow melt pits, using heat for underfloor comfort heating.
And there's no more efficient method of heat than using a heat pump and your refrigeration system, no matter what the size is a heat pump. So that gives you a lot of opportunity as well. And The last thing that's had a big impact is changing rules and regulations that here we have the RBC authority and then we have a national authority and the US has their own more state by state sometimes in the States than what we find here in Canada, but the regulatory agency has made changes and Prohibited summer refrigerants from being used inside of buildings.
The chart that you've got up there starts with CO2. A couple of the new ones, 1, 2, 3, 4, ZE and YZ 5, which have lower GWP, but not low enough for states like California anymore. But now we're going to have to get under 150. Propane is not new. It's been used for years and years. And we used to use it in the gas fields in Alberta many years ago.
And it just kind of went by the wayside, but now it's become a good option for having low GW. P. No ozone depletion. Quite efficient. If you look on the C O P side of the things and then ammonia, which is very, very efficient, but we can't use it everywhere. There's some municipalities, for instance, I work for the International Olympic Committee and the last Olympics in China.
We were not allowed to use ammonia at all, but luckily we got CO2 and half the venues in 449 in the other half of the venues. So knowing the regulations is very, very important because they change depending on where you are working at.
I want to take a minute to talk about what refrigeration mentor training is all about. We are all about helping contractors increase profit. We help end users reduce bottom line costs and really helping technicians make more money. And our mission is to empower those contractors and technicians by equipping them with the, really the skills that they need and the knowledge that they need for success.
And what we do is we help contractors. By building customized training packages that work for their technicians, that work for their busy schedule to advance their skills in gauging them in continuing education and testing them. All these programs that we really do is really by the hands on approach, getting them to go out there and do.
The field work. So they get tangible results and we are committed to getting you the results you're looking for. All our programs are online drip model. So I can meet with technicians or the refrigeration professional. I can coach them. I can mentor them and our team of professional really want to take your business, to the next level.
So if you're a service manager, business owner or technician, reach out, head to refrigerationmentor. com or check out in the show notes, there's a book a call link and it doesn't matter where you're at in the world, we can help develop a program that's going to help you and your business be more profitable in the commercial refrigeration and aid vac industry.
Now let's get to the conversation goal.
Trevor: I do have a question for you too, because what you said earlier in, because you do a lot of refrigeration, I've had some people reach out to me that work at Local rinks, we're talking about small towns.
I'm in a city here in Brantford, we've got a hundred thousand Toronto's not far. So it's not hard to find a contractor here, but I have people in the U S and different countries, even here in Canada, when you have a small town in Canada, we've got lots of rinks everywhere. Because we're a hockey country, but there's not many technicians being able to work on these anymore.
And like, and I'm having people reach out to me that, that, you know, they're a small community that I got an ice rink. I don't know how to repair, get our stuff repaired because costing so much more. Do you have any advice? For some of those owners of those hockey rinks, because that's something you're in the world of.
Art: Sure. Most of the rinks years ago were always ammonia, but not all communities actually had ammonia mechanics. And then. The, the regulations required. They had certified operators on, on board the rink as well, and that became an expense to them. So in situations such as that, we went with synthetic refrigerants such as the one or the 5, 1, 3 and 4, 4 9, and all four.
It's not as efficient and, probably long term global warming is not as good as ammonia or CO2, that it was really the best choice for them. So as far as finding a mechanic, if you can find a good grocery store mechanic or a good commercial refrigeration mechanic, they have a fighting chance of working on a system with.
449 or or 513 on the CO two side that there's some wonderful heat reclaim attributes with CO2 and it is going to be a growing force without a doubt, but not every local mechanic is capable of working on it, just like ammonia in the opposite end. So somewhere there's gotta be a middle ground that you have to make sense with the system.
You're installing that you have the people local that can actually work on it.
Trevor: Yeah. And, and I think the biggest thing too, and I don't know, maybe you can correct me on this, the generation of like, we have eight there's HVAC technicians around the world, we've got, there's lots of them because the air conditioning is for some reason more important than refrigeration sometimes it seems.
Then we've got commercial refrigeration techs. Then we've got supermarket tech. Then we've got industrial techs. And it seems like there's less people getting industrial refrigeration compared to, you know, supermarket, but there's even less than supermarket versus commercial refrigeration and then less than commercial refrigerator versus like HVAC or air condition.
