When you call a company to look for help, do you really want to have to dial a person’s name like you are on your old Nokia phone using the T9 keyboard, or do you want to hear a real person’s voice? (It’s okay if you are googling T9, I did it for you, and the best results are shown in the image below.)
Google results for T9 texting. My favorite part is the Reddit link on the right. r/dumbphones.
My answer is to speak to a real person. This is something I have always appreciated whenever I contact a company, whether it be to try and get information from them or to give information to them about EXAIR products. I understand that in some companies it helps with efficiencies and keeps cold-calling salespeople at bay (at least the ones that take no as the first answer). Yeah, automated systems may help reduce distractions for those who answer the phone, but at the same time, they may hinder someone who is trying to get a quick answer and wants to place an order.
Well, here at EXAIR, you don’t need to know how to spell names on your Nokia phone that you just racked up a high-scoring game of Snake on. Instead, you get a person who is a member of our Order Entry Team. They can actually help you submit orders, give chip estimates, product pricing, and even some lead times on stock products. Then, if you have technical questions or need something outside of that, they can bounce you over to us, the Application Engineering team. There’s a good chance you will hear less of our hold music than a full song or advertisement.
We will help you from there on out, even if it means placing an order. We not only try to be your one-stop shop for industrial compressed air products, but we also strive to be easy to do business with and get you the answers you need when you need them, not suspend you in a loop with our automated phone attendant until you discover the secret code to get to a real human.
The time has finally come, and spring is here! The Cincinnati Reds are playing, Spring Soccer is happening early on Saturday mornings, and the FC Cincinnati Stadium is bustling here in Cincy. With that, temperatures are climbing, the grass and weeds are growing, and more and more families are out walking around and doing outdoor activities. With this, also comes warmer temps, and lots of spring allergies in the Farno household. As a dad, I have stepped into my role pretty well by trying to delay turning on the air conditioner until everyone else in the house is plotting my demise. This year, I achieved it by putting off the routine maintenance of the condensing coils.
In case you weren’t aware, here in the Midwest, where pollen runs rampant and the winds have been strong this year, it is a great idea to clean out the condensing coils on your home’s A/C system before turning it on for the year. Unfortunately, your home A/C system is not maintenance-free like the Cabinet Cooler Systems EXAIR offers; at the same time, your home needs a lot more than a few thousand BTU/hr of cooling capacity. When we first bought the home, I didn’t know this was a thing, as the home I grew up in didn’t have central air. We rocked Window A/Cs, and my parents still do. So, cleaning the outdoor unit was not part of my knowledge base. This is something I learned once the air conditioner wasn’t working, and I started to troubleshoot.
The main purpose of the condensing coils is to strip all the heat out of the refrigerant and get it to “condense” back into its liquid state to be pushed back through the orifice and continue to cool the air that is being passed over the A Coils inside the house. These coils are covered in fins that are very tightly spaced. The outside unit has a large fan that pulls the surrounding air in through the coils and exhausts the hot air up out of the top. There is no filter on that incoming ambient air, though, so all the leaves, cobwebs, pet hair, pollen, dirt, mulch, you name it, get pulled up into these fins. Over time, this starts to get a buildup, and the cooling fins will start to lose their efficiency. The fan won’t be able to pull as much air through, and eventually, the gas doesn’t get condensed, which then reduces the cooling and can cause other bigger issues. This is just like a refrigerant-based A/C panel cooler in a facility. Most of the time, they have at least a small filter on the air intake to try and reduce the contamination of the condensing coils. So I clean the A/C condenser at my house using a coil cleaning solution diluted down, a pump sprayer, and a regular garden hose.
The main thing to remember when cleaning this is that the majority of the dirt is from the air being pulled into the center by the fan. So I rinse the coils from the inside out and make sure I have free passage all the way through. The water doesn’t need to be a high-pressure rinse like an OmniStream nozzle or one of BETE’s NF Nozzles, just a simple low-pressure stream of water to get between the fins and push all contaminants as well as rinse the solution away. Remove any leaves or other unwanted debris from inside the unit and then bolt the fan and cage back down. Then let the family enjoy some cold air inside the house.
This type of maintenance is something that easily gets overlooked when looking at refrigerant-based electrical panel coolers. That is where EXAIR Cabinet Cooler Systems shine. The only filter you have to worry about is a redundant point-of-use compressed air filter that is included with the Cabinet Cooler Systems. No chemicals needed for cleaning, no water, no mess to change out a compressed air filter, just long-lasting performance. If you want to talk about how to change your control panels over to Cabinet Cooler Systems, contact an Application Engineer today.
Hey everyone! I’m beyond excited to share some big news with you—I recently passed the Certified Compressed Air System Specialist (CCASS) certification test! It’s been a wild ride getting here, and I want to take you through my journey, to show what this certificate means to me.
