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29 minute read
What happens when you combine deep technical expertise, building science, and a commitment to doing HVAC right?
In this episode of The Heat Pump Podcast, we sit down with Brynn Cooksey—founder of Air Doctors Heating and Cooling, HVAC U, and a longtime leader in whole-home performance. Brynn’s journey takes us from his early days as a tech working alongside his father to running one of the most forward-thinking HVAC businesses in the Midwest.
His secret? Don’t play the price game. Play the diagnostics game.
The Power of Building Science
Brynn explains how embracing building science helped his company escape the “race to the bottom”—the box-swapping, lowest-bid dynamic that plagues much of the industry. Instead, his team leads with comfort, efficiency, and trust—delivering measurable, science-backed improvements that customers can see and feel.
At the heart of his process is in-home diagnostics. Think thermal imaging, pressure tests, and duct sizing analysis—not just glossy proposals. Brynn’s philosophy is simple: let the customer “buy” instead of getting sold. Show them what’s wrong, explain why it matters, and guide them to the best solution.
Lessons from the Field
Brynn also shares insights from a heat pump pilot program in Michigan, built in collaboration with Pearl Edison. From dual fuel designs to system sizing and load calculations, he offers a refreshingly honest look at what it takes to electrify the right way.
Key takeaways include:
- 🔬 Diagnostics build trust. Homeowners can’t “unsee” thermal leaks or undersized ducts.
- 🧠 Customer education wins. Teaching homeowners what’s really going on in their homes leads to higher-quality installs—and less price shopping.
- 🌡️ Dual fuel isn’t a compromise. In cold climates, it’s often the smartest step toward electrification.
- 🚫 Bad installs hurt everyone. Oversized or poorly designed systems can lead to $1,500+ utility bills and shattered trust.
Why It Matters
Brynn isn’t just running a profitable business—he’s helping chart a path for HVAC’s future. As incentives expand and heat pump adoption accelerates, we need more contractors who know how to design and install systems that actually deliver.
This conversation is a blueprint for that kind of business: smart, humble, diagnostic-first, and laser-focused on results.
Timestamps:
[00:00] - Introduction to the episode
[02:26] - Brynn’s background: Air Doctors, HVAC U, and Pearl Edison
[04:31] - Shifting from HVAC to whole-home performance
[05:26] - Using building science to escape the race to the bottom
[06:42] - In-home diagnostic sales process and customer education
[09:04] - Charging more by offering more value
[09:45] - What Pearl Edison does and how it benefits contractors
[13:43] - Why electrification isn’t always the first step
[16:51] - Dual fuel systems as a practical solution in cold climates
[19:14] - The danger of “Heat Pump Cowboys” and bad installs
[23:56] - Making heat pumps profitable for quality contractors
[31:21] - Helping customers understand their systems and bids
[35:57] - Final thoughts on solving the trust gap and winning customers
Connect with Brynn Cooksey:
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Brynn Cooksey: One of the things I specifically tell customers when we put forced air systems in and they were oversize, the leaky duct systems and you had to warm supplier temperature of forced air furnaces, and it masks a lot of our mistakes. And speaking honestly, I put it in hundreds of systems that were not sized right. Customers were happy just because the oversize furnace had a leaky duct system, and it kept the customers comfortable to an extent, but the customer didn't know that it could be better. When you put in a heat pump, the heat pump doesn't have that upside, so all your mistakes are exposed.
[00:00:39] Ed Smith: Hey everyone, quick public service announcement. We just put out our first e-book. It's our top ten heat pump sales tips that we've gotten from the experts we've had on this podcast. It's totally free, so if you want it, click the link in the show notes to get your copy. Okay, on to the show. Hi, and welcome to the Heat Pump podcast. I'm Ed Smith.
[00:00:59] Eric Fitz: And I'm Eric Fitz. We are co-founders of Amply Energy.
[00:01:02] Ed Smith: Today we are thrilled to have Bryn Cooksey joining us, founder and owner of Air Doctors in Michigan. Thanks for being here.
[00:01:11] Brynn Cooksey: Thanks for having me. Ed and Eric, I've been a fan of you guys's podcast for a long time. It's funny, I stumbled upon your podcast on accident. I was in the airport. I listened to other favorites like HVA School and Bones podcast, and Spotify was giving me a recommendation. So I was looking at the recommendations and I see this Heat Pump podcast and I'm like, what is this? I haven't heard of this before. And I started looking into it and you guys are interviewing all my friends, so I've been hooked ever since. So thanks for having me.
