The goal of aircondlounge.com is to provide useful information related to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) for people around the world.
“I believe that well-informed people can design and operate air conditioners more efficiently and thus, the environmental impact of air conditioners can be reduced.”
Yu Chang Zhen
the Founder of aircondlounge.com
Why aircondlounge.com was created
For many years, I’ve seen many poorly-designed air conditioning systems that are wasting energy and making people’s life difficult. At the same time, I’ve also seen many young engineers struggle to keep up due to insufficient guidance. Hence, I created aircondlounge.com to share my skills, experience and knowledge with the world.
About the name
The word “aircond” is short for air conditioning which is the main topic of the website. The word “lounge” gives a comfort and premium feel which reminds the quality of the content on the website. Together, aircondlounge strives to provide quality content with regard to air conditioning.
We contribute a small portion of our revenue to carbon removal.
At aircondlounge, we believe better knowledge will lead to better HVAC systems which in turn reduce their impact to the environment.
265 kg
of CO₂ permanently removed.
26 nos.
of carbon removal projects.
300+
of students contributed.
Our Products and Services
We offer a variety of products and services cater to different needs with regard to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). This includes educational content such as blog posts and online courses, design services such as duct layout and load calculation, and consultation services.
Testimonial
No matter is design services or online courses, we strive to deliver our promises and craft the best solutions for our clients and enrollees so that they gain actual value from using our products and services.
About My Past
I started my first job as a Project Engineer in a small company that specialized in building district cooling plants with thermal energy storage back in the year 2013. I was assigned to assist a few project managers on tender, design and submission work. Back then, I mostly just follow managers around meeting clients and taking notes. After a few months, I learned to become more independent and that’s when I and two other project engineers, who joined the company about the same time as me, were assigned to a hospital energy audit and retrofit project.
While working on the hospital project, I got to use many cool measuring devices such as temperature and humidity data loggers, ultrasonic flow meters and pitot tubes. Back then, I was primarily responsible for data analysis and reporting. In the following year, I worked on a primary school air conditioning system construction project. After the project was completed, I decided to move on to another company.
Nearly two years after my college graduation, I still worked as a Project Engineer. In my new company, I was assigned to work on two luxury high-rise residential towers simultaneously. But, the project had already started and we were behind the schedule. Thus, I was having a very difficult time trying to adapt and catch up with the schedule. At that time, I was managing more than 30 direct workers and two sub-contractors at peak with over a thousand air conditioners and mechanical fans waiting to be installed and commissioned.
It was very stressful because I barely have any experience in high-rise building construction. I was staying up until late at night almost every day during the commissioning stage. Furthermore, I had to do many tests by myself as workers were generally unable to handle instruments, causing delays on some of my RFIs and submissions.
Out of all, the bomba test is the most critical part for me. I teamed up with a few general workers to finish up the entire smoke spill and pressurization system as my supervisor had to bring another team to commission air conditioners for the residential units.
Fortunately, we were able to pass the bomba fire safety test in one shot and got all air conditioners tested and commissioned thereby minimizing the delay and ultimately obtaining the certification of practical completion (CPC) for the project. Although the project was very difficult for me, I grew a lot since then. I learned time and stress management as well as people and relationship management.
In the same year, my colleagues and I went to Beijing, China to attend one of the largest HVAC&R exhibitions in the world. The exhibition center is so big that we had to split into 4 teams and stay for 3 days. Every night, we’ll exchange the information and knowledge gained from each team.
Since we are in China, we wouldn’t want to waste it. So, we took the opportunity to go around Beijing and visited some tourist places like Great Wall, and Muzeum before flying back to Malaysia. I have many great memories of the trip to Beijing and we learned so many new things from the HVAC&R exhibition. Till today, I still keep in touch with most of my ex-colleagues.
Back to my work. After the two residential towers were handed over, my service team took over and I was transferred to work on another high-rise building but this time, it was an office tower. Remarkably, I was told that it is the first-ever hybrid chiller project in Malaysia. It has a whopping 54 units of hybrid chillers sitting on the roof. My colleagues and I always talk about it during tea breaks. The project also involved a few industry experts to guide all of us involved the project on energy efficiency and green building codes. I was lucky to be able to join a few factory visits with them and it was eye-opening for me.