Why CCASS? Six and a half years ago, I started my fascination with compressed air products and systems—how they power so much of modern industry, from manufacturing to automation. But I’ll be honest: there’s a lot to learn, and I wanted a way to prove I really get it. That’s where the CCASS certification came in. Offered by CAGI, it’s a credential that shows you’ve mastered the ins and outs of compressed air systems—think system design, energy efficiency, and all the components that make it tick. For me, it was about more than just a title; it was a chance to level up my skills and help customers optimize their systems.
The CCASS exam isn’t a walk in the park—it’s 80 multiple-choice questions in just 1.5 hours, testing your applied knowledge, skills, and abilities. CAGI doesn’t hand you a study guide, but they do point you to some resources. Their “Body of Knowledge” list was my starting point, packed with references like the Compressed Air & Gas Handbook and standards like ASME EA-4 for energy assessments. I dove into those, soaking up everything from compressor basics to sustainability tips.
What does this mean? Well, I’m the 6th person on the application engineering team to become certified. Our team of Application Engineers are dedicated to continuous self-improvement and actively seek ways to assure our readers, clients, and prospective customers that we are the foremost authorities in engineered solutions for point-of-use compressed air. We prioritize ongoing education and share our expertise through various platforms. This includes informative blogs like this one, casual videos available on our YouTube Channel and website, articles in different publications, and our webinars.
The subjects we cover range from strategies to reduce waste associated with one of the most costly utilities to system designs that mitigate pressure drops and ensure adequate supply for point-of-use applications. We can provide both in-depth analysis and high-level overviews to cater to different levels of understanding.
If you wish to evaluate our expertise or learn more about how we can assist with your facility’s compressed air needs, please reach out to an Application Engineer today.
This past weekend was one filled with many emotions in the Farno household. It was the tournament weekend for my youngest daughter’s basketball team, which I was the assistant coach for. This was our second season as a team, and we still had to learn a new dynamic this season because we added a player, and we were bumped up in our league after a strong performance in the tournament last year.
With that, came a season that did not have as many wins when you look at our record. You wouldn’t know it because of how these girls played for the full season though. Not once did we have a girl want to quit or mention that they weren’t good because we were losing. This is due to the families of our teams believing in them and our coaching position and style. Our head coach continually pushed these girls that wins and losses happen. Is it fun to win? Yes, is it fun to lose? No. What can we do about it when we lose? We can evaluate what went well, what didn’t and did we improve over the last time we stepped on the court. We didn’t sugarcoat every loss, we also didn’t tear down and focus only on the negative. Instead, we worked on skills and then we worked on their mental perseverance. When they would get out hustled or when fouls didn’t seem to get evenly called, we would remind them and ourselves that there are only two things they can control. Their attitude and their effort.
The standings shown here won’t matter past this weekend and that is something that is hard to convey to a 10-year-old.
When a player was getting upset, whether based on their mistakes or another factor, like an aggressive player on the other team, we simply reminded them of the tools they are equipped with and that all they can change is their attitude and effort on the matter. We would point out these skills they had forgotten they had in the moment. This wasn’t always easy, and we weren’t always perfect at doing it by any means. At one point in the season, we had a therapy session during practice and went through each player to tell them how we have seen them grow this year and what they should be proud of. This was just as much for their self-confidence as it was for our own.
As the assistant coach of the team, I really try to run support for the head coach and make sure our subs are ready. If a player during the game has a question or issue, I try to handle it. During practices, I would act as a defender, or just support whatever the coach was trying to teach. I distributed a lot of band-aids and several instant ice packs. I also tried to always encourage them on the wins that I saw while they were on the court. The fact of the matter was, I was there as support for the entire team and I would always try to look forward to seeing what was going to be needed and anticipating what I would need to do, whether it was a parent volunteer for a scorekeeper, a concussion check for the girl that just got hip-checked to the floor, or a high five for the girl that just made her first shot of the game, or the one that missed hers. No matter what, I tried to be prepared and anticipate what was coming. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t. How does this connect to EXAIR?
Early one morning, I got to use a ride-on floor scrubber to try and mop the gym. The sun coming in, and the peaceful situation really made me appreciate my situation.
Well, I do the same thing in my role as an Application Engineer. When someone contacts us with a blowoff need or a static electricity issue in their process, I immediately go to work trying to connect the dots in my wild mind to what they need and how fast can we get this obstacle conquered together. If a customer has a product that isn’t quite working right, I start the process of what could have gone wrong, and I try to be methodical in my process of troubleshooting. This all comes from experience and I have been doing this for 15 years now. I never thought I would be an assistant basketball coach since the last time I played was in 6th grade. Well, I also never thought I would be a Certified Compressed Air System Specialist, yet here I am, because there was a need and I filled the need that was presented to me, just like the girls on this basketball team did.
By no means do I get every single product selection, or assistant coaching task right. By no means am I perfect, and I don’t claim to be. I do, however, try to make sure my attitude is focused on achieving the task at hand, whether it be helping a player set a good pick or a customer select the right vacuum, then I make sure I exert the effort needed to get the answers and solutions that both sides need.