What are your thoughts and the trends you've seen over the last, say, decade in that? Is that something you noticed around the world as well? It's hard to find industrial mechanics versus a supermarket mechanic versus a commercial refrigeration mechanic.
Art: Yes, and I can't verify this figure, but I've been told in the U.
S. That there are short 600 industrial refrigeration mechanics right now that there's just a big need for it. There's not that. Many companies in every town that do industrial, it's more of a regional business where you'll have one major player who might do a whole state or a whole province where commercial mechanics the threshold of entry is much lower.
They can work out of their garage. And go work on the corner store walk in coolers, but there's not enough industrial work for one guy to service one plant in one town very often. So you are right, it is harder to find the industrial. Just as the commercial market was turning inside out because of the Freon regulations and the global warming and the ozone depletion, the same thing is happening with ammonia.
And it's more being driven by the safety aspect that there's an awful lot of pushback from various areas that get worried about ammonia. So the whole industry is changing by putting in a lot smaller refrigerant charges, modular refrigeration, putting systems outdoors rather than inside the building. So things are changing in all aspects of our industry.
Maybe the air conditioning has been a bit more stable. It kind of looks the same other than the variable refrigerant volume systems that are coming online. That was never heard of years ago, but that's a really, really good thing.
Trevor: No, and I, I agree too. It's more, it's definitely specialized. There's not as much out there.
And that's why we see like the different parts of the country or the with low that, not that skill level. You know what I mean? You don't see it taught in schools as much too. You know, there's very minimal industrial refrigeration, very minimal supermarket refrigeration, less commercial refrigeration.
And it seems like there's a lot of schools for HVAC. You know, so, and that's what, what refrigeration measures trying to do is get the commercial refrigeration side. And so I really appreciate your thoughts on that. I think we should dive into a little bit more of some of your expertise, because I know you're an expert in industrial refrigeration, commercial refrigeration, and there's a lot of people who want to get better.
So we've got some slides here. So if you're listening on the podcast, head to the YouTube channel, check out some of the slides that we're going to go through. And I think we should just start about what. An installation looks like to you because you've done them all over the world in the hottest parts of the world.
You put nice in to the coldest parts of the world, put nice in. Well, why do I put ice inside a building, even though it's minus 40 out all the time? Right. So let's talk about a little bit about some of your experience on the the ice rink side and what, when you're starting a project, what are some of the things you're looking for?
Art: Climate is probably one of the first things technically we look at that to install an ice rink in northern Manitoba, northern Alberta, it's cold and it's dry. And, I live there, so I know. There's a lot of benefit with that cold air, for sure, but it does have its problems as well. Versus doing a job in Toronto or Florida, where you have a lot higher humidity.
And although I would like to say the refrigeration is the absolute most important thing there is to do with an ice rink, it's actually that climate that probably has the biggest impact on these ice surfaces. And if we look at the Calgary Olympics as an example. That Calgary has very favorable weather.
It's cool and it's quite dry where Olympics in places like Sochi on the coast or the upcoming Olympics in Milan, the humidity is three times higher. So that works against you when you're using evaporative cooling and it definitely works against you when you have to try to keep a building dry.
That if you look at a the two most critical ice surfaces, I'd like to say are probably the Curling and the long track speed skating that when you're trying to glide a 45 pound stone down 150 foot ice surface and there's frost on it it's just a nightmare for the curlers. But if you can keep the dew point within the building within two degrees of that ice surface, It really, really reduces the amount of frost impingement and the mechanical obstruction that frost makes on the ice.
First thought, well, why do we go down a lot lower in dew Point one is it's expensive to do it, but if you get your dew point too low, you'll actually start sublimating the pebbles that are on the ice and, and that obstructs the game as well. And a long track speed skating. I'd mentioned everybody wants to set world records.
That's a big thing. They love to have a world record, but when you're skating 10, 000 meters and trying to break a record by a 10th of a second, and there's frost in the ice, it's not going to happen. So maintaining that inside environment is important. Now that's the air side of it. Refrigerations aside, you've got to have enough refrigeration to do the work depending on how much money your community has will dictate of how much redundancy you have installed, but nobody can put in two plants on a local community arena, so you usually try to size your plant for around 30 40 percent larger than what's required, so if one compressor is off, The second one will handle the load.