[00:01:40] Ed Smith: You know, Peter Troast, who runs Energy Circle, I do. When we were launching the pod, we were talking to him about it. He did our marketing website, and so we go to him for tons of marketing advice, and we're like, we're thinking about launching a podcast. And he said, what's the title going to be? And we said the Heat Pump podcast. And he gets this really sour look on his face like, what's wrong? He's like, it's very descriptive. And so he said we shouldn't call it that, but I actually don't know if it's a good title or not, but I'm glad Spotify recommended it to you. And at least you listened to it because your friends were on here.
[02:11.88] Brynn Cooksey: Absolutely. I thought the title was there was no guesswork. I got in, I knew what I was expecting, so.
[02:11.88] Eric Fitz: Awesome.
[02:20.32] Ed Smith: Let's hope we never pivot onto focusing on something else in HPC. We're pretty locked in.
[02:24.76] Brynn Cooksey: You have a lot of explaining to do, that's for sure.
[02:27.28] Ed Smith: Yeah, totally. Bren, you do about 15 things. Would you paint us a picture of your professional, extracurricular, even a sense of like how you spend a week?
[02:37.32] Brynn Cooksey: We get a lot of jokes about that. People swear I have a clone. No, er, doctors, which is our crown jewel. That's our home performance contracting business based out of Southeast Michigan. And we evolved from a heating and cooling company and basically that business, we take the whole house approach, so we do attic air sealing, we do insulation, we do the mechanicals. And our goal in that business is basically to help customers Get total house renovations and then actually help them save money on their utility bills and also gain comfort. So that's a, I'll say, small to medium sized contracting business that we run. And really my day to day is not much into the business just because I have a phenomenal team. So it takes care of itself. But I did found it after some help from my parents initially when they were in the business HVAC you years ago. I also taught for a couple of community colleges in the area, and we found HVAC because we were getting requests to go into contractor shops and actually help them with technical training, reducing callbacks and doing ride alongs.
[03:37.28] Brynn Cooksey: So we've got enough requests where we formed a business and that business has grown substantially, and now we're doing a lot of workforce training. So I'll say the bulk of my time, I'll say my week is in HVAC. You doing training and content creation. We do a little bit of work with Edison Edison. We were their initial contractor when they started up their business. And we'll talk about that, I guess, a little bit later in the show. But we. My robot Pearl Edison, is the design and consulting to help them implement building science into their software platform. And then another company we have a really good relationship is Teespring. They help take a lot of our in-person building science courses and help make them into online and on demand courses that we can get to many more people who are looking for training. So it sounds like a lot. But you know what the common theme is, is all built in science. So I'll talk to anybody who talks to me about building science. So they just happen to want to listen.
[04:32.36] Eric Fitz: So man, that's quite a range of projects businesses activities that you're involved in. It's super impressive. And yeah, it's going to be fun to dive into those a bit more. Can you actually go back a little bit and like how did you get into this space. Why building science, why HVAC so HVAC?
[04:49.76] Brynn Cooksey: I have a story similar to other people. I was doing it as a kid with my father. So during the summer times and when I was out of school, it was like my first high school job. So I picked it up. And then when I got to the age to support myself, it was a natural progression. I was in HVAC and I thought myself to be a pretty conscientious technician. I cared about what I was doing and I always wanted to learn. But I got bit by the building science bug. I took a building science class about 20 years ago and it blew up my ego. Boy did I learn what I didn't know. I was able to find problems that I didn't even know was there. And ever since then, I just incorporated building science into our business practices.
[05:27.41] Ed Smith: And so your sales and design process, like having been in having er, doctors be an HVAC company that's now a home performance contracting company, I heard you say during one of your presentations I was watching, you said that you moved into more building science and holistic to avoid. I think the quote was a race to the bottom of box swapping. Tell us more about how this differentiates you and how it helps you avoid that race to the bottom.
[05:53.85] Brynn Cooksey: Great question. So if you look at the contracting business as a whole, especially with HVAC businesses. You're trying to move products and equipment. And if you don't have anything to separate yourself as far as marketing, you're going to be grouped together by the customer. And without education, the customer is going to look for the lowest price. So using building science, we were able to show the customer that they had problems. The customer knew they had problems, but they just didn't know that there was a measurement to identify that problem. And once we tied the building science and actually given that customer education, we were then able to show the customer those additional problems. And at the same time, that presentation separated us from other contractors. So building science, the education piece with the customer has been huge. It's been a success for our business.
