EditGetting Started
Now that you have signed up for AiRNAB how do you get started?
First, AiRNAB will set your company up on our server. In this process your company will be outfitted with a default list of equipment (shown to the right), default parameters and also default parameter libraries.
Now let’s talk about the intent of each piece of equipment on the tree briefly.
Air Handling Unit – This piece of equipment was designed to fill the needs of the Air Apparatus report.
Roof-top Unit – This is generally the same as an Air Handling Unit, but because it is separate could have different parameters if needed.
Fan Unit – This piece of equipment was designed like a Fan Test report and could be used for Exhaust Fans, PRV’s, Return Fans, Transfer Fans, Building Relief, etc…
Fan Coil – this piece of equipment was meant to be used for smaller more unitary type of equipment, Unit Heaters, PTAC’s, Blower Coils, Fan Coils, etc… If you have a large enough Fan Coil unit it might be better setting it up as an Air Handling Unit.
Energy Recovery Unit – This is similar to an Air Handling Unit and Roof-top Unit, however when added to our system a Supply and Exhaust Fan are automatically added.
Hydronic Pump – This is the equipment for water pumps and will generate a Pump Test report.
Duct Traverse – This equipment item is used for duct traverses and generates a traverse report. It can be used for traversing any type of a face area including a coil. There are a few tricks to using this item effectively which will be covered later.
Fume Hood – This equipment works very similar to a Duct Traverse, but because it is a separate piece of equipment it has many parameters that are unique to a Fume Hood.
Chiller, Boiler and Cooling Tower – These equipment items are specific in their use respective to the piece of equipment.
Coil, DX Coil and Electric Coil – All of these produce a coil test report. The Coil item is for water and steam coils, DX for refrigerant coils and Electric Coil for electric duct heaters.
Balance Valve and Automatic Valve – These two types of balance valves can both be added to pumps.
VAV Box and VEV Box – these can be added under various pieces of equipment and are generally printed using the Summary report.
Supply Outlet, Return and Exhaust Inlets – These equipment items can be added to all equipment items that are involved in moving air. Summary reports and the Rolling Reports are the most commonly used reports for these equipment items.
Duct Leakage – This equipment item is use for Duct Pressure Testing.
Condo Unit – This is a specialty report that was designed to use the Rolling Report to keep all of the systems for an apartment style living space on one sheet of paper. It displays the HVAC unit detail information and then has Summary Report information for Supply Outlets, Condo Exhaust Fans and Condo Hydronics all on the same page in most cases. This equipment item is ideal for apartment complexes and assisted living facilities and saves paper by combining several reports on a single page.
ACH / Pressurization – This item is for recording number of air changes per hour, room and stairwell pressurization tests.
EditHow the Equipment Tree = Reports
With the AiRNAB digital documentation system the technician in the field is not recording information in the final report format, but recording information listed for each piece of equipment, information we refer to as parameters. The technician records unit data and measurements in the parameter fields for each piece of equipment. The technician Synchronizes their work at the end of each day sending the data that is local to their PDA up to the AiRNAB web server. When it is time to send the final report out each piece of equipment has both a detail and summary report that can be printed. When the report is clicked the system pulls all of the relevant data out of the database and produces a PDF report for every piece of equipment that is created for a project.
The content of the report is completely customizable by the TAB contractor. This means that any parameter name or terminology can be changed to reflect whatever that TAB contractor wishes. For example, default parameters in AiRNAB for motor data refer to “Sheaves” for the motor drive mechanism. This could be changed to “Pulley” if this is the preferred term. Data can also be grouped together in a variety of different Categories that appear in separate boxes on AiRNAB's Detail reports.
All equipment can have parameters edited, deleted or new parameters added in the Detail Report Set-up page on the Web Tool.
Report Cross-Reference Table
EditPre-Engineering a Project
Creating and pre-engineering a project can be done on the Web Tool or the Field Tool. Generally the Web Tool is better for job set-up then the Field Tool due to having a full sized keyboard for entering Area names from the blue print.
You create the job on the AiRNAB Web Tool by giving it a Project Name. There are some additional comment sections that can have information added such as, Sheetmetal Contractor, Engineer etc…
Once the project is created now you start adding equipment to the project. If you have 3 AHU’s on the job then you click on the AHU tree item and select (Add New) and then add 3 AHU’s to the system. If you use the range add, you simply need to define the starting and ending numbers; 01 to 03 and then the system will add the default equipment name “AHU” in the following manner: AHU-01, AHU-02, AHU-03. You can also type in customized equipment names in the Add List box. A list of names can also be copied to this box from an Excel spreadsheet if you prefer.