You might not have perfect ice, but you're not gonna lose your ice.
Trevor: Okay. That, that definitely, that makes sense. So when you are going in the first step, like you said, is that climate, what's happening around the system before we're doing an install? So you, so you get it in and one of the things is that you said you want to keep that air temperature about two two degrees above the dew point of the surface.
Is that correct? The dew point you want to
Art: keep the dew point about two degrees above the surface.
Trevor: Yeah. And so if you don't, it's not going to be a, the, the nice ice that they want. So this, this here is every rink in the world doesn't need that, that good, but this is what you want for the best ice. And this is the best
Art: of Trevor: the best. Yes. The best of the best ice. Yes. The thing is though, is what are they using? And you said it there is that, that dehumidification is going to be very, very important. What, what now with the new technologies, like CO2, for an example, we're seeing full integrated it. Systems where we're doing the refrigeration.
We're doing the ice. We're doing the cooling in the walk in box as well as we're doing the heating of the stands. What are your, some of your thoughts? Is this going to continue to grow? Cause I've seen some out there already. And what is the benefits and a disadvantage of going to a full say inclusive system?
Like a co2 system in our rink advantages.
Art: I think it's a wonderful thing that In the old days, we had a mechanical dehumidifier usually two of them hanging in each corner of the rink And there was electrical service you had to provide to each one of those and they weren't Very efficient. There were an air conditioner being used in a cold environment, which didn't really work very well.
You had to operate the coils so cold that they would freeze up. And then you had deep broth cycles, which are inefficient. So by having a totally integrated system, you have one box and that box with the single utilities going into it. We'll do your heating for the ice rink. It'll do your cooling for the ice rink.
It'll do your dehumidification, your air handling, your fresh air ventilation, all sitting on one footprint on the on the pedestal out back or on the roof, one set of wires going into it and all the energy coming from your ice plant rather than dissipating the energy to a condenser outdoors. So CO2 has got the benefit of.
Very high temperatures. So dust and dehumidifiers operate really, really well. The higher the temperature is used for the reactivation process. And that's where CO2 has a real good handle on things that you can do some amazing work with those high temperatures.
Trevor: And I think so too. I think we're going to see more and more of it, but.
There is some challenges with it because it's not like you can just go throw one. Like there's people that are installing them now and working on them. But even though I'm talking to those people that are doing these installs, like it's still new, even for the people that have been doing it for decades, it's still new.
And you can't just go throw this anywhere. You can't just go put this in the, the, the secluded places where you can't get a technician who has those skills.
Art: A couple of interesting aspects of that. One interesting story is we did the University of Alaska in Anchorage, and we did it with indirect CO2, where we had ammonia chilling CO2, and CO2 was being used as a brine pumped through the floor.
One of the big benefits of CO2 in the floor is that it's a volatile brine. It doesn't have a low temperature in and a high temperature out. It creates a monolithic temperature across the whole floor, which is a real big advantage. So nothing to do with the CO2 system, but the people who were putting the dasher boards in We're using a forklift with a chain to drop them in place.
And they were putting them in section by section. And when they came to the header trench, by mistake, they dropped the the hooks down into the trench. And when they lifted the mast up. They ripped off one of the CO2 lines, which was full of CO2. The system was charged and it wasn't running at that point in time.
It was prior to startup and the pressure was somewhere equalized at around a thousand and 80 pounds pressure. And when that line was broken off, it was like the horns of hell just broke loose in that. rank, you've never heard a sound like that in your life. But an interesting thing happened very quickly, is when you rapidly depressurize co2, it turns into dry ice.
So rather than continue to vent, the sound went away. It chilled off in inside the floor rapidly. And rather than having water in a pipe, which you froze, which would burst it, when CO2 turns to dry ice, it actually gets smaller. So it didn't cause any trouble with breaking pipes due to freezing. So what was done is out in the container, the compressor room, which was an outdoor one a vent line was open, allowing it to continue to vent outside the pipe was welded.
They were back in business. So they in the previous year had a direct R 22 system, and there were several hundred of them around the United States where there was R 22 pumped through the ice rink floor. So the the dean of the school. I had to go to a meeting next day and he had heard about this explosion in the rink and everybody getting scared.