[06:43.17] Ed Smith: So Brant totally makes sense when we talk to our customers about exactly this thing. There's this question around what is the actual process look like? What is the in-home process look like? What is the sales process look like? How do you not spend too much time but enough time? It's like, I'd love to just go for a double click, like when your salesperson is going to a home, like, what is that experience for them and the homeowner look like to set up this building science oriented differentiation for you?
[07:16.41] Brynn Cooksey: Very good question. So it starts with our CSR script. And basically our CSRs are trained to get enough information from the customer to set the stage for the salesperson to go into the house. Once the salesperson makes it there, we start the conversation by trying to flesh out exactly why the customer called. Was it high utility bills? Was it a comfort issue? Why did they call us? And we kind of have a guided survey. We walk them through just to kind of, kind of all the bad news out there so we can talk about it. Once we get those responses, we take a process called a field trip, and we'll do some level of diagnostic testing to help the customer understand that their problem is measurable. And it can be resolved. And we can test out to prove that we fixed it. And once the customer sees that level of detail, we let the customer buy. We don't sell. So they actually get to tell us what they're interested in. And they can't unsee what they saw. If we ran a test we have a thermal imaging camera. They can see the leaks. We measure static pressure. They see the static pressure is high. We can prove that the duct system is undersized. Once they see that, they can't unsee it. A high level at the time. The customers are impressed by what we did. None of our competitors are doing it, and as a result, they're more interested to actually do business with us. So that's our process.
[08:37.41] Ed Smith: Can I just make sure I got that? So the CSR call gets a bunch of info. Then there's a sales call where the salesperson is there to better understand the problem. And then there's a second trip to the home before install. That's called the field trip. And that's when you do the testing or those two things combined.
[08:52.69] Brynn Cooksey: Those two things go together. So the conversation that sales call in the field trip are together at the same call.
[08:57.57] Ed Smith: Okay. Got it. And so it's after discovering enough about the problem, then they'll know what to investigate more deeply for the field trip aspect. Okay.
[09:46.45] Ed Smith: Very helpful. Can I ask you a techie question? But does this lead you to charge a bit more than your competitors?
[10:14.73] Brynn Cooksey: Absolutely. We're no bones about it. We're probably, if not the highest, pretty close to it, but it's not the same service. Again, we're not swapping a box. We're providing solutions. We test in and test out on every project. And as a result, to hit those numbers, we have to have the diagnostic testing. We spend a ton of training. The techs and comfort advisors have to be trained in order to use the building performance best practices and educate what the customer. So you need soft skill training. So we're not the cheapest, but we say we're the best because of the solutions we provide.
[10:15.65] Ed Smith: It's a completely differentiated service and it makes sense to me. And that's what it is to avoid the race to the bottom. The race to the bottom is a competition of price. So I figured that's what you would say. But honestly, I think that's great to hear and would probably lead to a completely different level of homeowner satisfaction. All right. You mentioned briefly before Pearl Addison and your role with Pearl Addison. Would you tell us a little bit more about who Pearl Edison is and what they do? After that, I want to dig into that article you wrote with the founders over there.
[12:05.93] Brynn Cooksey: So I want to say hello to Jake and Evan. They're the founders of Pearl Edison. So they approached us and they wanted to work with a reputable contractor, basically to so they can incorporate building science into their software platform. So what Pearl Edison does, they create a win win scenario for everybody, all the stakeholders in a typical residential HVAC electrification project. And what stakeholders they have a customer facing software that as a customer inputs data. It gives them recommendations based on the customer's budget. It gives them recommendations on what their goals are. So if a customer is altruistic and wants to have an electrification system for fighting carbon emissions. The software will actually show them what impact they'll have by what system they select. So the software is really good at showing the customers exactly what they need to know. And it also helps them do the research on whatever tax credits or rebates are available in their area. So the customer gets good upfront pricing. They get their utility bill impact. They get a low calc, they get their climate impact. And then if the customer decides to fulfill their transaction, we have a network of contractors that we've trained on installation best practices and where the contractor benefits, they get jobs, not leads. So they actually get work orders where they maybe not have to sell, or they don't have to invest a ton of marketing to get heat pump related electrification jobs, or any heating and cooling jobs in that matter. They don't have to market as much to get those qualified customers to do the work. So I was their initial contractor in this model. And in my business alone, they helped me reduce my operating costs about 12%, which was huge. Just because they provided jobs, not leads.
[12:21.41] Ed Smith: Jobs were scoped the way you wanted. Because I could see that being tricky. Like they give you a job. I assume that means it's priced and everything else. And it was you showed up and you didn't have to, like, completely redesign whatever their quote was or scope of work.
