ASHRAE Meeting

Hello, I have a very interesting and coincidental story to tell. It all started with solar panels, a bank and a husband. In September of 2014 I really really really wanted us to put solar (PV) panels on our house. I had done all the research including gathering all the electric bills, calculating how many panels we would need, finding the inverter etc. After all that I called up the local PV solar installation company and arranged an in home visit. We went over my numbers and calculated the final cost with installation.  The last step was paying for it. The total cost came out to around 30,000 dollars and since we didn’t have that kind of money laying around we would need a loan. The solar company rep and I did the math on a loan at a reasonable interest rate and we found that the monthly payments on such a loan would come out to save us money on electricity every month. (The added bonus of PV solar is that it helps you prepare for the coming Zombie Apocalypse) The last thing we needed to do was head down to the bank and get the loan. To make a long story short, the loan would have to be taken out against the house and there wasn’t enough equity left over the satisfy the bank’s 20-30% safety zone. So even though we couldn’t get the PV panels, the woman at the bank we worked with was impressed with my knowledge of electrical systems and PV and gave me her card and told me her husband was an HVAC engineer and I should email him. Well thats exactly what I did. His name was Ross Montgomery and I had a really interesting conversation with him and in the end he invited me to a meeting put on by his company, ASHRAE. ASHRAE is interesting because it is sort of a company that other companies join and they host networking an get-to-gether like events usually with cool speakers. ASHRAE is international and its members are mostly HVAC engineers. Anyway, I met lots of cool people and had a great time learning about another field of engineering. I think its fantastic when I meet other people who are complete strangers who are so nice and willing to teach me and help me. For me, the moral of the story is that having a good network of people is very important and necessary in order to function as a professional, no matter what you do.

Below are some pictures of the event as usual. They also put me in the Sarasota-Bradenton ASHRAE January 2015 newsletter!

Here is me in their newsletter!

This is me with Ray Patenaude, the speaker, he was talking to me about HVAC engineering and showing me some diagrams of poor insulation and poor HVAC systems.

This was Ross at the event. It was so nice of him to invite me and I had such a great time with him.