And he said, Do you really think we've taken the right direction going this way? I said, Well, it's nothing to do with the refrigeration system. It was an accident that happened by another tradesman, and it was fixed. We lost about 1, 000 pounds of CO2, which cost about 1, 500. I said, the only difference, if it had been last year with R22, you would have lost a quarter million dollars worth of R22 before we got it stopped.
He said yeah, that's a good idea. Let's stay this way.
Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, exactly. So there's benefits there. And, and that could happen with anything though. You know what I mean? So like the 22, it's still, it might not be as loud. I've been in many stores and this is what I try to talk about in my programs to the technicians.
If you have a leak. And HFC store, cause I've seen it, the whole store goes white. You know, you want to get people out of there. If it's a four Oh four, if it's 22, it doesn't matter. Same as you, it's going to turn white. It just, it's a little bit higher pressure. It sounds a little bit louder. I've heard all these pressure reliefs go off, even, you know, 120 bar or 1, 740 BSI.
It's scary. You know what I mean? It's loud, but if you understand the safety protocols of it, it's just like working on ammonia. He was like, I don't want to work on ammonia, but if you understand how to properly work on it, you've been doing it for 45 years. You're still here kicking and enjoying what you do, you know what I mean?
Yeah. Take your family around the world and you're still doing it. So it's just understanding the safety and I really, this is what I push to everyone around the world. We got to be safe and don't get complacent. So even if it is a thousand pounds leaking, understand how to stop it, evacuate people properly and, and fix and, and fix the problem.
Cause that's our job as technicians.
Art: Yes, one thing that is a little bit of an issue with CO2, but as long as the rink is big enough, it's not a problem. It's the threshold limit value. And if you go to ASHRAE 34, they'll tell you how many pounds of refrigerant you're allowed. Per 1000 cubic feet of airspace and building and many of the direct our 22 ranks had no problem.
And the reason being you used to be allowed to have 13 pounds of our 22 per 1000 cubic feet. I have to actually look it up here, but with with CO2, we're down to one fifth now. We're only allowed 3. 4 pounds per thousand cubic feet of airspace. So I think what we're going to see happen more in the future is the CO2 systems will be indirect and putting glycol through the floor, or even better than that, doing aqua ammonia through the floor.
So the aqua ammonia will still give you a. Fairly high efficiency going that way. And you won't in impact the refrigeration concentration limit in the building.
Trevor: So that's a, that's a good point. Why, why do you think the regulation with that would, would it even matter if it was another refrigerant?
Why are they going from 13 pounds? You said down to 3. 4 pounds. Is it because the release rate could be a lot faster than CO2, the pressures, because that's kind of either one are not good for you. You know what I mean? It doesn't matter if it's CO2. Both of them are bad. You know what I mean?
Art: You'll almost have to ask the rats that they tested on.
And that's where they come up with it is they do lab tests with every single refrigerant has a different threshold limit value. And R22 was fairly good. You can put a fair amount of it in a system, but they find that the toxicity of the CO2 is greater than what we are. 22 was, but then ammonia, for instance, there's no possible way we could ever put that as a director of frigid in a floor.
It was done. The last place I saw it done was Aspen, Colorado. It's gone now. It's now an indirect system. And in Ontario, there was a number of outdoor rinks that used a direct ammonia in the floor. But then it wasn't really that much of an issue. So you have to be cautious with which refrigerant you use.
And this became a debate in the air conditioning world as well, where they were using common systems to feed all these smaller apartments that each apartment had access to that quantity of refrigerant. So they had to really watch that they were not over the threshold limit value.
Trevor: And that's it.
You got to know your codes and your regulation doesn't matter to refrigerant. We have B B 52 here in Canada, and then there's the, as me regulations, there's so many different ones. So depending on where you're at in the world and you're listening from dive into those those codes and regulations, especially if you're a contractor and you're a business owner technician, you still need to know your safety.
Right. And, and getting into the codes, because when I first started out codes, I've read them, you know, I had to do them on tests, but it wasn't something I was focused on, I was focused on the technical side, something breaks. How do I fix it? Code stuff will can save you, you know, and save the people around you.