[12:21.41] Brynn Cooksey: So by me being contractor zero or patient zero, as we joke, I did a lot of the designing work and got it with the input of mine, of what contractors would be looking at in the future. So to a contractor, the low calc is done and we approach, we take all the risk, right. The duck modifications are laid out. So the contractor is armed with everything that they need. And if there is a change order, Pearl takes care of that. So it's really designed to give the contractor just a work order where they can just go to town, they can put the equipment in, put it in correctly based on our specs, and then we're getting a good install that was designed properly and a happy customer. So the initial design concepts were me. And then we're we basically put that into our software program. So the joke around Perl is there's a little bit of me inside the software using Building Science.
[13:11.25] Eric Fitz: That's amazing. And I'm curious. Perl's been around for a little bit. Roughly how many projects are they doing a year? A month? Yeah. These days.
[13:19.73] Brynn Cooksey: So our heat pump pilot project, we started off last. We just finished it up early this year. Last year we did about 40 heat pump projects and that was the pilot phase. We're now starting to leverage states where the rebate dollars were launched like Michigan. So they give you an answer. Eric, we're not 100% sure of what they've done to date, but we are in several markets, including Pittsburgh and eventually California. I'm sorry Colorado
[13:43.93] Eric Fitz: So Bryn, Ed and I came across this incredible article. Honestly, it's really like an entire report that you helped author with the folks at Pearl Edison where we can't go through everything. It's an incredible article. We'll definitely drop it in the show notes so other folks can check it out, but we'd love to dive into maybe five of the major sort of ten points that the whole article goes through. We'll call out some specific points we want to cover, and then we'd love to hear your thoughts on it, the nuance that you expand on it a bit. So the first one we really wanted to hit on is really this concept that electrification is it's a critically important step, but it's not always necessarily the right first step. Can you just talk about some of the challenges, particularly when we're thinking about homes with a high energy burden, other things we need to think about to get homes electrification ready?
[14:33.85] Brynn Cooksey: That's a good question, Eric. So what we mean by that, if you look at a lot of the federal incentives, a lot of it was geared for income eligible families, and we learn and build in science. We always wanted to stay away from trying to have the box or HVAC products solve a problem, right? Typically, it's not the product itself. It's the combination of the product, the duct system, and the envelope. So what we meant by that when we wrote that statement, it was basically to help underline, I love a statement where he said, you can't HVAC your way out of a bad box. Basically what he means by that sometimes the building shell has to get addressed first in order for you to have a product that's going to work properly. So when we did our pilot and we had these houses that were older Detroit metro area housing stock, they were really leaky, had poor insulation. So maybe a heat pump, full inverter, size of the heating load. Maybe that's not the option for that house. Maybe it doesn't fit well, because the last thing we wanted to do was to put a heat pump system in, and the customers were burdened because of high energy bills. And it wasn't the equipment, it was actually the building shelves. So attacking the building shell first. That's key. And then also other upgrades might need to be done, such as electrical service changes that might have to be upgraded in order to accommodate a heat pump. So looking at every house, case by case, sometimes if we couldn't address the shell, maybe we were restricted to a dual fuel system. So we just had to look at the whole entire house as a system, just to make sure that we get these heat pumps in correctly.
[16:08.90] Eric Fitz: And it makes a ton of sense. And I'm sure you even have situations where there's basic health and safety things you need to address. So maybe you have knob and tube wiring in the home, let alone you need to do an electrical service upgrade to address that knob and tube before you're insulating the walls and or doing that full service upgrade. So yeah, you got to watch out for that kind of stuff too.
[16:27.78] Brynn Cooksey: Absolutely. All the stuff like that we run into with our older housing stock, you definitely have to take those into account. So when we coined that statement in our write up, that was what we were after. That is electrification is important. We do believe that it's the best step for climate change and eventually it should be done. But you have to have a practical approach about implementing it before customers can really benefit from the new technology.
[16:52.54] Eric Fitz: You just mentioned. Dual fuel. Can you just go a little bit further into that? A lot of folks, when they're talking about electrification, they're like, oh my gosh, wait a minute, we can't use any fossil fuels. You're crazy. But let's talk about why dual fuel is actually an important part of the solution.
