From HVAC to Whole-Home Performance – The Contractor Evolution

In this episode of the HVAC ADHD™ Vodcast, we sit down with Hal Smith of Halco Home Solutions and John Whitehead of Honest Home Performance to explore the evolution of HVAC contracting into true whole-home performance.

Hal brings more than four decades of experience building one of the most respected home performance companies in the country, while John represents a newer generation of contractors actively bridging traditional HVAC with diagnostics-driven building science.

Together, they offer a powerful conversation about where the industry has been—and where it’s headed next.

From airflow diagnostics and blower door testing to LIDAR load calculations, electrification, and heat pump readiness, this episode unpacks why modern HVAC can no longer be separated from the house itself.

Contractors today are being pushed beyond equipment replacement and into performance problem-solving—and this conversation shows what that transition actually looks like.

We dive deep into:

• How Hal scaled HVAC into a full whole-home performance business
 • Why more contractors are shifting from equipment replacement to problem solving
 • How airflow, static pressure, and blower door testing eliminate guesswork
 • Why LIDAR load calculations are changing HVAC design and sales workflows
 • The impact duct design and permanent load reduction have on system performance
 • How radon, moisture, ventilation, and IAQ connect to HVAC outcomes
 • Why heat pumps are forcing better design thinking across the trades
 • How contractors can create new revenue opportunities through performance services
 • Why “never stop learning” may be the biggest competitive advantage in HVAC today

Hal and John also discuss the growing overlap between HVAC, electrification, and home performance—and why contractors who adopt systems thinking will be positioned to lead the future of the industry.

Guest Links

Hal Smith: Halco Home Solutions

Website: https://www.halcoenergy.com/

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/halco/ 

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HalcoHomeSolutions

 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/halcohomesolutions/

John Whitehead: Honest Home Performance (Honest Heating & Cooling)

Website: https://www.honestheatingac.com/

 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Honest-Heating-and-Cooling-Inc/100083128580674/ 

 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-whitehead-17a341370 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

And we're live. Well, not live, but coming straight out of the Building Performance Association's National Home Performance Conference. This was a full circle moment for me. This was the very first conference I ever attended. And now HVAC ADHD is one of a few inaugural podcasts brought in to cover it. Man, that's just wild to me. So for this episode, we sat down with two guys at completely different stages of the same journey. Al Smith, who's been doing this for over four decades to build a powerhouse and home performance. And John Whitehead is right in the middle of making the transition from traditional HGAC into the home performance world. This conversation is exactly what this conference is all about. Real experience, real evolution, and real talk about where the industry is going. If you're still sizing systems off gut field, or you're starting to question everything you were taught, you're going to want to hear this one. Let's get into it. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the HVAC ADHD vodcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Begley. Today we're going to be talking with Hal Smith and John Whitehead. Hal is a longtime contractor in the home performance space and has done some amazing things with his business. We'll let him tell you about that as we get down that road. John is a first-time HVAC home performance contractor. He just started turning his HVAC business model into the home performance contracting business model and bringing that in. So the idea of the conversation today that we're trying to create with Hal and John is just the man that's been doing it forever, the OG with all the knowledge, passing that torch down to somebody who's just getting into the business in modern times because Hal has seen this business change over the years in ways that many people probably did not because of how long he has stuck with it and what he's turned it into. So without further ado, I'm going to let these two introduce themselves and we'll go from there. Hal, take it away.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

All right. Yeah. So uh my business is Hal Call Home Solutions. We do lots and lots of things in upstate New York. We're right between Rochester and Syracuse. We also go down and serve the Ithaca market. It's 23 counties. We have 190 some employees, just shy of 200. We have 125 trucks on the road. Been in business since 1984, so that makes 42 years we've been practicing this. Started as a HAC electric and plumbing business. I was very fortunate to get started at 12 years old. I didn't start my business at 12 years old, but I got entered into the business. So I was on a church youth group trip and the chaperone was a master plumber and he took a liking to me and I became his apprentice at 12 years old. So I I got out of I took trade school during high school, worked for a company for four years, and then I went in business at 22 years old. That was 1984, and 42 years later, here I am.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