And that's why they make codes. Sometimes we don't like them, but it's that people doing the tests and they're, they're saying, okay, this. Is safe for the public.
Art: It's really interesting that very often you can improve safety and, and improve the facility operation as well. But for years, we were stuck on using single system single chiller.
single condenser. Having two or three compressors on a single chiller gave you efficiency advantages when only one compressor was running. Same as on a condenser. If you had one big condenser and you were down to one of three compressors, you had great condensing properties. Your condensing was very low.
Then by going to modular systems, we lost some of that, but the benefit of having those modular systems is a redundancy. And in the photo group there that I sent, there's a picture of the system we did in Saudi Arabia, where we did four completely separate modules. Benefit is that you were never exposed to a breakdown by more than 25 percent of your system.
There was a A chiller, a condenser, a condenser pump, and a compressor on each module. So, if one module is shut down, you still have 75 percent redundancy. The other thing is your refrigerant charge is now divided between four systems rather than one. So, we have a kind of Catastrophic leak. You lose 25% of your refrigerant by using external cooling tower.
You now have a warm fluid going into the cooling tower, and that warm fluid is the energy supply that you need for doing heat recovery. So you didn't have to put in an extra heat exchanger. You use that warm fluid and take it into either a direct source for heat, like fresh air preheat, or you could use it as a feedstock for heat pumps.
Trevor: That makes sense. But one of, one of the things though is, is that. This will cost more than just a signal unit, but it's a redundance and it's a safety factor. So on those critical environments, like anything like blood banks, you know, I worked there, I know people there, they're like, and they got two of everything or like the pharmaceutical.
If this piece of equipment costs a million, we want one more that's costing a million right here. Because if this one goes down, we need this one up and running, you know, because we're talking about billions of dollars of sometimes refrigeration. Because I'm sure you've worked in some industries like that where refrigeration is so important.
Like people, like I keep talking, I tell people I'm in refrigeration. Well, what's refrigeration? But when you think about it, everything that we do today really involves refrigeration. You know, we're talking here, there is some sort of air conditioning or refrigeration, cooling, the, the servers that were, that this has broadcast through things like that.
So it's important to understand that, but redundancy can be important. And I see, I kind of seen that over the years, depending on the customer, they're cause we're always trying, they're always trying to cut costs you know, or reduce costs. I shouldn't say cut, but reduce costs. And sometimes it bites customers in the butt when they go too much, you know what I mean?
Have you noticed that your travels over the decades on, on projects?
Art: Absolutely. That if you go with a single compressor system single chillers, single condenser, Somewhere along the line, something's going to happen. That's going to shut that down. Unless you're continuously onto it doing maintenance, then when that happens, you you're out of business, that there's nothing you can do until it's up and running again.
And I've never heard a customer unhappy when they have a modular system with several compressors and one goes down, he just gets on the phone and says, I think one of those systems might not be working and that might not be the case, sometimes it's just off in thermostat, which we've had happened many times.
That times. But having that backup, they're sure, thankful for. 'cause there's never a good day for a breakdown. And very often it's always during bad days when there's a heavy load.
Trevor: No, no, exactly.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Trevor: Oh, man, that's, that's, it's just so interesting that all the different sides of industries, very similar.
Even when you talk with smaller systems, like in the middle of the summer here, when it gets 40 degrees of Celsius, 45 degrees Celsius and your air conditioner break down, it's like, man, I wish I had a second one. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, so right now what types of projects are you working on right now?
Like let's talk a little bit about your, cause you got a team, you do install. So you what, what is the accent refrigeration doing right now?
Art: Well, actually we do not anymore. Two years ago, two years ago, we all retired. There was a bunch of us we all been working together. Within the company for 35 years and a few of us much beyond that at a previous company.
So we've been together forever so Our last job as a group was in saudi arabia and we had six guys who were senior citizens all of us over 65 Two years ago and everybody knew their bit their piece their job And it went so well and we were on it was building the first professional hockey venue in Saudi Arabia, and there was about 200 tradesmen on all aspects of the projects from other people, but only six of us.
And the, the member of the project manager coming to us said, if I could find six more senior citizens like you guys, I'd fire the other 200 people tomorrow, but it just went really, really well. So. That was our kind of our, our goodbye job for all of us. And then me and two other people here were involved on the design side and we've been keeping really busy on that.