[17:06.58] Brynn Cooksey: We do have some hardcore enthusiasts where they're right. Carbon emissions is the focal point. But again, from a practical standpoint, I think it will be a long time before we completely get rid of fossil fuels. And again, we have to do it in a way where do a market transformation. We don't burden our customers. So in our pilot that we ran, I'll say the vast majority of the systems we put in were dual fuel, where we would decide to the cooling load for the heat pump, and we would have a economical balance point, maybe about 40 degrees, where the heat pump would trip and then the gas furnace would take on. And doing it that way, you're still getting a good chunk of that system or house covered through electrification, those Partlow days where you don't need the muscle of gas heat. The heat pump is running. So I feel it shouldn't be an all or nothing thing. I think dual fuel has its place, especially in climates where like ours. And it's really important in areas of markets with high utility rates. If you're KW per hour rate is really high, you may not get the full benefit of a cold climate heat pump because it's going to be too costly to run. So dual fuel has this place in an HVAC industry.
[18:13.50] Eric Fitz: Yeah, absolutely. We like to look at, if you take the ratio of the dollars per kilowatt hour compared to like dollars per therm, there are just certain markets in the country where that ratio isn't right. And natural gas is so cheap relative to kilowatt hours. Even with the massive efficiency benefits of a heat pump, it's hard to overcome some of those operational costs. And yeah, dual fuel can make a ton of sense. And as you pointed out, if you're actually making that switch over at a relatively low temperature, maybe it's only a few hundred hours. You're actually running that gas system. So you're getting 95% of those carbon reduction benefits. Yes. But also you're making sure you don't hit that homeowner with operational costs, utility bills that are just completely unmanageable.
[18:58.14] Brynn Cooksey: I agree with you 100%, Eric. And even to sweeten the pot, a lot of times we would specify a modulating gas furnace where it would only produce the output that's needed to offset the load. So even then you can reduce carbon emissions. So your method that you just described, that's exactly how we went about our pilot program.
[18:58.14] Ed Smith: Kind of an interesting I forget if we talked about this at the symposium, Bryn, but we started where Edison is. So our first 18 months, we actually did a pilot phase that's the same size as we did a few dozen homes for full home electrification, weatherization, solar heat pump, hot water heater, panel upgrade, all that sort of stuff. So the sort of the things you guys are, some of the bunch of the stuff you're commenting on from the work you all did, is near and dear to Eric in my heart, which is why I'm very intrigued to ask about the fourth point in the report, which is the heat pump. Cowboys are coming. Consumer protection is about providing homeowners. I'm quoting you all now. Consumer protection is about providing homeowners with enough information to make well-informed choices, not just checkbox compliance. Otherwise, these opportunists will sell homeowners a system based on false expectations and bad energy modeling. I would love to hear more about that one.
[20:14.62] Brynn Cooksey: Absolutely. Let me explain. So in Michigan, locally, I personally our company, our doctors, we pulled out five systems last year. They were sold. They went in, the customer's bills skyrocket, and they were oversize heat pumps. They couldn't manage the moisture. And when we pulled all five out, each heat pump was replaced to the tune of about $20,000 a piece. So it's definitely occurring in the marketplace where heat pumps out a new craze. Everybody's asking for them. There's a lot of misinformation, if you will, that's out there. So one of the things we're concerned about is if a contractor isn't trained properly, it cannot be malice. It can be just a contractor just not educated where they're putting these systems in, and they're doing a customer huge disservice. And one of the things I specifically tell customers, when we put forced air systems in and they were oversize, they had leaky duct systems. And you had the warm supplier temperature of forced air furnaces, and it masked a lot of our mistakes. And speaking honestly, I put it in hundreds of systems that were not sized right. Customers were happy just because the oversize furnace had a leaky duct system, and it kept the customers comfortable to an extent. But the customer didn't know that it could be better when you put in a heat pump. The heat pump doesn't have that upside. So all your mistakes are exposed with duct leaks and stuff like that. So if you don't have a properly trained contractor or technician doing a due diligence on a design part. You're going to get customers who are going to have bad outcomes, and that's what we want to avoid. I have seen some bills, utility bills with my own two eyes that were north of 1500 bucks a month in our peak winter season. So with that being said, if the funds from a federal incentives are geared towards low income or income eligible families, that's a huge burden. So we just want to make sure that any contractor that works with us, they're trained on best practices so we can have good outcomes.
[22:14.18] Ed Smith: Are you telling me then, that a heat pump system won't modulate down to the perfect amount 12 months a year, no matter how big it is?
[22:24.10] Brynn Cooksey: I'm telling you, the heat pump system is a small portion of the system, and you need duct system and an envelope to make it all work together. So I would agree with that statement.
[22:33.50] Eric Fitz: I want to make a quick shout out to Steve Rogers and the Energy Conservatory. We in episode 13 of the Heat Pump podcast, we interviewed Steve and he went into a whole bunch of great examples around why duct leakage to the outside is such an important thing to catch and fix, because if you're not aware of it, you swap out the equipment. You can actually make things even worse. And it's such an important topic. I encourage folks to check out that episode as well.
[22:56.42] Brynn Cooksey: I love Steve. Steve's a good friend. I love that company also. So that was one of the episodes. I was glued and I was in my living room listening to it, and my wife heard me agreeing and she was like, what the heck is going on? And I'm listening to Steve preach. So absolutely, I love I love the Energy Conservatory, and Steve's a good friend, but he's 100% right. If you leak leak air out the duct system, it's inside the conditioned space. It's still in a box, so it's not as bad. But when you leak it out side the thermal and pressure boundary, that energy is gone. It causes building pressures, which can also affect comfort. And it can also cause indoor air quality issues. So if a well-meaning contractor doesn't have that built in science training and they do a heat pump retrofit and they don't look at that, they're asking for trouble. So we definitely need to get more building science training out there to our technicians and contractors.
[23:45.38] Eric Fitz: I'd love to jump into the fifth key point because it plays into what we were just talking about. So in the article, you talk about bad system design and bad installs are really common. Unfortunately, you mentioned this again in the article that a lot of projects go to best sales person, not necessarily the best engineer or technician. Can you just talk more about that and what we can do to help address that particular challenge?
[24:09.02Brynn Cooksey: That's one of Pearl Edisons is key is to have good contractors win. When looking at a you have some contractors that may have large marketing budgets, or they spend a fair amount of money on soft skills and training techniques to help them close at the kitchen table. Sometimes those companies may not have the building science effect behind them, and maybe their large operating budgets. Or maybe they buy a lot of equipment. They can get equipment a little bit cheaper than maybe a smaller contractor. So it's not a fair playing field sometimes, just because that contractor has to grow to that point in order to become successful. So one thing we're pro Edison. We're trying to make it where the customer has the best information and that the contractor sees jobs, not leads. Marketing forever in my business was one of the largest expenses. Just because you have to put enough out there to get enough business back to pay your bills. So learning is a great way for contractors to get those jobs, those highly profitable jobs that can sustain their business without spending a ton of money on marketing, where they can take that that resources and put it somewhere else in their business.
[25:18.75] Ed Smith: We got one more we want to ask about, which we picked our favorite five. But all ten points in this article were fantastic. We'll link to it in the show notes. So this one was intriguing to me. It's important that home electrification is profitable for good contractors. It's almost so obvious that it didn't need to be stated. But why did you guys need to state it? Tell us more about that.
[25:39.51] Brynn Cooksey: We work with some of the good friends at PNL. One of the laboratories for and one of our projects is trying to reduce the resistance for contractors to put in heat pumps. Heat pump marketplace transformation isn't new. It was attempted before and the technology is a lot better now. But you have some contractors who are flat out afraid to put in heat pumps because of some of the horror stories where they don't work in cold climates. They are. The customers would be uncomfortable, their bills are going to go up, and that's because of the technology. There's one part of it, but also the same design practices that we're not doing a good job as industry doing now. We were worse at it back then. So as a result, you have some contractors who absolutely do not want to touch heat pumps. And I've even had colleagues across the country, in the energy sector who are trying to get heat pumps in and trying to get a part of the heat pump wave. And they're getting three quotes from contractors, and each and every contractor are telling them not to put heat pumps in. And it's a concern because the concerns are legitimate, but they can't be overcome. And I think they can be overcome with training, with proper training. So in order for a heat pump marketplace transformation to take place, contractors have to feel like they can put a heat pump in, it can go in correctly, they can set the controls, and their phone isn't going to ring when it gets zero degrees outside and they're going to have an issue. So that's what they fear. And if you have a callback as a contractor that just eats away, your profit goes away. So that's one of the things we're also trying to do is help with various organizations to reduce that resistance to selling heat pumps so that contractors can benefit from really a well-performing heat pump system is really some of the best comfort I've ever experienced. So if we can get contractors to understand that, I think we'll see some of that resistance come down.
[27:25.79] Eric Fitz: It was interesting, Brennan. We just got to see each other in person at the Air Conditioning Contractors of America, the ACA 2025 conference. Just we were just at a couple of days ago and one of the big sessions was with the manufacturers. And so that's all the big name manufacturers. You can list all the brands. I think most of them are represented. And they asked this question to the whole audience. And this is like contractors from across the whole country. I don't know, there's probably 4 or 500 people in the room. And I was amazed. They asked, raise your hand if you're installing heat pumps right now. And about half of the audience raised their hands. And this is certainly not a scientific study, but I think about the sort of the perceptions of attending the ACA conference in particular. Even last year or the year before. Can't imagine that the audience participation or the number of folks reporting that they're installing pumps would be that high. So I was that was really promising, at least for me to see that things are turning, that I think there's more and more contractors across the whole country that are embracing this technology and realizing if they thoughtful, if they're addressing issues like you're talking about with the building envelope, they can have a lot of success and be profitable and be successful.
