PRESS RELEASE // OBITUARY
AVON LAKE, OH, June 6, 2022 -- The HVAC industry lost a true trailblazer May 3rd with the passing of Gregory Robert (Rob) Falke, longtime President of the National Comfort Institute (NCI). His death at age 67 was due to complications from COVID-19.
Falke’s career began after joining his father's residential/commercial HVAC company in Turlock, CA. His job was managing service and sales.
In his sales position, Falke quickly discovered that comfort issues plagued many buildings. As an avid reader of every HVAC technical journal and magazine he could get his hands on, Falke learned about an air capture hood and studied everything he could find on measuring airflow. He soon purchased his first balancing hood to help correct significant comfort issues in one customer's building. Before long, he was correcting airflow issues in buildings across California’s central valley.
In the late 1980s, Falke pioneered the idea of applying commercial balancing knowledge to residential HVAC systems. As he tested and fixed more systems, he wrote procedures and processes to consistently measure and record his findings.
Within a few years, he decided he needed to teach these concepts to fellow contractors and helped found the NCI with Dominick Guarino. Together they began the journey of training thousands of HVAC professionals.
Falke is considered the father of modern airflow testing and diagnostics and residential airflow balancing. His focus on airflow and duct system renovation led to the development of NCI's first-rate technical training team, whose focus on airflow remains key to that organization's mission today.
His final legacy began in 2016 when he launched and chaired an ASHRAE committee to develop a standard for measuring the performance of installed HVAC systems.
Four years later, ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 221: "A Test Method To Field-Measure And Score The Cooling And Heating Performance Of An Installed Unitary HVAC System," was published. This standard embodies Rob's and NCI's vision of how HVAC system performance should be tested and rated.
For more than 30 years, Rob published hundreds of articles in magazines across the HVAC industry. He spoke at dozens of conferences and association meetings, touching and improving the lives and technical skills of contractors across the U.S. Rob Falke’s influence will continue for generations.
ABOUT NATIONAL COMFORT INSTITUTE (NCI)
NCI is the nation’s premier Performance-Based training, certification, and membership organization focused on helping heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and electrical contractors to grow their businesses and become more profitable. To date, the organization has trained and certified more than 28,000 industry professionals in various disciplines, including system diagnostics and design, indoor air quality, air balancing, carbon monoxide analysis, and combustion efficiency. To learn more, please visit www.nationalcomfortinstitute.com.
For more, conatct Mike Weil, NCI Director of Communications, [email protected].