Digital Zeus™ HVAC Tool & Instruments Journal

HVAC PROTech® actually has it’s conception rooted in the Usenet Newsgroup of alt.hvac, the real pioneer of today’s bulletin board forum configurations. The problem with alt.hvac is that it is operated in an umoderated format - which is to say anyone with a newsreader has the ability to type in anything they want to type - often spam, off-topic and intentional flamming threads are the result.  Homeowners consistently seek DIY information and advice from the qualified users of the alt.hvac board. The frustrating thing about that being the truly valuable technically based threads and posts made by those qualified users are often lost in a sea of spam and ignorant “How do I, and How much should this cost.” type threads.

There are boards on Usenet that are moderated, and there is a rather involved process to initiate the proposal of creating a new board - especially a moderated board. A moderated board would, at least theoretically eliminate the spam and other OT threads so the technical information and/or threads of a social nature, between mutual tradesmen would maintain their integrity and make it a viable proposition to efficiently locate those specific threads for reference purposes. Good idea that required a boatload of logitstical peripherals to become cohesive. And a degree of the mechanics of the internet that I did not posess at that time. So the condensed version, the alt.hvacprofessional.series.moderated was granted a Charter and for at least an unknown period of time was propogated on a very few selected ISP’s. The afore mentioned peripherals were not in place and were far too complex to ever really wrap my mind around - so that version of HVAC PROTech® was reluctantly abandoned.

The subsequent version of HVAC PROTech® was actually somewhat successful but was also destined for limited success simply due to the limited utilities offered by Yahoo! The HVAC PROTech® Group and it’s subsequent sister Groups, formed to increase alotted file limitations imposed by Yahoo! very quickly became essentially a sprawling complex of individual Groups with only the trade and the developer as a common theme. It became apparent very quickly that this type of configuration and the basic concept were not compatible with one another. And while the Groups are for the most part still breathing, and receives an occassional request to join from some obscure country.

The concept was at this point shelved. Approximately 6 months, give or take a month following the shelving I happened upon the php software used for the bulletin board type forums. This was a revelation to me at least being under the impression up to that point that the operation of a bulletin board involved massive servers, complex software, code writing abilities, hosts and a whole lot of other things that I had none of. Here it all was for free - my original ideals of what could be facilitated through these free servers and hosts held little resemblence to what could realistically be facilitated through them, but nevertheless, I saw this as a very good starting point. And that’s what I did.

The next set of circumstances that occurred, contrary to what many believe was shearly coincidental. Within 2 maybe 3 weeks of actually getting the HVAC PROTech.com® Forum online, on the other side of the coin the big dog on the block, HVAC-Talk was being acquired by Penton Publishing. As with any acquisition of this magnitude Penton and HTalk had more than their fair share of rough spots to get sanded down, in the interim a few of the members of HTalk became restless and started looking for alternatives. A member of HTalk that I had become acquainted with in the chat room at HTalk was instrumental in bringing a significant number of very high quality members to the HVAC PROTech® Forums. Some of those original members are still active on the Boards and some have moved on to other boards or back to HT. Of those that are no longer on the Boards several of them are greatly missed and respected both as men and members of this trade.

The HVAC PROTech® Forums maintained essentially the same Charter as that established back in the Usenet days - in a nutshell, for Professionals by Professionals. The Forums were, very early in development configured to allow very restricted access to limited and selected boards by homeowners - this paragraph of our Mission Statement was eliminated within about 2 or 3 months by a unanimous decision of the Board of Moderators and then by the general membership. Since that decision the HVAC PROTech® Forums have for all intents and purposes choked itself off from access to any of the Boards by anyone not verified as members of the HVAC/R & Controls trade. HVAC PROTech®  registration is free but requires the prospective member to request registration of an account, the potential member must provide current contact information, and degree of involvement in the trade - the process is highly restrictive but eliminates interaction with homeowners, hacks and DIY’s and thereby permits free discussion of costs, technical issues and other elements of the trade that traditionally could not be discussed.

One critical element in the original concept still absent from the Forums was a technical documents repository - we made many, many efforst and attempts through various servers, hosts and even member ftp to drive configurations - most ill advised and all unsuccessful in producing the vision of a true Technical Archives. A good friend in California invested a tremendous amount of personal time and resources in research, software acquisition and technical texts to teach himself how we could produce this concept consistently. Eventually leading to the development and birth of the HVAC PROTech® Technical Archives site facilitated through our dotorg domain. Today those Archives represent the largest most technically diverse collection of indexed and searchable technical documents, files and HTML pages dedicated solely to the trade on the internet.

The HVAC PROTech.com® Forums have been the developing grounds for some innovative, unprecedented features. Our exclusive FieldTest Evaluation Threads, the Technical Archives, non-corporate sponsorship and now our latest vehicle Digital Zeus™. You can learn more about Zeus and why he’s here in the About Zeus page on this blog.

HVAC PROTech.com® then and now has always been for the technician. People, ideas, members and servers may change with the passage of time - the concept of, “For the Technican” never will. Register and visit us today.

HVAC PROTech.com® http://www.hvacprotech.com

HVAC PROTech® Technical Archives http://www.hvacprotech.org

Digital Zeus™  http://digitalzeus.wordpress.com