[00:28:34.43] Brynn Cooksey: That's a great point, Eric. As a matter of fact, that's how I got connected with Pearl Edison. They were looking for contractors to help them run this pilot, and a lot of contractors were unwilling to put in heat pumps because of those fears. And I agree, I was in that same meeting and it was still shocking to see heat pump adoption isn't quite where it needs to be. So I think together, as long as we continue to try to overcome those legitimate concerns. But like I said, they're not overwhelming. We can overcome them. I think we can get pushed the ball down the road a little bit and start getting more adoption of heat pump technology.
[29:07.75] Ed Smith: Brian, you're a guy who's on the cutting edge of a lot of stuff happening in building science and HVAC. What's going on or what's coming that's got you excited or optimistic about shifts in either heat pumps or home performance?
[29:24.47] Brynn Cooksey: I like the fact that a lot of the federal incentives are placing the emphasis on proper design and building science, where participation into those programs, you actually have to go through training. So it's maybe it's going to help kind of force people through the industry to go through training, the proper training to help reduce some of these bad outcomes, because the same fears we have, a lot of states and other agencies have the same fear where they don't want to see poor heat pump installations go in, and it's on a large scale. So just imagine a city or state that has a ton of heat pump issues. So I've loved that to see that specific training has been in place to make sure that heat pumps going correctly, and some of my building science classes even recently, once we talk about like low calculations, I've had contractors literally on break doing our in-person class run outside to their truck and cancel all their jobs for next week to postpone them until they get low. Kalkstein. So it's like slowly but surely we're getting the message across. Hey, there's a proper way to do this, and I don't think it's malice. I think we just don't have enough resources to train everybody effectively. So I'm thrilled to see that.
[30:37.83Ed Smith: That's awesome. What? I wish I could be there to see those cancellations happen. That's pretty inspiring.
[30:43.79] Brynn Cooksey: It is. You hear them over, you overhear the conversations. Hey, Mr. Smith, we got to redo some stuff with your system. Do you mind if I come out next Friday instead of next Monday like I had planned? And it's awesome. They're getting their stuff together so that they can do a proper load calc. So it's absolutely. That warms my heart to see that, to see them take advantage. And they you have to be humble enough to understand you have been doing it wrong for a long time like I have, and that they are now trying to change. So I think if we can get more training out there, I think we'll see everything improve as a whole.
[31:10.59] Eric Fitz: Is there anything else that we can do as an industry to help change the kind of homeowner perception or sort of distrust of contractors in general? I know you touched on this a little bit in the report, Role of Utilities, but what are you thinking about? How can we help just homeowners also be more comfortable with this change?
[31:28.67] Brynn Cooksey: That's a very good point, Eric. I think a lot more resources to maybe educating the customer about what heat pumps are. Another true story. We had a customer who purchased a heat pump and it was two competing contractors. One contractor's bid was really high compared to the other, but he had a properly sized heat pump. He had dehumidification selected because the heat pump, besides the heating load, he had all the stuff in bells and whistles and I'll say contractor B did not. They were going to put in a heat pump, electric resistance, and there was no accounting for the electric and fuel rates. As a result, when a customer, they went with the lower bid and that later on that winter last year, their bills skyrocketed. And his comment when we were doing a consultation with him after the fact, was that it wasn't enough information for him to understand what decisions he was making. So I think as a whole, I think if we can start to produce some customer facing information to help them along with the decisions, I think that will be very helpful.
[32:29.35] Eric Fitz: Totally. It's interesting the abode, which helps manage some of the utility programs in Massachusetts. They've got a tool that allows homeowners to submit the different bids they've gotten from contractors, and then they will help do a comparison across the different systems that have been designed and provide guidance on what are those trade offs between the systems that are not obvious for the average homeowner? I've got to see it for the first time just a few weeks ago. Maybe we can link to it in our show notes, but it's interesting to see tools like that starting to emerge that can really help homeowners just decipher all this new information that they're coming across for the first time, or people don't replace their HVAC systems very often. So it's maybe like once or twice in your lifetime that you're going to go through this whole process. For most folks.