Once the equipment is added to the tree you can click the “+” sign in front of the AHU Equipment Tree icon and you will see each individual unit and its corresponding name. When you create a new AHU a Supply Fan and Supply Filter sub-component are added automatically by the system. Now you can click on the “+” sign for an individual unit to add other system components: VAV boxes, Supply Outlets and Return Inlets to name a few. These are then added to the system in the same fashion as the AHU’s that were just created.
This continues with all equipment relevant to the project until all equipment items and system components have been added to the equipment tree. It is recommended that large projects exceeding 1,000 items including outlets be split up into separate projects. For example, Davis Elementary – Air and Davis Elementary – Water.
Once the project is created it can be assigned to any number of Field Tools. Next time that technician synchronizes the new project will appear on their Field Tool.
EditUsing the Field Tool
Now that we have the project on the Field Tool, the technician
is ready to begin recording job data and measurements.
The home page on the Field Tool, shown to the right, has all of the projects listed that are assigned to that TAB technician.
The Field Tool is organized with the same equipment tree, also shown to the right, that you have on the Web Tool.
The technician in the field can add equipment to the tree, record equipment information, read airflows, take static pressures, measure volts and record all of this data digitally, in their Field Tool.
At the end of the day the technician will Synchronize their Field Tool by connecting to the internet using a Wi-Fi hotspot, or cradling the PDA that is connected to a PC that has an internet connection. Once connected the technician simply presses the Synchronize button at the bottom of the Field Tools AiRNAB home page. Now all of the information that is local to this Field Tool will be transmitted and shared with the AiRNAB server and available to any Web Tool Users that have access.
For more information regarding effective Field Tool use please see
EditBundling Your Final Report
In AiRNAB we say that you have some flexibility over the layout and format of the report, but generally the framework of the report is pre-defined. Every company using the AiRNAB service has complete control over the content and terminology used within the report, so that reports may look similar from one AiRNAB user to another, they will not be the same. You can also personalize your reports with a custom header with your logo and anything else you want in that space. If you need assistance with this please give us a call.
AiRNAB has several special reports and then a Detail and Summary Report for every piece of equipment. Please check the
Report Cross-Reference Table to see how AiRNAB reports match-up to other reports.
One thing that you will notice is that the AiRNAB service most likely offers more reports then you currently are using. Each piece of equipment has both a Detail and a Summary report; in most cases you will use one or the other.
Section A, Project Summary Reports has a Cover Page, Field Note Report and Deficiency Report. The latter two maybe reports that you are not currently using and you may be interested in learning more about. Section B, Specialty Project Reports has an Air Outlet Summary report. This report is the only report on the AiRNAB service that is incapable of receiving formatting changes of any kind. Most people are using the Outlet Summary report in Section E in its place due to the ability to modify what information is displayed and the order in which it is displayed.
Section C, Rolling Reports is actually grouping several individual reports together to give you a "by system" report output rather then bundling things individually. So, these reports duplicate other individual reports and by using them you will ultimately not need other individual Detail or Summary reports as a result.
Section D, Zone Summary Reports are just a different way to organize a Summary report for a different look or grouping of equipment. The best example of this would be a Balance Valve Summary that you also wanted to view sub-total of balance valves by various zones all served by the same pump. Again, this is an example of a report that NEBB or AABC may not currently require that is available in AiRNAB with the click of a button once the information has been collected digitally with the Field Tool.
Once again, Sections E & F are the reports that were designed to be the equivalent of reports that you are currently using.
Now that you have a little better understanding of the reports that are available to you using AiRNAB, let's discuss how to combine all of these individual PDF reports into a single PDF that includes all of the pages to your report in one file. If this file is small enough it can be e-mailed to your customers. Larger files can be burned to CD's and distributed electronically in that format offering you savings in the amount of paper and toner being used to make multiple hard copies of your final report. You can still print your final report to hard copy in addition to having the single PDF if you desire, or your customer requires a hard copy.
Last of all, bundling individual PDF files into one file currently has to be done with 3rd party products. Adobe Professional and Nitro PDF are two such software packages that have been very popular with many of our customers. If you have any detailed questions regarding your options here please give us a call on our technical support line.