We're working right now on the 2026 winter Olympics. We've had. Lots of jobs across Canada and the U. S. We're just starting one more job in Saudi Arabia right now, which is going to be a few years out that we're doing design work on. So we're keeping quite busy on the design side. I'm 68 this year, but I think I'll keep going for another four or five years and let the young folks take over.
But on our previous business, we had a couple of companies and one was we were Thermocane dealer. And we did all the tractor trailers and trucks all over Vancouver Island. We did over 600 of them. Those guys took over on that end of it. Then our service guys took over on our service end. And we're just a small, happy group of designers right now.
Trevor: I love that. But this is, this is the thing like inside refrigeration that I tell people and a lot of newer people in industry, it can take you everywhere. You know, you started out as a, you know, in school as a not knowing anything about refrigeration, learning, you know, to become a technician to working as an installer, working as a service technician, which is totally different jobs and then becoming a business owner and then learning about design and engineering.
And it can take you everywhere. What is one of your favorite things like about refrigeration now? And what, what do you see the future of refrigeration looking like?
Art: I think what's happening is on the heat rejection side of the cycle is the biggest growing part of our industry and probably the most important part of the industry, but prior to now in the early days, refrigeration was just a big cost to a community when you put in an ice rink.
But when you start using that energy and heating the building footprint, and on many venues where they have a double or a triple or down in Ontario, you've got many four plexes down there. We've worked on a couple of them down there. There's a lot more heat available that you can share within a community and that really makes it a paying proposition, without a doubt.
Here, where we are is Our we have an indoor ice rink and outdoor ice rink and a skating trail that joins the two of them in my venue right here where I'm sitting today. Way more energy than what we need for the building. We heat the building. We do the dehumidification. We do the hot water all off the ice plant, but there's still 60 percent of excess energy.
We pump it. 400 meters down the road to a housing development, the West Hills Housing Development, and it goes into their after their heat pump compressors towards the houses. We don't go directly in to the borefield. It started out with 30 40 houses in the beginning. We had enough heat to heat just about all of them.
Now there's over a thousand homes there, and they get their heat from three heat pumps. There are three ammonia heat pumps that our company built 12 years ago, and that's where all the heat comes from. So once again, this rink can't do a thousand houses. So we've got a bore field with 300 holes underneath it.
It's a soccer field during it's used a well used soccer field and underneath it's where all the energy comes from. To heat all the houses, Europe. Now they're eclipsing that they've got massive heat pumps going in and you're now just incredible scale. London is about to transform where they're going to be heating an awful lot of their public buildings.
So from the rivers in Vancouver shark does so much with sewer heat that they're extracting heat from sewers all over North America. They've done a great job with that. So. Cool. There's so many clusters around where you have a brewery, you have a grocery store, you have an ice rink, and you have a communities built around it.
I really think that is the future is harnessing all this energy and having it not go to waste. People don't think of heat as refrigeration, but that's the, the useful by product we have is, is just using the benefit of the hot side of recycle a lot better than what we did 30 years ago.
Trevor: Yeah. It's transferring that heat because yeah, those condensers, big condensers on those supermarkets is man, when I was just blowing all that heat out, you're just.
And then I've seen it so many times where the heat reclaim or heat recovery just turned off. Oh, well, it's inefficient for our store. And I've seen end users lots of times. I asked the technician, they're like, all these stores have all the heat reclaims turned off and I'm like, why? Well, the end user says it's less, it's more, it's inefficient.
It costs them more money to run the heat reclaim and heat recovery. I was like, okay, maybe, I don't know. It's, it's free. It's kind of, it can be free, but that's one of the things though. When you have a heat pump, you're using it you know, all year round. Cause I'm seeing a lot more CO2, big industrial heat pumps.
You're always running in transcritical. So it doesn't, doesn't matter. But when we talk about like a supermarket refrigeration, we need all the heat in the, in the wintertime, in the summertime, when we generate all the heat or most of the heat, we don't really need as much. So it's, we're going to figure that out as well.
And I continue to see, just like you're talking about there around the world, the people that I deal with and I work with, they're saying. More district eat micro grid starting to make, make it more efficient and effective than what we did 50 years or 30 years ago.