So awesome. John? My name is John Whitehall. I'm out of Marchalltown, Iowa. And I've been doing HVAC since 1998. I went to trade school and K Nar trade school and started working for other contractors. And five years ago, my business partner and I started our business on a CD and tooling. And three years ago, we partnered up with NCI and Measure Quick and became ICOFOMAS Contractors. And that was a big evolution for us because we started measuring things that we used to guess about before. And it was a huge transformation for us because prior to that we were really good at mechanics and seeing the the turning on a motor and making the unit make the house comfortable according to customer standards versus analyzing the true comfort level by looking at things such as airflow and humidity and things that go along with that has really been an eye-over there for us. And as of April 1st, I started a new company called Honest Home Performance and Rayon Solutions. My main focus in our area is focusing on radon testing and mitigation, and then also offering blower doors and building envelope solutions and hoping to work with weatherization contractors to solve clients' customers and improve their customer or improve their comfort and efficiency in their homes. And I'm excited to be on the panel with Jeremy and Hal and be able to find some takeaways that I'm able to go home and implement it in my update-day operations.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Thank you, John. Happy to have you in the home performance world. Happy to have you sitting up here with us today. The first question is for that I'm going to ask today is for Hal. I just, since you've been doing it for so long, what when you first started bringing about home thinking about bringing home performance into your business as a business model, what was the biggest challenge at that time and being able to bring that the home performance world into the HVAC and plumbing world?

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Yeah, so you know, being from the New York and BPI was actually from New York, and they so they first started targeting New York contractors. So all the contractors around me at that time were much bigger than I was, all started taking this BPI classes. And I my brother was my HVAC salesman at that point, and I sent him to BPI class, and he came back and says, Hell, we don't want anything to do with this nonsense. That's a lot of work. I'm not looking to blow a door, right? So I said, okay. So we I let it go for about six months, and then we started losing some jobs to the contractors that were using BPI. And I said, I gotta go to this class myself. And so I took the class and I just bought in hook, line, and sinker, and my brother's no longer with me because he didn't want to bring a lug a blower door around. But yeah, it we just bought into the concept is the home is a system, and you've gotta you've got to look at the whole picture, not have the blinders on. And just to never look back. We immediately we took all of our sales force and we said, this is the way we're gonna do business. And here's some that you know did well and stuck with us, and there's some that said I'm so, but we just believed in it and we've marched ahead since.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

During that time, was there a lot of incentives at that time to support the work, or what was driving your work then? Did you have to do a lot of marketing, or how were you guys getting the the home performance work when you first started out?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, there were not incentives at that time. It was it was more just the the local competition in the Rochester market. We had some some large players that have now been bought by private equity firms. Sure. But you know, it was out competing against them for jobs, you know, that they were saying, hey, we're gonna, you know, we'll do this blower door, and you know, and so all of a sudden we looked inferior because we weren't doing that. And so that was probably the motivation more than anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Okay, so you had some good competition to in the New York market because, like you said, BPIs from there, building performance, energy star for homes originated there, energy star for existing homes. I forgot the name. What was that? Energy Star, something out of New York. Anyway, it was an existing home program, Energy Star Rain at one time, and it it came from New York. So there was a lot of support for that and a lot of competition, like Hal was saying. John, what is your biggest challenge right now as you go about bringing home performance into your business model?

