About Us

Hey all! 

Before I introduce myself and how I got to be here talking to you I just want to say thank you for stopping by and I really hope you’ve found my website useful in some way! 

If you have then it’s mission accomplished. If not, then please send me a message explaining any grievance you have. I’m always looking to improve the site in anyway possible and your feedback is crucial.

Well, my name’s Paul and tinyhousehugeideas.com is my labor of love. I’m an HVAC (heat, ventilation, and air conditioning) engineer by trade and a family man.

So, why did I start tinyhousehugeideas.com?

After the birth of my first child and the covid years that followed I basically wanted to spend more time at home. The opportunity arose to acquire tinyhousehugeideas.com and write about the things I know best, namely the installation and maintenance of heating and air conditioning systems.

Truth be told, the systems I’m used to planning and installing were always a lot bigger than the ones we discuss here on the site but the same logic applies. In the end, I’m sure I speak for most of us when I say we want to get value for money, and I can help you do this when it comes to heating and ventilating your home.

Whether you're looking for tips on maintaining your HVAC systems, troubleshooting common problems, or selecting the best equipment for your needs, I hope this website can be the ‘go-to’ resource for all your HVAC-related questions.

Am I qualified to give HVAC advice?

Besides 5 years “in the trade”, planning, installing (and sometimes maintaining) heating, ventilation, and AC systems, I’ve got a college diploma in HVAC and Refrigeration.

I’ve recently been working hard to provide you, the readers, with some qualifications that are verifiable online. I realize it’s easy for me to say I’ve done ‘this’ and ‘that’ but why should you believe somebody you’ve never met? 

Putting myself in your shoes, it’s a difficult one to solve. I did my college diploma 12 years ago and to be honest it isn’t even a very good qualification. Nothing tops what I've learned while actually working but I can’t really verify this knowledge for you.

So, one step I’ve taken to prove my skills and knowledge to you is by completing fully verifiable online professional HVAC certification.

Courses that don’t just require participation but require difficult exams to be passed and your knowledge to be tested and proven in the form of design projects.

I’m going to continue doing these courses and build up my verifiable online qualifications. It’s important that I stay up to date with what can be quite rapidly evolving techniques and technologies but also that I prove to you that I’m not just full of hot air.

Anyway, I started my new online education a few months back. I'm currently working towards the ‘Buildings as Sustainable Energy Systems Professional Certificate’ from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

It's a course about designing energy efficient and economical HVAC systems for buildings in the modern world. It is incredibly relevant to what I'm trying to do here at tinyhousehugeideas.com and I'm finding it much more demanding than when I studied HVAC & refrigeration all those years ago! Times have changed (for the better) and its a really fascinating subject (if you like your maths and physics!).

Delft University is actually ranked 10th in the world for Engineering and Technology, so this qualification will be something I'm really proud to finish.

The courses so far have covered a lot of ground that I am familiar with but there were a few surprises for me in the exams!

The certificate requires passing exams and projects in four courses. I've passed three so far and I'm patiently awaiting my final project to be graded for the remaining module.

You can actually see my certificates (so far) here: