Hvac Residential Load Calcs App Reviews

App works as you would expect. You can email a report which is all good, but the file is not printable and sharing is not much of an option. Wish I would’ve known that, I would’ve kept looking. Could this not be changed to send as a PDF? Also feels very much like an old app. Hasn’t been updated in quite some time.

I downloaded this app and, yes, it was a little hard to use at first. Isn't all software? I called Carmel, and they got back to me ASAP and trained our guys for 1/2 hour for FREE. After the training, we knew how to use it much better, and now 3 of my guys use it constantly in the field. It's a great tool and I love the email capabilities so I can review their work later on. Yes, it's not perfect, like I wish the reports were simpler and more appropriate for customers, but they are working on that. As far as I know, this is the only load calc app out there, and it's a great first step in this whole mobile app world. Great app and look forward to more......

I've been using this app for a couple weeks now at the recommendation of Trane. It's been very useful and accurate. I've compared it to my desktop Manual J software, and it is the same heating and cooling loads. I especially like the fact that when I first downloaded it, I called Carmel and asked if they could help me out. In fact, they offered to train me and a couple of my guys on how to use the app for about 1/2 hour. It really made a difference in using it after the training session. I would highly suggest being trained. The negative comments that have been posted may be due to the fact that they do not know how to use the software properly. I would suggest the training. Great app!

I use this for various buildings and rooms at the company I work for and it's amazing the short comings of construction design that are pointed out. Which as you can guess brings me to a much mentioned request: bring on the commercial building app! Please...

I have not found this program to be user friendly at all. I contacted the company and they asked me if they could call me and help talk me through the program, this has been over a month ago and no call! This has been a waste of money for me.

I've been in the HVAC industry for 35 years, but until last year had not done anything serious in residential HVAC. Most of my work has been in large buildings and industrial processes. So I never had occasion to invest in a Manual J load calculation program. But this winter, when our own furnace started having major problems, I thought I'd better do a load calc to be a more intelligent consumer. I used this program and found it a real delight. It's as simple to use as one could ever expect with a Manual-J-compliant load calc, and the ability to tour the house with a laser distance measuring device and enter the data into the iPhone directly was actually quite a bit of fun. To cross-check the results, I was able to download our actual furnace run-time for an 8-hour period when the outdoor temperature averaged 4°F below our local 99.6% design value, including a 15 MPH wind. (Our Ecobee web-connected, datalogging t/rh-stat is another real delight) The actual average furnace output for that 8-hour period was within 5% of my calculated load. Pretty amazing. Also, my calculated load was within 10% of the load calculated by my HVAC contractor who used the far more complex and expensive Wright-J software on the PC. So I'm feeling pretty good about the results from this economical and easy-to-use program. Not that it's perfect. It has all the awkwardness and poor assumptions of Manual J itself. For example, it's exceedingly difficult to find the place where you enter the air infiltration rate for the home. And when you get there, the interface makes it quite difficult to figure out the correct way to enter the value. Really, in this day and age, when blower door tests allow very accurate measurements of the all-important air infiltration number, this needs to be much, much easier to find and there needs to be a simple way to enter a "blower door airflow at 50 PA" directly into a well-labeled field. Also, Manual J assumes much lower humidity loads from infiltration that what actually occurs (It assumes less than 25% of the actual load in our particular location... it's a problem in Manual J itself, and this program has no choice other than to follow that bad assumption because it's intended to be "Manual j-compliant." ) On the other hand, the support from the developer was excellent and very responsive. He got me on the right track within an hour of my confusion about where to input the air infiltration rate. I don't usually expect that level of support in a $24 dollar program. Another issue on the negative side is the report output options. While the screen reports are excellent and very clear, the downloadable HTML report is nearly unreadable for all of the forrest of extra lines, and it won't print at any legible size on a single page, or even on logical tiled pages. Further, the spreadsheet version is even worse... a huge, wide landscape format which even cannot be read on the screen until you've completely reformatted all the cell widths, and even then, it's not set up to print on paper in any logical way. So the program as it currently stands is essentially useless for communicating the loads to anybody else in any form other than looking at the results on the screen, or hand-copying the results from the screen reports into an email or other spreadsheet. So the non-screen reports need *a lot* of work. That said, the program still gets five stars from me because after all... it provided very reliable results and it was very easy to enter the detailed room-by-room data. I suspect this is going to be very popular with HVAC contractors who need to really do load calcs rather than just guesstimating loads.

Wasted $35 don't do it. Better pen and paper. It's completely waste.

This is a good solid load calc app that I use on my iPad out in the field. It cranks out good results and I like that I can email them back to the office. The screen reports and pie charts look good and they impress my residential customers too. I also requested a 20 or so minute training session from Carmelsoft, and they obliged. Very helpful. Now that I've been using this app, I do have a # of requests for improvements: 1. Allow for some simpler reports so I can send them to my clients directly. 2. Add commercial load calc capabilities. 1/2 my jobs are at malls or office buildings. 3. Add some duct sizing functionality to it. Look forward to future updates.

Every time I load a new project it just crashes, waste of money

Input is clunky. Never sure if you are doing it right and there is no help. Can't input direction walls face, only windows. Room feature, main reason I bought it is only 1/2 finished. Can input any opaque surface you want in your room as long as its a ceiling w no insulation. Can only add items, not delete them. Text often reverts after editing. Because I have no idea if its understanding what I'm inputting, can't rely on the output.

I'm using this and the Load Plus app for doing quick energy audits. I know it doesn't quite do the entire energy analysis on these apps, but I do email the results back to my office so I can plug it into my spreadsheet and predict energy usage. Great app.

I am a Trane reseller, and they suggested we download this app as part of a promotion they are offering us resellers. I installed it on my iPad and have used it out in the field with some customers. I was able to do a quick and accurate load calc, show the customer some graphical reports, then email the results back to my office so I could print it out. It was quite easy to use, despite being based upon Manual J8 which I know can be cumbersome at times. I can see using this app almost exclusively out in the field, now. Great work.

It was recommended by Trane to go along with the iPad program. After using it and comparing it to other programs I am so disappointed and it's now a joke around the office. Our building only needs -1.2 tons??? So I guess we need to turn on the heat on next time we want to cool off. I think Carmel should try another load calc so they can use terms we all know instead of making up new names for loads. Bottom line DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY or TIME.

Easy, fast, and accurate. Better than rule-of-thumb. I use it daily for quick equipment sizing. Also, a great tool for field trouble shooting.

I’m not sure about some of the other comments, but this app is really useful. I find it accurate and I love using it in the field to do those quick calcs. My clients love it too.

I would like a refund this app is useless. Extremely disappointed. How do I get refunded? Gave one star because I had too.