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Right now, my my goal, it really isn't a challenge because in the circle of building performance, it seems so the people that know the truth really open the gates. What I've seen in HVAC space is a lot of the people who are gatekeepers are really gatekeeping on rules of thumb and on data that's made out the way their local did it, and they're not about to show you the way that they think is the right way. And so for me, my goal is learning and learning proper practices and being in the space with integrity around doing the best way the first time and not having to come back and say, I learned more, or I did it the wrong way. I want to be I am here with the intention in the first day, and have so far have been very lightning to learn under people who have held decades and decades of this experience who are just freely opening the gates of knowledge and offering their experience and to not learn improper practices like I did in HVAC.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Improper practices are something that plagues all these industries: HVAC, insulation, electric, every single one of the trades across the board have improper practices that get done over and over again. That's why this high performance space, as Hal was saying, excels the way he does it the way that it does. John, if you had one question for Hal as you're getting started with his years of experience, what do you think that would be? What's one thing if you're like, man, if I had a guy with 40 years of experience, I would sure like to ask him X in the context of HVAC two home performance? What do you think? 42 years, okay. 42, 42 going on 43.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

But say what was I would ask you, how what what was the biggest eye out there when you started testing the full envelope as far as ways to improve efficiencies and comfort in homes?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Yeah, I mean we started some, you know, this is how we did heat loss heat gains, right? And you know, when you when you start doing that right, and then you start getting involved in insulating homes, and you realize what the the true heat loss heat gains are, you you're going like, wow, oh my gosh, this is you know two-thirds less than what you know that it was telling you. And so it's you know, I mean, just there's just no comparison. I mean, I can't believe there's so contractors out there doing it so sloppily so wrong because the information is out there and do get I wish more HVAC contractors would would understand.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Absolutely. That brings me actually to a couple interesting things. We've been talking a lot about something called permanent load reduction, which is the concept of being able to use a load calculation as a thermal map in the home and go through and expose all the thermal deficiencies of the home and really integrating that into an HVAC business from a maintenance contract visit customer standpoint sort of concept. And the only reason that that's actually a viable concept right now is because of the LIDAR technology. So that's making a lot of people be able to use these apps like Ampli and Conduit Tech, and there's a couple other ones that have come online and walk through homes and do a load calculation in a fraction of the time that we used to be able to do it. So I say all that to ask how when you first started doing load calculations as a practice, how what was the procedure then, and how did you actually work that into your workflow from a day-to-day standpoint?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Well, I mean, we went from the the true rule of thumb, oh, it's you know, like this, and it's it's a hundred thousand VQ house. I mean, truly from there, and that's how it was done that yeah. Sure. Then we started, you know, for a lot of years we did block loads. You know, fairly accurate block loads. You know, when in today's world with with heat pumps and you're you're si and you gotta size every single room and you gotta you gotta come up with a heat loss heat gain for every single room, not just the block loan of the house. So now all of a sudden, you know, you've got to go in and and sketch out and measure every room in the house. Well, that that's a lot of work, and that's a tough job on a no-cost estimate. Right? Yep. So these tools we with our business we use amply. We love those guys. Not that the other tools aren't good, but you know, that LIDAR technology that truly just scans that house. You don't have to measure it, you don't have to sketch it, and and it gives you a a room-by-room, you know, true heat loss heat gain per room.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Were you guys doing that? Actually going into the house and measuring room for room and everything before the LIDAR, and then you eased into LIDAR, like, wow, this is just a thousand-time way better doing it, or you know, is there a difference?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Or some of my call them home solutions experts. Sure. Some of them were doing it better than others. Some of them claimed they were doing it room by room, but I found out that there were some shortcuts being taken because it was such a long process. So, but now you know we equipped them all with iPad pros and they've all got the and and they can't turn in a job without an Ampli. And John, what are you using Ampli or Conduit?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah, so I can speak to that jury. Three years ago at the HGAC School Symposium company create your relationship with conduit. Conduit, yeah. Working with Shelby has been in Joy, and we made a commitment with Shelby that we would use it on every single job unless there was extenuating circumstances. And we had run into a couple hoarder homes, a couple of uh other things of undesirable conditions, sure, where we haven't used it and actually learned a lot from thermal mass of a hoarder, right? Because the load calculation on an empty home versus the load calculation in the reality of a zero-degree day, right? Calculating the load and a 99% average day, and then separating the fact that they've got approximately 17 tons of thermal mass stacked in the ceiling. We actually had an instance where we properly sized the furnace and we put it in on a below zero stretch, and it was four days before the furnace actually caught up and worn up all the trays. Oh my goodness. So we've actually been standing homes for three years, minus just a couple. And when we made contact with Alex Me and looked into his training with WrightSoft and seeing the time commitment not only to do the work, but to properly train, it just made sense for us to use the product from conduit. It's been great relationship.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