After more than 4 years of working, I was promoted to become a Senior Project Engineer. I was doing multiple design projects including value engineering work, 3D Revit drawings production and the installation of VRF air conditioning systems for high-end retail stores. Meanwhile, I also reported directly to the managing director on business development work. Though I like my company at that time, I decided to challenge myself a year later.
I took an offer from another company and became a Project & Service Manager at the age of 28 where I was working primarily on hot water heat pump systems. For about 2 years, I was serving hundreds of customers every week, solving their hot water and heat pump issues before I decided to quit and start this website.
There is so much more I want to share but this is getting too long. If you want to know more details about me and what I do previously, you can check out my LinkedIn profile and follow me on various social media platforms. Also, you can subscribe to my newsletter using the signup form I’ve prepared around my website to get notified of new posts and updates on aircondlounge. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Yu Chang Zhen
Project Experiences
I’ve handled not many projects compared to people who worked in the HVAC industry for 10-20 years. However, I manage each and every project in detail; almost every aspect of the project from costing to commissioning and after-sales service, in Malaysia.
Menara TCM
A 32-storey premium office building designed for GBI and Leeds gold accreditations that consists of multiple office floors, a banquet hall and a food court.
- Evaporative hybrid chiller system
- Chilled water air handling & fan coil unit
- Variable air volume system
- Ultra violet germicidal irradiation system
- Pre-cool fresh air & CO2 sensor system
- Smoke spill & pressurization system
- Carpark CO sensor system
Tropicana Gardens
Two blocks of luxury high-rise condominium with 4 basement carparks, two recreation floors and multiple types of residential unit.
- DX split unit
- Multi-split system
- Residential VRF system
- Ducted fan coil unit
- Kitchen & toilet exhaust system
- Smoke spill & pressurization system
- Carpark CO sensor system
Village Grocer @ Tamarind Square
A premium supermarket that has high standard for the aesthetic of mechanical services.
- Air-cooled VRF AHU system
- Ductwork
- Noise and vibration control
- VRF centralized control system
BookXcess @ Tamarind Square
A large bookstore consists of a study area, a children area and common space for shoppers.
- Air-cooled VRF system
- Fresh air system
- VRF centralized control system
- Condensation prevention
SJK (c) Wangsa Maju
A primary school consists of office rooms, common space and a 11,000 sqft hall that can hold 1000 students.
- Air-cooled split AHU system
- Ductwork
- Noise and vibration control
Credentials
I’m a certified trainer and registered technologist (graduate) in Malaysia. In terms of my academy qualifications, I’m a Bachelor’s Degree (Honours) holder specializing in mechanical engineering. With my qualifications, I was an ASHRAE Affiliate member and IMechE Associate member. With regard to industry sills, I’ve been trained on Autodesk REVIT software and ISO 9001.
Certified Trainer (Malaysia) 
Registered Technologist (Malaysia) 
B.Eng. (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering 
ASHRAE Affiliate Member (2017-2020) 
IMechE Associate Member 
Autodesk REVIT Trained 
ISO 9001 Trained
HVAC System Knowledge
From my work, I learned about many air conditioning systems, both residential and commercial. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much experience in industrial applications. Nonetheless, these are the systems that I know and had experience with.
- Chiller System – Evaporative hybrid chillers, water-cooled chillers, air-cooled chillers, cooling towers & pumps.
- VRF System – Air-cooled VRF condensers, central monitoring system, VRF troubleshooting, VRF copper pipe, VRF AHUs & water-cooled VRF systems.
- DX Split System – Split units, multi-split systems, ducted split systems, AHU splits.
- Exhaust System – Toilet exhaust, kitchen exhaust & exhaust for mechanical rooms.
- Smoke Extraction System – CO sensors, fire compartmentation, fire dampers and fire curtains.
- Pressurization System – Staircase pressurization, lift lobby pressurization, VSD fans, motorized fire dampers and differential pressure sensors.
- District Cooling Plant – Thermal energy storage tank, load profile and underground pipes.
In addition, I also have a few years of experience with hot water system.
- Heat Pump System – Air source heat pumps, water source heat pumps and hot water storage tanks.
- Water Heaters – Instant water heaters, storage water heaters and heat pump water heaters.
aircondlounge.com – HVAC Education Site for the World