East Tennessee ASHRAE Members,
We will be having our October chapter meeting on Wednesday, October 21st at Rothchild’s Catering on Kingston Pike from 12:00 – 1:00 pm. Please come as early as 11:30 to socialize with other members and friends in our industry. Lunch cost will be $25 per person and will be payable by credit card, check, or cash at the door. 1 PDH will be available for attendance.
We are excited to announce that our October meeting will feature Keith Earhart
Presentation Topic: Resilience by Design Selection: Design and Equipment Choices that Deliver Real-World Impact
Resilient plants aren’t oversized—they’re well designed and well selected. This session shows how small, negligible-capex design and equipment choices create real redundancy and stable operation during tower, drive, or fan derates. We’ll cover chillers specified to ride through elevated lift when a cooling-tower cell is offline, modular tower strategies, fan arrays for graceful degradation, and Guideline-36-aligned controls. Attendees leave with field-tested heuristics, a submittal stress-test checklist, and owner-ready visuals to defend resilient options without budget shock.
Resilience is a design-and-selection decision. Redundancy often comes from specifying equipment that tolerates abnormal conditions with minimal cost premium. When a cooling-tower cell goes dark, the tower doesn’t “stop”—it returns hotter condenser water. If the chiller selection anticipates this and can operate at higher lift while maintaining surge and approach margins, the plant continues rejecting heat until operations recover.
This talk makes that repeatable: how to read chiller maps for worst-case lift, pair them with modular tower cells (N+1 logic, serviceable distribution), select fan arrays for graceful degradation, and apply Guideline-36 sequences that prevent hunting through transients. You’ll leave with a stress-test checklist and owner-facing justifications to secure approval.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Specify chillers that maintain capacity at elevated lift (e.g., tower cell offline / higher CWST) with verified surge margin.
Compare N+1 vs. modular redundancy for towers, pumps, and fans to gain resilience with negligible capex impact.
Use risk curves and variability bands to quantify downtime risk and defend selections to owners.
Align equipment and Guideline-36 sequences to stabilize part-load and event recovery.
Apply a submittal stress-test to catch single points of failure before procurement.
Speaker - Keith Earhart:
Keith Earhart is a senior engineering executive and founder working at the intersection of HVAC/MEP design, field operations, and data-driven delivery. He serves as SVP of Engineering & Strategic Accounts at CIS Industries, is founder/CEO of DesignFlow Build, an AI-native ERP for construction, engineering and service contractors. Keith’s recent work centers on off-design resilience: chiller and cooling-tower selections that sustain capacity at high lift with one tower cell offline, verified surge margin, and stable part-load behavior; paired with fan arrays, variable-speed drivetrains, and Guideline-36 sequences tuned for transients and degraded modes. He regularly presents to ASHRAE chapters on maximizing uptime and safety without bloated capex.
Register Here for the ETN ASHRAE May Meeting
Thank you,
Jared Murrell
ETN Chapter President 2025-27
865-696-8635