What is your actual workflow? Like, when do you implement it? Is it at when they're like, oh my god, I need a replacement, or do you have a way to talk to your customers to go into the home and do that as a preemptive measure just to hand on file for when the time comes?

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Yeah, that's something we've talked about is to do that on maintenance with a pre-existing client. However, right now we're we're rocking just one device. So right now we do it on proposal. And we do okay. We're doing it for free, which I wouldn't advise if you can get around it because there's clearly a value there. Yep. However, for us, the monthly investment and the way that it separates us from our peers in our community. The majority of contractors in our area, like you alluded to, how are pretty much sizing it with three fingers on the curb. And so we we choose that that's included in our proposal. We don't share that data. If the customer wants to buy the data, they're welcome to. We haven't had anybody take us up on that yet, though.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

So, Hal, what advice do you have to scaling that type of operation? Like John said, he's using one machine right now, and our pay, how many people are you running right now, John? Service right now.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

We have six people on our team.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

There's two of us that do the so as those systems grow, do you have any advice to John on how to scale the home the home inspection portion of it? Like as far as being able to get into the home and can regularly do all of the home performance inspection measures and be able to grow that and scale it into the size of company that you have?

SPEAKER_00 16:48

Yeah, I I think you know, we don't do a light hour scan on every single job. We, you know, we get called into the job for many different reasons. It might be a replacement water heater that we got called in on, it might be you know a new electric panel. So we're if if somebody's interested in a new electric panel, we're not gonna do heat loss, he gained. Absolutely. Um but anytime there's any interest in in an HVAC upgrade or change, then we're you know certainly incorporating in the LIDAR stand. We do do a an energy audit for for all of these because in New York there's a program that that we actually get get paid. We we tell our customers it's not a free audit, it's simply no cost, and it's no cost because you already paid for it through your utility bill, the systems benefit charge that eight, nine dollars they pay every month. They the so they pay us$250 to do the energy audit. We certainly don't make any money on them, but it it it becomes uh at least we're paid for our time. Sure. So, you know, as part of that energy audit, we're we're doing definitely uh an air advice, you know, 30-minute report. That's part of it. We're doing a blower door, we're doing a dermal imaging camera. So, and then if there's any interest in an HVAC improvement or upgrade, then certainly that LIDAR scan is part of the process.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Perfect. So it sounds like and if it's a comfort complaint or an HVAC complaint, then HVAC complaint, then you guys are definitely going to implement the LIDAR. But if it's one of the adjacent businesses, it depends on what the business actually is. And for you guys, John, you're doing it every proposal that you do. Yeah, as long as it's as long as it's a system upgrade. Yep, we're we're doing it on every system. Do you have any data or do you have any anecdotal data about how that may have changed the amount of jobs that you're able to win? Do people seem like they're more prone to pick you guys because of the knowledge base that you present to them? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

It's it's definitely a it's definitely a talking point. We also use static pressure profiling, we use the true flow grid on occasion when when the ductwork is suspecting. And we also do ductwork system evaluation, take the measurements, and then we sit down at the table with the customer, we look at their existing equipment, we look at the stand, we we inform them that this is non-biased third party based on accurate measurements, that this is this is true life data, and then we compare the the lack of airflow, because you guys can definitely testify there's not been a system that we've run into yet that was properly sized or had properly properly uh proper amount of duct working. So it definitely gives us a leg up to start a conversation, and then at the end of it all, if we don't get a deal signed while we're there or are only asking that they use the knowledge that we've imparted in them to be more educated with the other contractors and to ask if they are proposing a system that's a ton bigger, how much ductwork do I have? Where where are you gonna get rid of it?

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Smart. I like your approach. That's very smart.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

We actually have implemented a process just recently where we got the the same version of the wholesaler notebooks with our company business card on them. And so when I go to talk to the client, we go to the basement to do the ductwork survey, I give them the notebook and our company pin with the NCI clipboard, and I take the measurements and I have them and write down the data, and then we use the assumed standard for our sheet lead, we uh you we assume we use the assumed friction rate of 0.6 to be on the side of caution and educate them on the fact that the majority of us were taught the wrong way to read the doctor later, we're reading it at a more accurate way, but still not precise. And we empower them, and in most cases, I feel like the majority of our clients have more wisdom in our industry than some of our peers.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

That's hilarious. How what is the biggest change that you saw in the industry that you can put a finger on from the time that you started doing home performance to today?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

You know, it it doesn't stop at home performance, you know. I mean you you go in and you there's a lot of companies out there insulating and air sealing homes, but they don't pay any attention to moisture mitigation. So they're throwing mold. So, you know, there's a lot more to the business. People ask me, why the heck do you do gutters? Well, I only do gutters when I do basement waterproofing, and I only do basement waterproofing when I try to mitigate moisture. Yeah. So they all go hand in hand. Sure. You know, somebody calls me to for an estimate on gutters and and they're getting four other estimates. From the cheaper stuff, you know, that's not the business wherein we don't do that. We only do gutters when it pertains to our basement waterproofing work when we're trying to mitigate moisture. But it you you this this business just it doesn't stop. It keeps you you gotta you gotta take all these pieces of the puzzle and bring them together. Uh I can I could say I John, you said you're in the radon business. I I bought a fancy new electronic uh radon test machine and I was testing it at my home. It's a$25 device, and I would have never in a million years guessed that I had a radon problem in my own home. I'm not on a hot spot on the map. I have a very dry, very tight, everything's masonry, there's no cracks. And this this new device is reading 16 picocurries. And my wife is ready to kill me. She's in the medical profession. Uh so she wasn't happy. But so I said this device must be garbage. So I went and I went and got a carbon absorption test, and four days later, 16 picocures. I'm going, oh my gosh. Thank goodness, one fan with two suction points, I'm down to 0.08. So I solved it pretty quickly. So what because of that, we're now every I I equipped all my trucks with with radon carbon absorption tests, all my technicians, all my installers, they're giving these tests out. So far, we're you know, we're giving 10 tests out, three are coming back with over four equality. Holy crap! So the the potential for radon is way more than I ever dreamed out there.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Yeah. And to speak to that a little bit, how that's something that I've been really picking up on at this conference is the difference between trending data and spa data. So when we're testing any of these things, humidity or radon or carbon dioxide, we're looking at either a moment in time or a trend. So the carbon absorption test, when used properly, when installed properly, when stored properly, when sent properly, has a potential for accuracy. So too does the continuous radon monitor. However, it is only a snapshot in time for the 48-hour mandated period. Any of these tests are best to look at the trending data, right? So if you had a bulk water issue, you would clearly not necessarily need a whole house dehumidifier for the rest of your life. So too is radon. If you have stack effect on a windy day, if you have a deep frost level, if you have a bulk water below the slab issue, it's a trending relationship. And that's something in our industry that a lot of people don't take into account. That's been a real talking point that I've noticed throughout this conference so far is are we looking at a snapshot in time or are we looking at a long-term trend? And that's something that's very important with any of the data. A lot of people in our industry who are the snake oil type will point out something that's that's a temporary ETD and come up with a really high dollar permanent fix that really is a not a cost-effective measurement. And so that's something that's been an Iometer for me on the radon testing side of things, and also using the data as far as pressure field extinction extension to see that I'm not sacrificing the customer's energy, I'm not costing them an energy. Sure. And that's something that since I've met you in the last few years, Jeremy, that I've really started learning a lot about is the Pascal and looking at we really only need five Pascal of suction. And if we create 20 and we get down to that 0.5 raise, yeah, we're still wasting 15 Pascal of the block. Sucky conditioned air, it went from a hundred dollar operating cost a year to a five hundred dollar operating cost a year over 20 years. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:23

