HVAC Essentials: A Free Hands-on Workshop

The way the abstractions got peeled back worked, though Module 4 dragged a bit and the labs assume you’ve already got the spreadsheet templates set up. As a new grad, I liked how the course maps HVAC concepts to things I recognize from software arch and infra. The psychrometric chart walkthrough in Section 2, especially the example adjusting supply air temp to hit comfort without spiking energy, stuck with me. Seeing COP tradeoffs discussed alongside real duct losses made the theory click. I kept thinking about obs too—logging temps vs actually instrumenting zones felt like prod vs local. It's not flashy, but it connects practice to why the numbers move. walking out with a clearer sense of how small tuning choices compound into optimization.

This workshop hit a few bottlenecks I’ve been running into while supporting HVAC-heavy buildings tied to our infra. The section on psychrometric charts, specifically the example where they walked through coil load changes during a humid shoulder season, stuck because it maps cleanly to how we reason about RPS spikes in prod. I liked the economizer control logic walkthrough too; seeing the failure modes called out felt like reading a good PR checklist rather than a textbook. The hands-on bits felt close to real ops, even if a couple labs assumed cleaner sensors than I see outside a lab. Some parts weren’t my thing, mostly the early thermodynamics refresh, and I wished there was a bit more on obs and fault detection once systems drift. Still, it balanced theory with the kinds of gotchas you only notice after chasing alerts across arch and CI logs.

hvac airflow lab in module 2 using psychrometric chart calc stuck; it's practical, but wished more on controls tuning.