Innovation
Necessity being the mother of invention
I’ve been an HVAC/R service technician for more than 25 years.
It was 1995 when the EPA was revamping its refrigeration regulations and doing away with R-12, when I attended a trade school in Lodi, Ca. I was extremely committed. In fact, probably a bit obsessed in my determination to reach the highest possible score. I did just that, literally spending every waking moment studying until my brain hurt, achieving a 99% on the universal EPA certification and a 100% on every test, including the final.
Over the years since, I’ve worked for a wide range of companies. Covering nearly every aspect of the industry, from residential, commercial to industrial and refrigeration, servicing countless variations of heating, cooling, humidification and dehumidification.
There has always been a few things in our industry that bug me, but the condensate system is by far the biggest, I’ve never felt that the industry-standard was right, when it came to condensate system design, appearance and function. Off and on, throughout years, I’ve been trying to figure out a better idea. More specifically, something that can be cleaned out without having to tear the whole thing apart.
Spending my life out in the field, I see a lot of dysfunctional applications. In fact, most of the time condensate traps are put in incorrectly in one form or another. Most of the time they don’t put vents in when needed, sometimes they install vents when there not needed, often vents are installed on the wrong side of the trap.
One day in April 2015, I finally had enough!
After I spent all day working on a condensate problem in a very tight space. It was plugged up and flooding an upper-level floor and draining into the unit and onto the floor below. It was almost impossible to work on, having to climb under a permanently mounted desk to get to a tiny little closet behind it. Then having to fight through and remove various components on and around the unit, just to even get to the disastrously installed condensate trap and piping that had been haphazardly patched-up a million times before… I was so frustrated!
On my way home, I stopped by Home Depot to get some parts to fix a sink at home. I don’t know why, but something suddenly it hit me as I was walking down the PVC fittings aisle of the plumbing section. I envisioned a means of doing this. As I fumbled around with the parts off the shelf, thanking to myself, that’s it I finally have something here. I realized there were modifications that would need to be made. I started working on it and developing it.
The finished product is C-trap. The C-trap, most importantly, is a cleanable trap, designed to work in conjunction with HVAC/R equipment that produces condensation in its normal operation. It is designed to collect and retain a given amount of condensation (that is continuously produced by the equipment) in order to break a vacuum-like effect also produced by blowers generally contained in said equipment, thus allowing the accumulated condensate to continue draining from the equipment, through the C-trap, and then pipe it off to a nearby drain or runoff.
After building the prototype and testing it out, I applied for a patent, which has been granted. I then started talking to some supply houses and contractors that were interested in the product. And built this website.
Yes, of course, like anyone I am pursuing the opportunity for financial gain, but it is way more than that for me. It’s something I am excited and passionate about. I would like to see it become an industry standard because I see it as a better practice that our industry has long since needed, now more than ever. It’s incredibly important to me to try and do everything I can to get it widely known. People tend to get so conditioned in traditional and repetitive practices that they don’t think out of the box. That's the threshold I'm trying to break through and I’m hoping this connects the dots in people’s minds, that somethings are only done out of mere habit…
But there is a better way!