So this this conference really opened my eyes to that. I think you know, the point that was just made here that Hal started out making and John really drove home is like it's even connected beyond what we typically assume. Like we sit here and we talk about home performance, and that's a very specific thing, and it means a few things. But like when you really start looking at the house as a connected whole system, the systems go way beyond even the stuff that we as top-level professionals would even, you know, really look at on a day-to-day basis. So, like, I applaud both of you for like taking that step and connecting it. And then the John, you know, that applying the the building science to being able to save energy there. That's a pretty amazing leap that you just made. So I applaud that type of growth. And I think that how you talked about you guys just you keep growing and you just ended on or started doing a really unique IAQ program. You want to talk about that for a minute?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yeah, so you know, we're we're using this to Sarah Advice, the 30-minute test, and it gives uh to John's point, it gives us a quick 30-minute look and time. But when when we compare that and then we do a four-day test, they're pretty close. You most times. You know, you're not whatever you see in that first 30 minutes is a pretty good, pretty good indication of what you might see for a long-term test. And so that you know, that just opens up conversations and and if if there's some things that are of concern, then we would do, you know, a longer test. Um something else that we've just just getting into now knew my wife who is a director of nursing for 32 years, uh, joined our company, and she we're we're starting to work with the healthcare industry and and c customers that are asthmatics and how to how to improve the breathing in their own home. And then there's there's money out in New York State to help these customers improve their home. And and the whole objection is to that they don't have an asthma attack and have to go to the ER. So we're able to take that funding and then also braid that with some some of the low-income funding that's out there that we can insulate in air seal homes and do that, but but that M power plus money doesn't allow us to make some of the changes for for better breathing in the home for to treat the asthma. So we're very excited just getting started with this to pair those two things together and really make a bigger difference in in the homes.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

I heard you talking about that earlier, and and that's why I kind of run it off. To me, it's like such an amazing thing. I can remember back when, right when they were starting to formulate Obamacare, they did a bunch of studies on sick building syndrome and school-age children, and they took a data set of school-aged children and they said, these kids miss school more than anybody else due to health reasons. Let's look at what those health reasons are. And then when they started digging into it, they found, hey, it's not anything that we can put our finger on. Let's go look at the home. And then they called in energy auditors into the home, and they came into the home, and then they said, we need to do a study on this. And they started a small sample study where they actually started fixing the homes and still monitoring the children and seeing how much school they missed in correlation with the home being weatherized and and and the IAQ improved and everything like that. And lo and behold, the kids school the amount of times that the kids missed school for being sick went way down, some of them almost to nothing. So they were just getting ready to put into the Obama part of Obamacare. The thing they were trying to do is exactly what he's talking about here is like get Medicare to first get involved and send a nurse out to the home, and then have a professional like Hales Group come out to the home and do an evaluation and fix the home, fix the sick building syndrome, and then the kids aren't sick anymore. It's not high AQ problems, it's not allergy problems, it's not sickness problems, and it's not carbon monoxide problems. Because one thing about CO a lot of people don't realize is that it at low levels in children, it manifests just carbon monoxide poisoning and sickness, it manifests just like colds and stomach flues and things like that, do. So a lot of these kids could have been having these symptoms from water heaters not venting properly or all this different stuff that's going on and on and on in the home, and they're just never getting better and they're always missing school. To me, hearing him say that that's now a program in New York, it blew my mind. It's like a big deal. And I think that other people, like including you know, Sean, as you move up in your home performance world and everybody else, should really start thinking about how they can do what these guys are doing or how they can bring that program to their community because it is a next level service that can solve a lot of problems for people if you figure out how to fund it the right way. So that's a little bit of a soapbox, but like I was just blown away by by the that them doing that program there.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Jeremy, I can jump on that box a little bit too. Since we joined up with National Comfort Institute, every single furnace that we maintenance, we do a full combustion analysis. All of our technicians carry personal CO alarms. We do sell low-level carbon monoxide alarms. It was an eye-opener, and for those of you in the room who don't know, the actual big box carbon monoxide alarms will not go off until 70 parts per million, and not until after one to four hours of exposure. So, what that means in plain English is that you could be exposed to 69 parts per million for your full life legally. They meet the standard. However, if they don't pass the threshold of 70, they're not required to alarm. And there's been a lot of studies and a lot of tests done where people in the other room here, some of the vendors have actually taken those alarms and put them in bags with over 100 parts, and they didn't go off for six to eight hours. And so my advice to anybody in the room or anybody listening to this on the internet is to make an investment in your own health and have a low-level CO alarm. Our NSI 6000 monitors alert at 15 parts per million after five minutes of exposure. And when we when we deliver those to our clients, we advise them to take them everywhere because they're battery controlled. I even say take it to Bingo since it's the snow clear anymore.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