[33:13.55] Brynn Cooksey: I agree with you 100%. That's a fantastic idea. Eric, you mentioned another point. Nobody on Saturday afternoon says, you know what, I'm going to buy a new heat pump today. They don't do that. Typically, it's an emergent situation. The older system is failing and they need to get something in there quickly. That process, if you think about it, what you're just talking about that company being able to compare and then just think about the contractor who was well meaning if he didn't communicate without diagnostic testing enough to the customer, they may just view that difference in just sales and Adeline and that customer may revert to a lower price point. So helping the customer not make that mistake will be huge in seeing rapid heat pump adoption.
[33:54.55] Ed Smith: And for those who aren't doing it in an emergency situation, then you're going to get. If the HVAC company is following recommendations in the industry for sales practices, they're going to get a good, better and best for the three different companies who came in. That means if they have three companies come in to quote, they have nine quotes to choose from, and I'm willing to bet none of those are exactly the same. So now the homeowner has nine options to choose from. No idea how to decipher it. No one to help them think through that like it is an incredibly complicated and unnerving decision.
[34:28.63] Brynn Cooksey: It's a lot of money. Like Eric mentioned, it's outside. Your roof is probably one of the biggest investments in your home, and you're probably only going to make this decision a couple times in your lifetime. So it can be it can cause a level of anxiety for customers, for sure. That's one of the reasons we like to get them involved with the diagnostic testing in our sales process, so the customers can see their problems. That's exactly why we do it.
[34:49.08] Eric Fitz: What gets me excited here is this is a big problem. But it also with every problem there's there's a huge opportunity. There's an opportunity for contractors to spend that extra time with their customers, to really educate them, to actually walk through the tradeoffs of the proposals that they're making and help empower the homeowner to make the best decision, both for their specific needs as occupants in the building. But also understand, hey, there's some of these challenges in my specific home or these constraints we have to deal with and be able to understand, okay, this particular contractor is not trying to just make a buck. It looks like my house. I really need to do some extra duct insulation. And that's going to that's why it's going to cost a little bit more. And if you take that time, it's a way to completely differentiate yourself again from folks that aren't doing that, and you're going to end up with more profitable jobs, happier customers, better overall business.
[35:40.64] Brynn Cooksey: Or as we like to say, Eric, we get out of the rat race. That's where you get out the rat race. Yep.
[35:45.56] Eric Fitz: Awesome.
[35:46.08] Ed Smith: That is a great note to close on. And our final question is always, what resources would you recommend to heat pump entrepreneurs who don't want to be heat pump cowboys who want to do what's right? Build a long standing business with delighted customers. What resources would you point them towards to build that business and build that delighted customer base?
[36:06.88] Brynn Cooksey: Excellent question. So I would say heat pump adoption is coming. I would say not to miss the boat with heat pump adoption and do it correctly. You need to focus on the design fundamentals so that I can manuals the J and S and the D, buy out the time and just go to a class and understand exactly what the process is. And I always recommend that before even using a software system like apply, just to understand that garbage in is garbage out. Start with the design process in the end. Get a software program like Ul's leader tool is amazing. It makes the whole process where I would have to go to a house and survey it, and come back with a bunch of notes and put it into a software program. You can do a little calc relatively quickly. Use technology like that to make yourself more efficient, and if you start to do those things, you're removing really the risk from having bad installs and having warranties and rework. If you design it right on the front end, everything seems to take care of itself. So focus on the design aspect of it. Seek that training out. And it's a lot of training is costly, but it's an investment that will pay yourself. I can't imagine how many exits are involved by making that investment. So investing yourself with the design courses use technology and I try things on my own house, and it drives my wife nuts to just to see if it works. Like cutting our furnace size in half. She didn't believe that would work, but doing a little calc and can actually show her the numbers and proving it to her and proving it to myself. Then we will incorporate it, incorporate it into a business. So that would be my advice. And the heat pumps are coming. Just do them right.
[37:43.48] Ed Smith: Awesome friend. Thank you so much for joining us. This was fantastic.
[00:37:48.44] Brynn Cooksey: Thank you guys for having me again. I love you guys. Podcast I'll be listening in the future.
[37:52.92] Eric Fitz: It was so much fun to have you on. I really appreciate it. We'll be in touch soon, man.
[37:56.12] Brynn Cooksey: Thanks, Eric. Thanks. Edit.
[00:38:00] Eric Fitz: Thanks for listening to the Hip Hop Podcast. It is a production of Amply Energy, and just a reminder that the opinions voiced were those of our guests or us, depending on who was talking. If you like what you've heard and haven't subscribed, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We'd love to hear from you, so feel free to reach out! You can reach us once again at hello@amply.energy. Thanks a lot.