Art: In grocery stores, especially in humid climates in summer, there's a real benefit for desiccant dehumidification to reduce defrost cycles.
And if you're got a CO2 system right in your store, you could totally regenerate your desiccant dehumidifier and not pay a penny for heat other than the fan moving the air around. That's a real good use for one of the interesting jobs we did in Boston a few years ago, is we used internal combustion engines driving screw compressors.
And so your first thought, geez, we're trying to decarbonize and you're using internal combustion gas powered engines isn't that creating more carbon, but in the Massachusetts area that uh, most of the electricity comes from turbines, gas turbines, and then there's what we call line loss. When you get your electricity, it leaves the plant and arrives at your venue.
There's a lot more electricity produced than what actually arrives just due to step up, step down, and so on. So by putting those internal combustion engines that are driving the compressors right in the rink we're moving the electrical supply or the prime mover. To the compressor rather than using power, but you think, well, internal combustion engines are not really that efficient compared to a 94 percent electric motor and internal combustion engine is maybe 50 percent efficient.
So where does the inefficiency go? It's heat. It's waste heat. It goes up the stack. So we did a total heat recovery off those engines. And we use that for powering the dehumidifiers, heating the hot water. Our cooling towers almost never come on there. We're using all the energy within the building.
It's a three plex rink. It's going to grow into a four plex, but it's all done very cleverly and efficiently of using the, the, the, the heat. And we got a. Big multi million dollar grant to do it because they understood the dynamics. Once we explained what we're doing.
Trevor: Oh, I love that. Yeah, I know that sounds super cool.
I love that. Just hearing the evolution of you, you know what I mean? Because, you know, 30 years ago, you weren't thinking about this, you know, but now, now you're in it and you're like, wow, how can we change, make it different, how, how can we evolve? Because this is one, another thing I love about refrigeration, it continues.
To evolve people think, Oh, refrigeration is stagnant. Some people say it's the same as it always was. It's not, it's not with the new technology electronics and monitoring and AI predictive analytics as well as design. And it's all done in refrigeration. Super. Any final thoughts for the people listening technicians or business owners in refrigeration?
Art: In my early days as I said, when I went to trade school, I really, really liked it. And if I, if I didn't do that, I might not have continued education throughout my life, but I liked that small little snapshot in time so much, almost every year. I would take a course, I took industrial instrumentation in Edmonton, then I went and took an electronics course, and then I took a business operating course, and then any refrigeration course I could get on in North America and Europe, I would go to, and I think continuing the education, keeping at the leading end of the wave, and really make your future rather wait for it to come to you, like look for opportunities or develop a career.
Opportunities is even better that come up with ideas. They, they might not all work out, but you can refine it. As long as you're all in, you can take your idea and make it better and make sure the customers are happy.
Trevor: I love that. I think that what you said there is so key, not only in the refrigeration industry, but in, in, in general, you should be investing.
10, 20 percent of what you make into educating yourself to make yourself better. And that's what I do. I, I, every year I'm taking new courses, trying to develop myself because being curious and continuing to learn only makes us better and the people around us better. So I, I love that point. All right.
How can people find out more about you or learn more about your design and your consulting work?
Art: Www. accentrefrigeration. com or look me up on the internet, give me a call I, I just love the industry, like, talking about it now is just what I love to do, just with you and with other folks, so, we, we, every trade school on South Island and universities all come here to bring their students for classes, or if the class is too big, they bring us out to their place to do them, so there's two of us here that are doing a lot of training for people and we just do it, so, yeah, Pro bono to help them locally and get people involved.
And Camosun College and Victoria, the University of Victoria and Royal Roads, they come to learn about energy efficiency. That's just a fun thing. And you learn from so many people, the people you teach can teach you just as much as you can teach them.
Trevor: Yeah. Oh, man. I love it. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us here at refrigeration mentor dot com.
Getting on the podcast. Once again, it's, it's taking your time, investing in yourself, trying to get a little better each day and you can be super successful. Just like our traveled the world. This is what refrigeration is about. If you want to travel the world, you can, if you want to make a pile of money in refrigeration, you can.
You want to start your own business. You can, you can do all this stuff, but like art said, the most important thing is investing in yourself every year. Art, thank you so much for taking the time.
Art: Thank you. I love what you're doing.