Man, they won't be holding up how how long have you been coming to this conference now? How many years? Like you're when was your first? Do you remember your first one? Ten years, I'm guessing. Ten years. And over the 10 years, what keeps you coming back? Like, why do you come back year after year? I I always learn something every single time. That's the amazing thing about this group right here. Like, it doesn't matter how many times you come to these conferences, and especially this one. I tell everybody this, like, I'm not saying it because I'm here. Like I've said this many, many times in my life. Like, this conference is from a learning perspective, like where you want to come to learn and get the most value from it. This is the conference. There's uh there's other ones out there that put a lot of fluff in it because they need marketing dollars, and you know, you see the trade-off. Like, we don't have some of the cool fancy food and all that stuff here, but like what you do have is a different type of food that's feeding you in a much better way. So, like sometimes you know, the trade-off is a trade-off, but this particular conference provides that type of education to new and old folks alike. And on that note, John, so far, what's the best thing you've got out of the conference? What's uh your favorite thing? Let's put it that way. What's the favorite thing you've got out of the conference?

SPEAKER_02 34:10

First and foremost, I owe my attendance to the Amply podcast and seeing Peter chose. From from you, from Amply, from a lot of people, and hearing Peter talk about the conference was the draw for me. And today I got to sit in on zonal pressure testing with the blower door and looking at the the zonal pressure difference between different spaces, which was really intriguing to me, and breaking down the whole blower door and seeing how much of that's actually coming from the attic and how much of that's coming from the garage if it's attached. And yesterday's session with TEC Jake and Bill really wrote down the numbers on the TEC, the TEC workflow, and breaking down the end factor between five is a large portal, a large lack of integrity in the structure, and seven and beyond is defy a thousand cuts, and making that connection of this is where I can break out my Inverite camera, you look for the mother hole that's costing you, or this is where I can get the smoke puffer out and see where I can just empower the client to hey, seal these cracks and save yourself some money.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Quick commercial, Joe. Sure. Six weeks from now, there's another BPA conference in beautiful Saratoga, New York. It's a regional conference. It's gonna be wonderful. Come and see us in New York.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

The regional, that's one thing I love about BPA too, is they always do the regional events, and it's a great way to get little tidbits of the knowledge that you may not be able to come get the whole thing, but get some chunks and you know, in your own backyard, that's always a beautiful thing, right? So let's see here. I I I got a few things I still want to ask you guys. What how much time do we got left here? 250, probably about 10 minutes or so. So I'll save the last thing for last that I always do. But the one question that I wanted to ask how is where do you see the HVAC industry specifically out of the trail, all the trades, where do you see the HVAC industry going next? And now that we're here with the inverters and the technology starting to in AI starting to make its way in the HVAC and stuff like that, like from your experience, like you've been in a long time and you've seen a lot of changes along the way, and even more so because you're in home performance. So, what is it you think, like, where do you see the HVAC industry headed?

SPEAKER_00 36:55

So in New York, they you know, they've had lots of heat pumps and incentives, right? And they just now are finally saying, you know, we've been incentivizing people based on the size of the heat pump. So a five-ton heat pump got the biggest rebate. So guess what, guess what heat pump got put in all these houses? So they're now finally changing it, and they're saying, look, it you're not gonna get a heat pump rebate in until first of all you turn in a blower door and you have to calculate how many air changes per hour, you have to get it down below 10 air changes at a bare minimum to say the house is even close to being heat pump ready. So they're finally changing, you know, and and towards the better. That's a long time in coming there. Yeah, it certainly is, but uh it uh, you know, but but what that means is there's a lot of HVAC, you know, in New York there there's there's close to a thousand heat pump installers that work with this clean heat program, and there's about 75 contractors that are doing it shell work, so that's yeah, I hear it. That's the ratio there. So there's a lot of HVAC contractors that need to learn about home performance and shell work.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

Still a lot of work to be done. Yeah, and John, I'll ask you the same question. Where do you see HVAC at it from your perspective perspective?

SPEAKER_02 38:22

Knowing what I know now, I would say that the old school folks who are setting their ways and their rules of thumb are either gonna need to jump on the high performance ship or they're gonna need to uh swim to shore or sink on the way. I think that the things that used to pass were good enough. Our industry has gotten away with good enough. The bar has been so low, nobody called to complain or kicking butt. It doesn't work anymore. The mismatch systems with the mismatched up were the temperature difference with the heat pump versus the temperature difference with the furnace when we go from fossil fuel to electrification. The people who aren't on the high performance ship are like saying they're either gonna sink or they're gonna swim their bugs off and try to eat.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Your your comment reminds me of Dom from National Comfort Institute. Well, he is one of my mentors. A few years ago, he said a thing that has stuck with me this whole entire time. He said, We went from working on Time X's to Swiss Swiss watches overnight. And he's like, and that is a scary thing for a lot of these guys out here. So I hope that the guys like you, I hope your prediction is right. I do hope it swims to the top instead of the bottom, because if not, I don't know what comes next because the technology is not gonna step stop improving. So these guys have got to start learning where they have actually really never started learning, you know, beyond just the typical HVAC school. And, you know, there's still guys bending metal and stuff, you know, they're 40 years old. Like that's not gonna fly anymore. So people need the education is paramount. I appreciate you guys being here today. We're almost up on the time. I have one more question I ask all my guests this at the end of every show. So I'm gonna let both of you guys answer it. Is if society ended today and you had to write something on the wall to leave behind for the next society that was formed, what would that message be?

SPEAKER_02 40:17

You think about it, how I'll go ahead and watch an update of Jeremy's podcast at the kitchen saying I'm ready for this. I would borrow a line from a good time. Honestly, inemotional when I think about it line. He says, never stop alerting. He's also taught me that you're never loved. Because, like Ty, the people in this industry who know the truth, they're here to share it with you. These rooms full of women and men of the trades who have opened their their mouths, their hearts, their brains, and their arms to embrace us. And those who are willing will succeed, and those who won't get what they sell.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Very well put. Appreciate that. Yeah, and I guess for me, do the right thing. You know, we've always been about customers for life. And you know, sometimes you don't always you leave the job and you don't make money, but if you did the right thing for the customer, that money will come back to you someday. And so do do the right thing.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

A thousand percent. Love it. All right, guys, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today. Al and John, it's been an awesome conversation. Thank you very much.